Meet the ‘SPY kids’ tied to Wall Street’s first ETF

The first US ETF was launched in 1993

Exchange-traded funds are relatively new inventions, and they've grown significantly in popularity during their few decades of existence. They were first created as an alternative to mutual funds. A colorful visualization depicts the entire history of ETFs.

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

Explore a list of the world’s weirdest and wildest ETFs

Whether you’re leaping straight into the future and looking for stocks picked by AI, a sci-fi aficionado who wants to invest in space travel, or a drama enthusiast looking to make money on stock market volatility, the ETF market’s weird corners have something for you.

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF is one of the most highly traded funds on the market

State Street, a popular ETF issuer, is responsible for the SPDR S&P 500 ETF. This fund trades under the SPY ticker, and State Street maintains a web page with key facts and figures on SPY. For instance, its expense ratio is 0.0945%, or $9.45 on an initial $10K investment.

Read how Vanguard's founder used the S&P 500 to revolutionize retail investing

John Bogle, the founder of The Vanguard Group, created a fund that tracked the S&P 500 in 1976. That fund created an unprecedented opportunity for individual retail investors, brought down fees across the board, and popularized the belief that passive, low-cost index fund investments would outperform actively managed portfolios long-term.

How COVID-19 brought new investors into the market

With fees removed from the equation and more time at home thanks to pandemic-related lockdowns, Americans who had never bought or sold stocks before started participating in the market. Charles Schwab dubs this cohort “Generation Investor” and notes individuals from all age ranges took part in this phenomenon. Study up here.

Listen to the methods and strategy of the secretive S&P 500 selection committee

Stocks are added to the S&P 500 by a secret selection committee that meets regularly to assess which companies can remain in the index, which companies need to be added, and which companies no longer meet the criteria. The members of the committee used to be public, but S&P Global decided to keep its members confidential after companies sent packages, letters, and gifts to try to make it into the index.

Researchers, experts, and retirees are finding that the 401(k) has left much to be desired

Baby Boomers, once the biggest generation, are now creating the largest wave of retirees in US history. Much of this generation is also the first to retire predominantly on the expectation that their 401(k) plans or similar tax-advantaged accounts performed well in the markets—which isn’t always the case.

History’s largest intergenerational wealth transfer is happening in the next few decades

The founder of a multifamily office firm offers lessons on how to preserve wealth for generations from a global perspective, like educating younger family members.

The children of parents who died on 9/11 share their stories in remembrance

Many children of 9/11 victims were too young to remember their parents who died. They’ve grown up living with the tension between having a personal connection to the day but few, if any memories. Read some of their stories.

A timeline of Wall Street's history

Wall Street's historical timeline starts with Wall Street getting its name in the 1600s and ends with details about the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011.

Spellcaster: the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried

The rapid collapse of FTX, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, in late 2022 shocked the world. At the center of the fiasco was Sam Bankman-Fried, a 29-year-old wunderkind who had entranced politicians, journalists, financiers, and others with his melding of altruism and digital currency. The sordid details revealed as the empire fell captured public attention—venture into the death spiral with this in-depth podcast from Bloomberg.

See every company in and out of the Dow since 1928

The index has had 30 companies since 1928. See each company’s tenure on the index and what firms were added or replaced by year and industry.

Some companies like to make their IPO day antics unique

An article details some of the wildest bell-ringing day stunts in recent history, from Clifford the Big Red Dog ringing the opening bell to one company's employees roasting marshmallows in a campfire on Wall Street as it went public.

The 2024 Synapse collapse took $90M of people’s life savings with it

In 2024, a banking middleman called Synapse declared bankruptcy. Unfortunately, it also locked roughly 100,000 Americans out of their own money, which prompted a class action lawsuit.

SPACs, explained

Special purpose acquisition companies make it easy for mature unicorns (companies valued at over $1B) to receive growth capital by going public. This process effectively skips the work of a traditional initial public offering, and its time-intensive investor negotiations. Typically, a well-known investor with expertise in a certain industry sponsors a SPAC with the intent to acquire a startup. Learn how it works and the risks involved here.

'The Fund' exposed culture problems and scandals at Bridgewater Associates

In 2023, Rob Copeland—who covered Bridgewater Associates for The Wall Street Journal for 10 years before moving to The New York Times—wrote a book that drew from interviews, company documents, and meeting recordings. "The Fund" highlighted sexual harassment scandals, a company contract to hire strippers, and a toxic company culture. Dalio has criticized the author for being sensational and a gossip.

One $100 investment in the Medallion Fund skyrockets over time

The Medallion Fund, the famously secretive quant fund that invests billions of dollars for the partners and employees of a single firm with a legendary track record, has trounced the market for more than three decades. While its results are an extreme outlier, this visualization showcases the power of compound interest.

Play a game that reveals if investors with a crystal ball make better trades

The "crystal ball" game reveals how well you would do trading stocks and bonds if you could see the front page of the Wall Street Journal one day in advance.

PayPal's Peter Thiel turned his Roth IRA into $5B

In 1999, tech titan Peter Thiel had a Roth IRA with roughly $2K in it. By 2019, that tax-free account was worth $5B. For context, the average Roth IRA was worth roughly $39K at the end of 2018. Naturally, Thiel had a few investment options that the average person probably doesn’t have access to—but the story of his IRA’s boom is nonetheless fascinating.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.

Hedge funds make money from imposing steep fees on investors, as well as from investment performance

Hedge funds often operate on a "2 and 20" model: Investors pay fund managers a 2% management fee, and the hedge fund keeps 20% of their profits. (The 2% is imposed annually, irrespective of performance.) Hedge funds are known for chasing big returns—and taking big risks to get them. This explainer not only breaks down how they work in detail, but also the strategy first introduced in 1949 that still shapes hedge fund investing today.

Investors collectively own $28T in US Treasury securities

The 10-year Treasury yield is a central measure of the health of the economy, shaping how much both the government pays on its debt and the cost of borrowing for the private sector. This explainer provides stats and explainers on the important metric.

Why the SEC was started

The Securities and Exchange Commission was created during the Great Depression to restore public trust in financial markets after the 1929 crash. Established in 1934, it enforces transparency, investigates fraud, and protects investors by requiring companies to disclose accurate information and holding violators accountable.

WeWork filed its first S-1 in 2019

When WeWork prepared to file for its initial public offering in 2019, its S-1 revealed its poor financial state to the public.

Three AI startup founders broke the record for the youngest self-made billionaire previously set by Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg became the youngest self-made billionaire in 2006 at 23 years old when Facebook held its initial public offering. In January of 2026, three AI startup founders—Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha—broke Zuckerberg's record and became billionaires at 22 years old.

The Yale model of investment allocation, explained

College endowment managers long held to the traditional allocation of 60% domestic stocks and 40% bonds. But Yale’s David Swensen developed a new approach: deprioritizing low-risk fixed income and liquid assets in favor of alternative investments to leverage endowments' long-term investment horizons and capture the “liquidity premium.”

Dozens of S&P 500 stocks, including Coca-Cola and Walmart—known as the dividend aristocrats—have increased dividends every year for 25 years

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

Watch this video that uses Lego bricks to explain how venture capital works.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

When a Paris department store hesitated to sell Estée Lauder's perfume, she 'accidentally' broke a bottle, causing the smell to spread throughout the store and shoppers to start asking to buy the scent.

11 people died from firework injuries in the US in 2024.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

Despite being favored by 87% of Americans, Congress does not have term limits.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

Apeirophobia is an overwhelming fear of living forever, perhaps stemming from the brain's inability to conceptualize an infinite life.

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.