5 Best ETFs to Buy in 2026 (For Your TFSA)

Last updated 25 February 2026

Today, we are exploring the 5 best ETFs to buy in 2026 for your TFSA. If you’re starting out a tax-free savings account (TFSA), or have already started it but you are unsure which ETFs to buy, this article will help you analyse some of the most bought ETFs for TFSAs in South Africa.

The problem with not investing in ETFs is that you miss out on the high-growth returns that will turn your R500,000 TFSA lifetime limit into millions by the time you finish contributing to your TFSA. If you don’t invest in ETFs, you risk your savings or investments being eaten away by inflation. ETFs are most probably the best solution to this problem because they offer diversification to your portfolio, as well as returns of over 10% annually. Some even offer up to 23.46% average returns per annum over 10 years. Let’s explore each of them in depth.

Top 5 Best ETFs to Buy in 2026

ETF comparison (South Africa, 2026)

ETF	Index	TER	1Y Return	5Y Return	Average annual return	Portfolio Size
Satrix 40 ETF	JSE Top 40	0.10%	48.16%	18.39%	13.20%	R21.4bn
Satrix MSCI World	MSCI World	0.78%	2.06%	13.07%	12.42%	R27.5bn
Satrix Resi ETF	JSE Resources 10	0.43%	132.47%	23.74%	23.46%	R3.2bn
Satrix S&P 500	S&P 500 Index	0.25%	-0.49%	15.98%	16.99%	R10.5bn
Satrix Nasdaq 100	Nasdaq 100 Index	0.46%	2.47%	16.34%	23.22%	R8.6bn

All performance data is as at 31 January 2026 and is annualized, according to Satrix.

S&P 500 Feeder ETF

The S&P 500 tracks the 500 largest companies in the United States. You get exposure to Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, and all the big names you hear about in the news. The fund is market-cap weighted, so the bigger companies have more influence on your returns.

The S&P 500 gives you access to the US equity exposure without needing to open a foreign brokerage account or deal with forex paperwork. The fund acts as a rand hedge. This means that when the rand weakens against the dollar, your returns go up. When the rand strengthens, your returns take a hit. That 5 year return of 15.98% includes both the US stock market performance and all the currency movements between the rand and dollar.

You’ll notice the 1-year return is slightly negative at -0.49%. This happened because the rand was relatively strong over that period. The US stocks went up in dollars, but when you convert them back to rands, you end up with a small loss.

Risks associated with the S&P 500

You’re putting all your eggs in one country’s basket. If something happens to the US economy or if US stocks underperform for a few years, your returns suffer. Political changes, regulatory shifts, recessions, all of it affects this fund directly.

Currency cuts both ways. Yes, a weak rand helps your returns, but a strong rand hurts them. If you’re maxing out your TFSA over 14 years and the rand suddenly strengthens a lot, your returns will look worse than the actual US market performance. However, past data does not support this.

Nasdaq 100 Feeder ETF

The Nasdaq 100 tracks the 100 largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. This fund is heavily weighted towards technology and growth stocks. It’s not a broad market fund like the S&P 500. It’s concentrated in specific sectors.

Concentration of the Nasdaq 100

As of January 2026, the top 10 holdings were:

• Nvidia: 8.89%
• Apple: 7.34%
• Microsoft: 6.12%
• Amazon: 4.90%
• Meta: 4.03%

Over 50% of the entire fund sits in Information Technology stocks. Communication Services and Consumer Discretionary make up most of the rest. This is a concentrated investment in US tech and growth companies.

If you believe technology, AI infrastructure, and cloud computing will keep driving global growth over the next 10 to 15 years, this fund gives you direct exposure to that trend. The 5-year return of 16.34% shows what happens when that thesis plays out.

Inside a TFSA, you don’t pay capital gains tax when you eventually sell or withdraw. For a fund like this, where most of the returns come from price appreciation rather than dividends, that tax saving adds up over 14 years of contributions.

Risks associated with the Nasdaq 100 ETF

This ETF is crazy volatile. The best year was 51.53%, and the worst was -8.38%. If you’re putting R3,000 into your TFSA every month, or R36,000 yearly, and this fund drops 8% in a year, you need to be comfortable continuing to buy through that drop.

Sector concentration is the big risk here. If technology stocks fall out of favor and investors rotate into value stocks or other sectors, the Nasdaq 100 will underperform badly. It happened before, and it may happen again. The question is whether you can hold through it.

Over 14 years of TFSA contributions, you will see at least one or two negative years. Maybe more. Most people panic and sell at the wrong time.

JSE Top 40

These are the 40 biggest companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). You get exposure to mining companies, banks, telecommunications, retail, property, and technology.

Sector breakdown (as of January 2026)

• Basic Materials: 37.51%
• Financials: 29.14%
• Technology: 12.51%
• Consumer Staples:m7.78%
• Telecommunications: 5.29%

The top holdings include Gold Fields, Naspers, AngloGold Ashanti, FirstRand, and Standard Bank. This means your returns are tied to commodity prices like gold and platinum, and how well South African banks perform.

Why it makes the list

You get a 2.61% dividend yield. Most offshore equity ETFs don’t pay out dividends; they just reinvest them automatically. This one pays quarterly. Inside your TFSA, those dividends are completely tax-free.

If you earn rands, spend rands, and plan to retire in South Africa, having some local equity exposure makes sense. You’re not depending entirely on the dollar rand exchange rate to give you good returns.

Risks associated with the JSE Top 40

You’re very exposed to commodity prices. When gold and platinum fall, this ETF takes a hit. That 37.51% weighting in Basic Materials means resource company performance drives a big chunk of your return.

South African political and economic risk is baked in. Load shedding, policy uncertainty, and government debt problems all affect JSE-listed companies. Some are more exposed than others, but you can’t escape it completely.

The worst year was -6.00%. That’s over a full calendar year. During that year, there were probably months where the fund was down 10% or more from its peak. If that happens a few years into your TFSA contributions, will you keep putting money in, or will you panic and stop?

MSCI World Index Fund

The MSCI World Index covers about 1,302 large and mid-cap stocks across 23 developed market countries. This is the broadest diversification you can get from a single fund. It includes the US, Japan, UK, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, and 15 other developed economies.

The US makes up 72.92% of the total weighting. Japan is second at 5.50%, then the UK at 3.64%, and Canada at 3.26%. This just reflects how big the US equity market is compared to the rest of the developed world.

Why it makes the list

If you want one fund that gives you exposure to developed market equities around the world, this is it. You’re not betting on a single country or a single sector. You’re spreading your risk across 23 countries and over 1,300 companies.

The 10 year return of 12.42% includes the COVID crash, the recovery, interest rate hikes, and multiple currency cycles. It shows you what holding global equities delivers when you just stay invested and don’t panic.

The worst year was 0.10%, and the best year was 34.41%. That range is much tighter than something like the Nasdaq 100 or the Resi 10. Lower highs but also higher lows.

Inside a TFSA, you’re compounding that 12% to 13% over 14 years without paying any capital gains tax. That’s where the real benefit comes in.

Risks associated with the MSCI World Index Fund

If US equities underperform global markets over the next decade, this fund will underperform with them. The diversification across 23 countries sounds good, but in practice, you’re still mostly betting on Trump’s America.

Currency matters here. If the rand strengthens significantly over your 14 year TFSA contribution period, your returns in rands will look worse than the fund’s actual performance in dollars or other currencies.

Satrix Resi ETF

The Satrix Resi tracks the JSE Capped Resources 10 Index. This is pure commodity exposure. Ten stocks. All resource focused. Gold miners, platinum producers, and diversified mining companies.

Sector breakdown

• Gold Mining: 51.47%
• Platinum & Precious Metals: 34.25%
• General Mining: 11.86%
• Chemicals Diversified: 2.42%

Over half of this fund is gold mining stocks. Gold Fields and AngloGold Ashanti together make up close to 50% of the entire fund. Platinum miners are another third. The rest is diversified mining and a bit of chemicals.

Why it makes the list

That 10-year return of 23.46% is the best performance on this entire list. Resources have outperformed over the long term because commodity prices went up, the rand stayed weak, and demand for hard assets kept increasing.

It has a 1-year return of 132.47%. That’s what happens when gold rallies hard and rand-based investors benefit from both the commodity price going up and the currency effect on top of it.

If you’re worried about inflation eating away at your TFSA savings over the next 14 years, gold and platinum give you some protection. They’re real physical assets. When paper currencies lose value, commodities tend to hold their value or go up.

Inside a TFSA, you don’t pay capital gains tax on that 132% return. If you held this in a normal taxable investment account you’d owe SARS 18% on the first R40,000 of gains plus more on anything above that. In a TFSA, you keep everything.

Risks associated with the Resi 10

The worst year was -39.36%. That’s a full calendar year where the fund lost nearly 40% of its value. If you put your full R36,000 annual TFSA contribution in on January 1st and the fund dropped 39%, you’d end the year with only R21,830. That’s a real loss of R14,170.

This fund doesn’t care about company earnings, innovation, or business models. It just tracks commodity prices. When gold falls, when platinum falls, this fund falls. There’s no diversification to protect you.

Ten stocks, and half of them are gold miners. If South African mining companies face strikes, operational problems, cost increases, or new regulations, there’s nowhere to hide in this fund.

Yes, the 5-year return of 23.74% looks amazing. But getting there meant living through that -39% year. Most people can’t handle watching their money drop that much. They sell at the bottom and lock in the loss.

ETF Overlap

If you’re buying multiple ETFs in your TFSA, you need to understand overlap. Overlap happens when different ETFs hold the same underlying stocks. For example, if you put 30% into the S&P 500 and 40% into the Nasdaq 100, you’re not getting as much diversification as you think.

Both funds hold Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, and Meta. The Nasdaq 100 is actually a subset of companies that also appear in the S&P 500, just with heavier technology weighting. So you end up with maybe 15% to 20% of your total TFSA sitting in the same five tech stocks across both funds.

The same thing happens with the MSCI World and the S&P 500. The MSCI World is 72.92% US stocks, and most of those US stocks are the same ones in the S&P 500. If you want real diversification, you need to look at what’s actually inside each fund, not just the fund names. A portfolio with S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and MSCI World sounds diversified, but you’re really just overweight on US large-cap stocks, especially technology.

That’s why adding something like STX40 or Resi makes sense. They give you exposure to completely different companies and sectors that don’t appear in any of the offshore funds.

Which ETF Works Best for a 14 Year TFSA?

All five of these ETFs qualify as Section 12T tax-free investments. You don’t pay tax on dividends, capital gains, or interest. That’s the whole point of using the TFSA structure.

Your annual limit is R36,000. Your lifetime cap is R500,000. If you contribute R36,000 every year, you’ll hit that cap in about 13.9 years. After that, you’re done. You can’t put in any more money, even if you withdraw some later.

For TFSA investing, you generally want growth over income. The tax benefit applies to capital gains, so you want funds that go up in price rather than paying out dividends. That’s why the Nasdaq 100, S&P 500, and MSCI World make more sense than STX40 or Resi for most people.

But it really depends on how much risk you can handle. If you’re 25 years old, that -8.38% worst year from the Nasdaq 100 doesn’t matter much over 30 or 40 years. If you’re 40 and planning to use your TFSA money at 55, that worst year starts to matter a lot more.

You can use a TFSA calculator to see what different scenarios look like. Put in R3,000 per month for 14 years at different return assumptions like 10%, 12%, 15%, 18%. See what the numbers come out to. The difference between a 12% return and a 16% return over 14 years is massive when it’s all compounding tax-free.

Offshore vs Local: How to Split Your TFSA Contributions

The choice between offshore funds like the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and MSCI World versus local funds like STX40 and Resi isn’t about which one is better. It’s about how you split your money between them.

Offshore funds give you currency protection if the rand keeps weakening. You get access to global companies and sectors that don’t exist in South Africa. You diversify away from local political and economic risk.

Local funds mean you don’t have a currency mismatch if you’re retiring in South Africa and spending rands. You get dividend income (STX40 pays 2.61%). You get direct exposure to commodity cycles that often benefit when the rand is weak.

Most Azanian investors do a mix of both. The exact split depends on where you earn your money, where you plan to retire, and what you think will happen to the rand over the next 14 years.

A 70/30 split between offshore and local is common. Some people do 50/50. Going 100% into either offshore or local is a big concentrated bet.

This Article Is Not Financial Advice

Everything in this article is for educational purposes only. Before you invest any money in your TFSA, you should speak to a certified financial planner who can look at your actual situation and give you proper advice. They’ll ask about your other investments, your debt, your emergency fund, your retirement plans, all the things that matter when building a portfolio. This article gives you information. A financial advisor gives you advice. Those are two different things.

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