Billionaire Israel Englander's 2 Biggest Bets Are on the S&P 500, and He Just Bought More

Billionaire investor Israel Englander operates Millennium Management, the hedge fund he founded in 1989 and grew to become one of the world's largest. Millennium has more than 3,800 holdings with more than $92 billion in assets under management. But his two biggest holdings prove that you don't need to pick a handful of the best stocks to achieve a diversified portfolio -- for that, the best bet is with exchange-traded funds that track a major index.

Millennium's top two holdings are the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: IVV) and the State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEMKT: SPY). Both track the S&P 500, which includes 500 of the largest publicly traded companies in the U.S., providing instant diversification at a low cost. Millennium purchased 1.5 million shares of IVV in the second quarter, according to the fund's 13F filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. And it bought 4.2 million shares of the SPY ETF, making it the fund's second-largest holding.

Israel Englander, CEO of Millennium Management. Image source: Getty Images.

Millennium's portfolio spreads investments out -- rather than investing heavily in one or two sectors, the holdings are balanced, with tech stocks having the largest concentration at 17% of the overall portfolio, followed by finance, industrials, and healthcare, each weighted at more than 10%. And that makes sense -- the fund operates as a multimanager fund that allocates capital to independent portfolio managers rather than following a centralized thesis.

But the two S&P 500 index funds make up nearly 10% of Millennium's overall portfolio, proving that even investors who are as sophisticated as Israel Englander can find low-cost index funds extremely useful.

Source: Hedgefollow.com. Weightings as of June 30, 2026

How SPY and IVV fit in a portfolio

Both of these ETFs have the same goal -- to track the S&P 500 and provide investors with exposure to the same group of large-cap U.S. companies. You won't find much difference in holdings or performance.

However, IVV is cheaper to own -- it has an expense ratio of 0.03%, or $3 annually per $10,000 invested. SPY has an expense ratio of 0.095%, or nearly $10 annually for a $10,000 investment. That may not sound like a lot, but if you're investing $500,000 in IVV, your expenses are only $150 per year, compared with $475 per year for SPY. A few hundred dollars a year adds up.

SPY's advantage is that it has a much higher trading volume -- it averaged 45.4 million shares per day over the last month, versus 4.52 million for IVV. That's important for active traders because the trading volume means tighter bid-ask spreads in the options market. But unless you are trading often, IVV's lower expenses probably make it a better choice.

Patrick Sanders has positions in Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.