2 Growth ETFs to Buy for $200 and Hold Forever

If you want your money to grow over the long term, your best bet is probably an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that invests in S&P 500. These ETFs are some of the cheapest to own, allowing you to keep more of your money over time. And they essentially match the performance of the market, ensuring that you never underperform the broader market.

But what if you want to grow your money even faster than the S&P 500? It’s not easy to do, but these two growth ETFs will give your portfolio a big head start.

Use this weird trick to beat the S&P 500

Want to Beat the S&P 500 Long Term? One idea is to simply buy SPDR S&P 500 ESG ETF (EFIV 0.57%). As the name suggests, this fund invests in S&P 500 companies with an emphasis on companies with a high ESG rating. ESG stands for environmental, social and governance. In a rough way, this metric tries to assess a company’s impact on social and environmental issues. Cigarette and fossil fuel companies may receive a low score, while healthcare and technology companies may receive a higher score — although there is wide variation in how individual companies rank.

The good news is that this additional administration comes at a very low cost. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: SPY) has an expense ratio of 0.09%, while the ESG variant charges 0.10% — only slightly more expensive.

EFIV Total Return Level data by YCharts

Over the past five years, the S&P 500 ESG ETF has outperformed the S&P 500 ETF by a healthy margin of nearly 7 percentage points. The reason is twofold. First, major investment icons such as Larry Fink encouraged major market participants to place a premium on a company’s ESG rating. He believes these factors will grow in importance over time, and companies that address their ESG rankings will see greater capital inflows and thus a relative premium to their lower-ranked peers. Second, the ESG category typically overweights technology companies, a sector that has performed very well in recent years. For example, the S&P 500 ESG ETF has a higher weighting for companies such as Microsoft, Appleand Nvidia — three of the biggest stars on the market in the last decade.

If you want to bet on a low-cost ETF that has outperformed the S&P 500 in recent years, focusing on ESG investments — a category that includes many of the top growth stocks on the market today — this fund is for you.

Go even bigger with this Supercharged Growth ETF

Want to add even more growth potential to your portfolio? Go with Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC 2.39%). This fund is invested exclusively in Bitcoin, giving you instant exposure to Bitcoin price movements. Over the past 12 months, Bitcoin has doubled in value, although it has fallen 15% over the past six months. If you’ve been wanting to invest in cryptocurrencies, this is your chance.

Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is not perfect. It charges a relatively high expense ratio of 1.5% and also has a tracking error. So if you really want to go all in, you’re probably better off buying Bitcoin directly. But if you want to easily add cryptocurrency exposure to your portfolio, this ETF will do the trick.

With a total market cap of $1.1 trillion, Bitcoin likely still has plenty of upside as a store of value. Gold, by comparison, has a total market capitalization of about $15 trillion. Additionally, there is plenty of long-term optionality when it comes to Bitcoin’s transactional use and overall place in the growing crypto ecosystem. Few investments have grown in value as quickly as Bitcoin over the years. And while buying Bitcoin outright is probably the best long-term option, this ETF is a much simpler option for most investors.