VOO returned 317% over ten years at a 0.03% expense ratio, while QQQM delivered 102% over five years targeting Nasdaq-100 growth stocks.
DGRO raised its annual dividend from $0.66 to over $1.45 per share since 2016, compounding entirely tax-free inside a Roth IRA.
Fidelity counted over 559,000 IRA millionaires in Q3 2025, a group built through decades of continuous contributions into diversified equity funds.
It sounds nuts, but SoFi1 is giving new Active Invest users up to $3,000 in stock for a limited time, and all it takes is a $50 deposit to get started.2 See for yourself (Sponsor)
A Roth IRA is one of the few accounts where every dollar of dividends, distributions, and capital gains can compound without federal tax for decades. The 2026 contribution cap is $7,500 for savers under 50 and $8,600 for those 50 and older, so the fund choices within the account carry outsized weight. Three low-cost ETFs cover most of the ground a long-horizon Roth needs: Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:VOO), Invesco NASDAQ 100 ETF (NASDAQ:QQQM), and iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF (NYSEARCA:DGRO).
Each fund plays a different role. VOO delivers the broad U.S. large-cap engine, QQQM tilts the portfolio toward growth and technology, and DGRO adds a quality dividend-growth sleeve whose reinvested payouts compound tax-free. Together, they cover market beta, growth beta, and dividend beta without overlapping so heavily that the account becomes a single bet on the few largest stocks.
Fidelity's most recent participant data counted 559,181 IRA millionaires in the third quarter of 2025, and the profile of that group leans heavily on decades of continuous contributions into diversified equity funds. Long-duration equity exposure is what turns the small annual cap into a seven-figure balance, and the Roth structure removes the tax drag that would otherwise chip away at reinvested dividends and rebalancing trades. The three ETFs below share a common trait: low fees, transparent indexes, and turnover that fits a hold-forever account.
SoFi Active Invest is offering a limited-time promotion. Open an account, fund it with $50 or more, and you could receive up to $3,000 in complimentary stock for Active Invest accounts. See for yourself by clicking here now.
The S&P 500 is what VOO tracks, and it functions as the default core position for most Roth IRAs. The expense ratio of 0.03% is roughly as low as fund fees go, meaning almost every basis point of index return reaches the shareholder. That matters more in a Roth than in a taxable account because there is no offsetting tax benefit to offset expense drag, since the fee is a pure subtraction from tax-free compounding.
The holdings are the 500 largest U.S. companies by index rules, which gives exposure to the earnings power of the domestic economy without concentrated sector bets. Long-term returns reflect that breadth. VOO has returned 86% over the past five years and 317% over the past ten years on a total-return basis, with a one-year gain of about 23%. Shares trade around $708.
A growing dividend is also paid by VOO. Trailing 12-month distributions totaled $7.35 per share, up from $5.12 in 2020. In a Roth, each of those payments can be reinvested into additional shares without triggering a tax event. The tradeoff is that the S&P 500 has become concentrated at the top, so a large slice of VOO's return now rides on a handful of mega-cap names.
The Nasdaq-100 is what QQQM tracks, the same index behind the older QQQ, though with an expense ratio of 0.15% that undercuts its sibling. Invesco designed it explicitly for buy-and-hold retail investors, which is the exact profile of a Roth IRA holder maxing out contributions each year. The lower fee is the reason to prefer it over QQQ for a multi-decade holding.
The portfolio leans hard into large-cap technology and consumer names, with NVIDIA at roughly 8%, Apple near 7%, and Microsoft close to 6% of assets. That concentration is the point. QQQM exists to capture the earnings growth of companies that reinvest heavily in software, semiconductors, and cloud infrastructure, giving it exposure to the firms driving AI and cloud spending.
Performance has followed that trend, with QQQM delivering 102% over five years and 26% over the trailing year. Net assets stood at $97.2 billion at the end of May, up sharply from $70.9 billion three months earlier.
The primary tradeoff with QQQM is volatility. A Nasdaq-100 fund can fall further and faster than a broad index during growth-stock drawdowns, and its sector mix means an AI capex slowdown or a rerating of software multiples would hit QQQM harder than VOO. For a Roth investor with 20 or 30 years ahead, that variance is the cost of a higher expected return on the growth sleeve.