Over a year ago, after working together on a ETF article, my wife and I bought our 14-year old son shares of an ETF. We went with the SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF (SPLG ). The goal was not only to support an investment but also encourage financial literacy. Today, we checked in on how SPLG has progressed, and the theme of diversification came to the fore.
SPLG provides him with exposure to 500 of some of the largest U.S. stocks for a miniscule fee of 0.02%. There are other, larger S&P 500 ETFs that trade more frequently than SPLG. However, since the ETF was meant to be a long-term investment, we focused on a fund with a low fee.
We looked at how SPLG was doing as of April 11. While over the past year, the large-cap ETF was up 4.5%, it was down nearly 9% year to date. Eli and I have talked about how an equity ETF like SPLG is a basket of stocks. We decided to look into why the ETF was down in 2025. My son and I also discussed how diversification stopped the decline from being worse. I’ll let him share more.
Many Well Known Stocks Suffering This Year
“Stocks of some of the most well known companies are down this year,” explained novice investor Eli Rosenbluth. “Apple, Estee Lauder, Nike, and Tesla are all lower than I expected.”
Despite its 21% year-to-date decline, Apple is still the largest stock in SPLG. Weighing 6.5% of SPLG, the information technology giant is bigger than Microsoft and NVIDIA. Tesla was the tenth largest position in SPLG. The automobile company’s 37% decrease in 2025 has landed themselves on S&P 500 Index’s ten worst performers list for the year.
Meanwhile, other consumer discretionary stocks Nike and Estee Lauder were down 28% and 26% respectively for the year. The good news is that the pair only represented a combined 0.17% of the S&P 500 index. Therefore, other companies played a larger role in the ETFs performance.
The S&P 500 as a whole is made up of many sectors. Information technology is the largest at 30%. Financials follow right behind at 14%, with health care (11%), consumer discretionary (10%), and communications services (9%) also represented in the index.
What Stocks Are Up This Year?
In contrast, Eli noted that Cencora, Consolidated Edison, and Republic Services were all up more than 20% in value thus far in 2025. Cencora distributes generic drugs for humans and animals. Walgreens is their largest customer, with other customers around the US including hospitals which use their products.
Consolidated Edison is an electricity company that sells to about 3.6 million customers and, in just New York alone, has over a million consumers. As the Rosenbluths, our family has been a customer of this company for decades.
Republic Services is a waste management company focused on recycling and other environmental services. Their goal is to make a cleaner planet for the future.
The changes in the White House and its policies have led to shifts in the stock market. Today, SPLG allows you to benefit, even when some companies you know are not on the rise. Diversification matters a lot when owning large-cap stocks.
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