The 6 Best Vanguard Index Funds for 2019 and Beyond

Investing icon Warren Buffett advises investors to stash 90% of their money in a Standard & Poor's 500-stock index fund and keep the rest in short-term government bonds. That's a good start for investors who want to keep things simple, but it limits your investments to large U.S. companies. So today, we'll show you how the best Vanguard index funds can add more portfolio diversification while still keeping your strategy simple.

Rather than help to pay the huge salaries of high-powered fund managers, investors can buy index funds, which simply aim to mirror the returns of their benchmark indexes. Why? Because roughly two-thirds of actively managed funds fail to match or beat their indexes.

It's not that fund managers are stupid or incompetent. It's because picking mispriced stocks is incredibly difficult. It's not surprising that the average fund