‘The best performing stock market was Colombia last year’: Picking an index fund as an Irish investor – The Irish Times

When it comes to financial “advice” on the internet, there are many content creators and so-called “finfluencers” who do actually have helpful information to share with the beginner investor.

The problem is that their guidance is often tailored to an American, and to a lesser extent, a UK audience. Following their recommendations for investing could potentially land you with an immense tax headache.

In this episode of Better with Money, Kevin Elliott, a certified financial planner with experience in global finance, shares the checklist he uses when considering an index fund or an exchange-traded fund (ETF) in which to invest.

If you don’t know what an index fund is, fear not. Better with Money is a safe space for the fiscally clueless and one is in good hands with Elliott, who runs his own YouTube channel. It is mercifully jargon-free, despite his career spanning financial institutions in London, Toronto and New York.

Essentially, an index fund is a selection of shares, commonly referred to as a “basket” of shares, which provides you with instant risk diversification. If one company in the basket performs poorly, the others will – in theory – pick up the slack.

The most well-known index is the S&P 500, which tracks the performance of the 500 largest publicly traded companies in the United States. But investing in an index fund that follows the S&P 500 could cost you money if it trades in dollars and is domiciled outside of the EU.

And with thousands upon thousands of index funds and ETFs to choose from, how do you know which one you should pick as an Irish investor?

Building on earlier ETF episodes, Elliott shares the checklist he uses to filter out the funds that don’t align with his goals.

His preference is for passive, broad index funds that are ideally global in their exposure. While few could look away from the US stock market, there are concerns that an artificial intelligence bubble could pop, precipitating a crash, or what people in the business call “a reset.”

And one need look no further than the oil crisis prompted by the Gulf war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to see what is causing market nerves.

In choosing a global index fund, rather than one that solely tracks the American stock market, the average investor can try to mitigate the effects of crises like these by spreading the risk as broadly as possible.

There can also be an upside to tracking what are known as “emerging markets” like those in Asia or South America.

“Someone asked me recently, ‘Well, why would I bother?’“, Elliott tells the podcast. “So the best performing stock market in the world last year was Colombia. It was up 75 per cent in 2025. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody that would’ve experienced or decided, you know, to put money in a Colombian index and the Colombian stock market.”

If you’ve been interested in taking the first steps towards investing but don’t know how to research the thousands of ETFs available, or you are put off by tricky terminology like UCITS or synthetic replication, make sure you listen to this episode of Better with Money.

Need to go right back to basics? You’ll find earlier episodes for the complete beginner here.

These episodes are for information purposes only and do not constitute financial advice.

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