CFRA rates ETFs and mutual funds separately, but our focus on holdings and costs rather than relying solely on past performance as others do enables us to rate funds before a three-year anniversary. These funds remain much smaller than the $230 billion Fidelity 500 Index Fund (FXAIX) and $51 billion Fidelity U.S. Bond Index Fund (FXNAX) , which track the same S&P 500 index and Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond index as IVV and BND for a lower 0.02% and 0.03% expense ratios.
“We think Fidelity’s focus was less on gathering assets for its new index mutual funds and more on establishing a strong brand for a low-cost mutual fund. The limited revenues that are foregone from FZROX, FNILX, and other zero fee funds has likely been offset by harder-to-quantify marketing benefits,” Rosenbluth said.