Originally Posted by
Qotsaautopilot
No one consistently beats the market. If they do, any gain is eaten in fees. This true in any actively managed fund in any retirement account. Buy a stock index fund, a bond index fund, and a cash fund. Balance your money in each based on where you are in age. Retirement made easy. Good luck
Exactly my point. Use the ETF's offered in the PCRB account to build a long-term ultra low cost buy and hold portfolio for a fraction of the price of the substandard offerings in our 401k.
Stick with index funds. Own everything, all the time. All you need to do is figure out what percentage of the 3 or 4 ETF's you need in your portfolio.
The S&P is basically the Large Cap offering.
SCHM= Mid Cap
SCHA= Small cap
SCHF= International
SCHD= Bonds.
With those 5 ETF's (you can add a little bit of REIT exposure (SCHH) to spice things up, if you'd like, but no more than 5-10% of your portfolio) you can build a kick-ass long term low cost portfolio.
You can also just buy the Schwab family index mutual funds, and make a good low-cost mutual fund portfolio using the tickers in this article... a wee bit more expensive than the ETF counterparts, but still a fraction of the price. Also, you can invest your full amount, whereas with the ETF's you're always leaving a little money on the table because you can only buy whole shares.
http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-fund_portfolio