@VintageFreak, yes, they are FDIC insured ($250K limit per account). That was the first thing I checked. We did perfectly fine during 2000-2002 and 2008.
Money market funds work just like saving accounts, and pay very little. Nothing fancy. I prefer Vanguard short term investment grade bond, Admiral share, VFSUX, with SEC yield 1.97% and ER 0.10%.

A wise man once told me - at that time I didn't know he was wise - never invest more than half of your money regardless of how much money you have. This is completely contrary to any advice you will receive.
I am taking this advice. My "cash" position in my investment portfolio does not include 50% cash I have which I will never invest. I maximize my retirement accounts of course.

Vanguard is the perfect place to compare ETF and OEF, because they invest in the same underlying portfolio and their shares, say VIG and VDADX, and have identical ERs. This removes portfolio differences and ER differences, allowing one to see clearly the differences due strictly to the sales structure. It also demonstrates that with Vanguard, cost advantage is indeed illusory (#1).
With VDADX, you get exactly what you pay for (NAV). With the VIG ETF you may get more or less, and that difference varies from moment to moment and day to day (#5). Vanguard shows that as of now (market close, Oct 6) the ETF was trading at a $0.04 discount, so selling near day end would have netted you a few cents under NAV.
Actually, you likely would have lost another penny, because Vanguard (like most providers) gives the closing price of the ETF as the midpoint between bid and ask. VIG typically has a 2c spread, and depending on the Vanguard ETF, the typical spread can be as high as 0.20%. (#4).
Hidden expenses, Vanguard? Trading expenses - these are the same for VIG and its open end siblings, because they share the same underlying portfolio. Likewise any volatility due to skittish investors (again one must ask, Vanguard?) would impact the NAV of the ETF share the same as it would affect the open end class' NAVs.
This is why I feel Vanguard provides the perfect way to compare the two ways of buying/selling shares of a portfolio - ETFs and open end funds. Take the portfolio itself out of the equation and all that's left are the intrinsic differences in sales mechanisms. One always gives you a buck for a buck (NAV), the other often doesn't quite get there, for various reasons.

Here's a good thread on M* from someone asking a similar question - new investor, a bit younger (age 25, not 30), lots of the same funds (or similar funds, or funds from the same families).
http://discuss.morningstar.com/NewSocialize/forums/t/341193.aspx
It's worth reading because no one who responded suggested "pick this fund and this one". Rather, they ask additional questions of the investor, discuss IRAs, matching, costs, etc. Easier for me to point you there than repeat a lot of good feedback.
Unlike the funds there (which were 'A' shares, apparently load-waived), you are being offered 'R' shares, which are load shares, period. Those funds add an extra 0.50% annually to the fees they take out of your investment.
Often (especially for small employers) this is a way for the employer to offer the plan without paying any fees to the administrator for running it. It is the employees who pay for the plan out of their investments (the 0.50% being assessed). That's a good reason to invest in the plan only up to the matching amount (if any), then an IRA, then maybe looking at more in the plan.
Of the funds I recognize, there are some decent ones, but few that jump out at me.

I have less then $5,000. That is what I would have said if asked.
The rest of my $ is in mutual fund ect. or my home.
How do companies spend $ on such poor surveys.
http://www.gobankingrates.com/savings-account/62-percent-americans-under-1000-savings-survey-finds/

I suspect that huge, highly liquid and extremely cheap ETFs like most of Vanguard's or even some of Schwab's proprietary ones (say, SCHD) do not suffer from disadvantages 1,2, 4, and 5 listed above.
Indeed, if you compare the ETF and OEM versions of Vanguard funds (say VIG vs. VDAIX) the ETF generally outperforms slightly.
#3, poor market timing, is a danger for all investments.
And mutual funds have plenty of disadvantages too, including hidden fees, trading expenses, taxes, and being forced by skittish investors to buy and sell at exactly the wrong time.
But I'd stay far away from any ETFs that aren't very liquid and cheap.

A RISKIER APPROACH
Templeton Betting on `Multi-Decade' Emerging-Market Opportunity
October 5, 2015 — 5:37 PM CDT
Updated on October 6, 2015 — 4:36 PM CDT
The recent selloff in emerging-market assets, including Mexico and Malaysia’s currencies, has opened up investment opportunities not seen for decades, according to Franklin Templeton’s Michael Hasenstab, who’s well known for making contrarian bets.
“On a valuation basis, this is not a once-a-decade, this is a multi-decade opportunity to be buying very cheap assets,” Hasenstab, who oversees 30 funds with $143 billion in assets, said in an interview posted on YouTube Monday. “We are not buying everything,” but “there are a handful that have been caught up in the turmoil that we think are diamonds in the rough,” he said.
His reputation, however, was tarnished lately after an investment in Ukraine turned sour as the conflict-torn country defaulted on its bonds. A Templeton-led creditor committee holding about half of the country’s $18 billion Eurobonds reached a restructuring deal with the Ukraine government in August.
Hasenstab’s Templeton Global Bond Fund, which manages $61 billion, has lost 6.1 percent this year, trailing 85 percent of its competitors, as some of its wagers on emerging markets flopped, according to Morningstar Inc. It returned 7.1 percent annually over the past decade, beating 99 percent of its peers.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-05/templeton-betting-on-multi-decade-emerging-market-opportunity
Fact Sheet 6/30/2015
https://www.franklintempleton.com/forms-literature/download/406-FF

Hi All,
I am new to the investing world and am hoping for some advice on funds to invest in for my 401K portfolio. I am currently invested in one fund ( American Century Strategic Allocation: Aggressive ). This fund doesn't seem to perform as well as our advisor assumed. I would appreciate any advice anyone may have oh what I can do with these funds:
Percent
Invesco Stable Asset Fund
Putnam American Government Income Fund - Class R
PIMCO Total Return Fund - Class R
Oppenheimer Global Strategic Income Fund - Class R
Ivy High Income Fund - Class R
PIMCO Real Return Fund - Class R
AB Global Bond Fund - Class R
American Century One Choice In Retirement Portfolio - Class R
American Century One Choice 2020 Portfolio - Class R
American Century One Choice 2025 Portfolio - Class R
American Century One Choice 2030 Portfolio - Class R
American Century One Choice 2035 Portfolio - Class R
American Century One Choice 2040 Portfolio - Class R
American Century One Choice 2045 Portfolio - Class R
American Century One Choice 2050 Portfolio - Class R
American Century One Choice 2055 Portfolio - Class R
American Century Strategic Allocation: Conservative Fund - Class R
American Century Strategic Allocation: Moderate Fund - Class R
BlackRock Global Allocation Fund, Inc. - Class R
AB Equity Income Fund - Class R
BlackRock Equity Dividend Fund - Class R
Franklin Rising Dividends Fund - Class R
SSgA S&P 500 Index Securities Lending Series Fund - Class IX
BlackRock Capital Appreciation Fund, Inc. - Class R
Neuberger Berman Socially Responsive Fund - Class R3
T. Rowe Price Growth Stock Fund - Class R
BlackRock Mid Cap Value Opportunities Fund - Class R
Oppenheimer Main Street Mid Cap Fund - Class R
SSgA S&P MidCap Index Non-Lending Series Fund - Class J
Eagle Mid Cap Growth Fund - Class R3
Nuveen Mid Cap Growth Opportunities Fund - Class R3
Delaware Small Cap Value Fund - Class R
JPMorgan US Small Company Fund - Class R2
SSgA Russell Small Cap Index Securities Lending Series Fund - Class VIII
Lord Abbett Alpha Strategy Fund - Class R3
Nuveen Small Cap Select Fund - Class R3
MFS International Value Fund - Class R2
MFS Research International Fund - Class R2
Neuberger Berman International Select Fund - Class R3
SSgA International Index Securities Lending Series Fund - Class VIII
Oppenheimer International Diversified Fund - Class R
MFS International New Discovery Fund - Class R2
Oppenheimer Global Fund - Class R
RS Emerging Markets Fund - Class K
The Hartford Healthcare Fund - Class R3
Oppenheimer Gold & Special Minerals Fund - Class R
Deutsche Real Estate Securities Fund - Class R
Columbia Seligman Communications and Information Fund - Class R
I am 30 and just starting to invest so I need to catch up and willing to go aggressive for now. Any help or advice would be very much appreciated. I was planning on reallocating at least 90% of my current funds.
Thank you in advance

DLENX vs PREMX going back 5 years are almost even-steven. I see the TRP div. is more generous, too.

@little5bee
Our house tends to move large enough positions that the one time fee, if it applies; to purchase an etf is not a concern.

respectfully...no, thanks! I'm not as good of a market timer as you.

@little5bee
I don't advocate buying a share of an etf. But, if one is considering a purchase of "x" $'s into their choice of investment, the $7.95 is a one time event. Obviously, purchasing in chunks would be a whole different consideration. Fidelity does offer a fair number of etf's via I-shares without purchase fees.
Our house tends to move large enough positions that the one time fee, if it applies; to purchase an etf is not a concern. ITOT is a good example if one wants a U.S. equity postion that is somewhat mixed with cap. size. The e.r. is .07%.
Have a pleasant remainder of the evening.
Catch

Artisan's manager ownership stats are consolidated in a single Statement of Additional Information. The link is http://hosted.rightprospectus.com/Artisan/Fund.aspx?ProsID=5816&DocType=S. The manager ownership stats are on pages 57 and 58.
At a quick glance, one of Yockey's assistant PMs has no investment in two of his four funds and another has fairly modest investments. One interesting question would be to ask whether Charles-Henri Hamker can easily invest in his funds. If he's not a U.S. citizen (he seems to be French), it'll be quite complicated.
Admittedly, though, I haven't yet had time to assemble the totals by fund since the SAI reports them by individual.
As ever,
David

From Morningstar's "parent pillar" of ARTGX 1/29/15:
"On a more positive note, all but two of the Artisan funds have at least one manager with more than $1 million invested in fund shares and eight have at least two managers who invest that heavily in their funds. That's the highest level of manager investment disclosed to the SEC and an industry best practice."
It does not name the two funds, but a call to the fund family might help identify them. especially if you send an email to the manager of the fund you are are interested in. You also might check in the Edgar database since it is publicly held.

@catch22 correct, one may purchase 1 share, but personally, I purchase in lots of 100. Schwab offers some NTF ETFs and if I bought those incrementally, that would be acceptable, but to pay $8.95/1 share of XYZ x 100, in order to scale in??? No, thanks.

Great point FA!
When it comes to what they can invest in and in what amount I think those are termed "fundamental" policies and require a shareholder vote. The last one I recall was from D&C about 5 years ago when they proposed allowing DODIX to own substantial amounts of non-investment grade debt (junk). It passed.
But I'd imagine things like restrictions on shareholder exchanges, minimum investment amounts, redemption policies, etc. are considered "non-fundamental" and can be changed by the fund company without a vote. Sounds like OJ's fiduciaries are a bunch of busy-bodies, frequently altering the non-fundamental policies.
These things are easily downloadable and I do make it a point to at least skim through them once a year.

Hi @little5bee
You noted: "The main reason I don't like ETFs is that they require a sizable investment all at once"
Which etf requires a sizable investment beyond the price of the etf "share" at the time of purchase? In effect, one may purchase 1 share, yes?
Thanks.
Catch

Thank you for clearly enumerating some of the issues with ETFs. (Though the hidden cost of NTF platforms is orthogonal - that's a problem with the platform regardless of the vehicle, ETF or OEF - and one that doesn't plague most ETFs.)
A couple of smaller downsides of ETFs:
4. Non-commission trading costs - the bid/ask spread and the (petty) SEC Section 31 fee (currently 0.184 basis points, usually passed through to investors by brokerages).
5. Tracking error - this is the "mini" version of your #2 - structural pricing issues. Even when the market isn't in free fall, there is a divergence between NAV and trading price, due in part to liquidity costs (and I guess also due to the fees that authorized participants pay to the sponsor to buy and sell creation units). This is different from the tracking error of the fund with respect to its benchmark index, which is inherent in all index funds.
On the plus side, ETFs may be more tax-efficient than their OEF counterparts. Only "maybe" for a couple of reasons. One is that well run cap weighted index funds rarely distribute capital gains, regardless of the funds' structure. The other is that Vanguard OEFs share the same advantage as their sibling ETFs, because they are merely different share classes of the same portfolios, not clones.
I completely agree with you regarding S&P indexes (not so for Russell, Wilshire, FTSE). This has been obvious since 2000, when S&P methodically swapped out "old economy" stocks for "new economy" stocks, just in time to see its index (supposedly a measure of market performance) underperform the market by several percent.
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10029393/1/the-sp-500-is-a-mutual-fund--and-a-bad-one-at-that.html
Finally, a note on the CNBC link - Usually, when an article is written saying how wonderfully cheap ETFs are, it gives an "average" equity OEF ER of somewhere around 1.3%. That's an unweighted average and a rather silly figure. Since the purpose of this article is to show how expensive (some) ETFs are, it did the opposite, and gave the dollar weighted average ER of 0.70%. A much better figure IMHO, but without labeling, it seems chosen more to support the thesis than to be objective. (Since no one really cares what numbers mean, let's just pick the "best" one for our point.)

It's widely known that having managers deeply invested in their own funds is good for their shareholders. There's nothing that focuses a manager's mind like the prospect of losing vast chunks of his or her own money. Also demonstrable, but less widely recognized, is the fact that having a fund's independent trustees deeply invested in the fund also substantially improves a fund's risk-return profile. It turns out that trustees don't like losing money or paying taxes, so they become particularly aggressive when their fund managers engage in behaviors that lead to such outcomes.
A relatively new study puts two interesting twists on the old story. Martin and Sonnenburg find (1) that a substantial increase in the amount that a manager has invested correlates with about 1.6% higher alpha in the succeeding year. So far as I know, no public source releases information on changes in a manager's level of investment. And (2) the increased alpha occurs even when the investment just reflects a fund company's mandate. That is, finding #1 isn't necessarily about market timing or confidence. If a fund company requires substantial and ongoing investment by their managers, performance improves.
My preference, of course, is that every single employee of the adviser and every trustee have substantial skin in the game. As one manager put it, "it's one thing to be invested in your own fund. It's another to have your mother invested. And it's an entirely different level once your mother-in-law is investing with you."
David

Dear friends,
As you know, I hold ETFs in the same regard as I hold, say, tasers in the hands of toddlers. Charles is, I know, far more hopeful of their potential for good. It might be selective perception on my part, but it seems as if there have been many more skeptical essays about them since the Monday crash than I'd seen before.
One argument that the term "passive investing" is a marketing fraud. John Rekenthaler does a nice job of pointing out that "passive/active" is not a simple split. There's a spectrum from truly passive (a cap-weighted broad market index) through covertly actively ("smart beta" and rules-governed active ETFs) toward more active (most "active" funds) to most active. I believe that even John's "passive" category is "active but lethargic." The S&P 500 is an actively managed quant fund whose the managers are employed by Standard & Poor's. They decide who gets in based on a combination of arbitrary rules, from market-weighting to float, profitably and market cap criteria. As a simple example, Avon was booted after 50 years. Why? Market cap was too small. It was then replaced by Hanes. The minimum cap is $4.5 billion, Avon was $3.2 billion, Hanes was $13 billion. So Hanes, a large and profitable firm, has been sidelined for years waiting for another firm in its industry sector to shrivel and get ejected. If Hanes was more representative of the market, should it have been added years ago? Maybe, but the rules say ... Should Berkshire Hathaway, excluded until 2010, have been added decades ago? Maybe, but the rules say ...
The prime arguments against ETFs seem to be:
1. their cost advantage is illusory. The fact that some ETFs are spectacularly cheap leads investors to assume that all are, which reduces their vigilance as they select investments.
2. they are structurally flawed. The uncoupling on market price from NAV during the crash was one signal of that. A recent article on hedge funds' strategies for gaming the ETF market is another.
3. they structurally encourage bad investor behavior. I smile whenever I read advocates list ETF's "advantages," one of which is always "easy to trade, like a stock." Uhhh ... right, but trading is bad for everyone except those who make money executing your trade.
I read two interesting essays this morning that add a bit of useful evidence to the discussion.
The Hidden Costs of Commission-Free ETFs lays out the costs of getting on platforms like Schwab and into their NTF programs. Schwab charges ETF advisers an $250,000 "shelf fee" plus 40 basis points to participate in the program. As a result, NTF funds including commission-free ETFs end up charging higher expenses. For every $1,000 you invest, you end up paying $2.20 more in annual expense for commission-free ETFs than for commissioned ones. If the commission is $9/trade, the break-even point is about $4,000 for a fund/ETF held one year; that is, if you intend to invest more than $4,000 and hold it for more than one year, you lose money with C.F. ETFs.
Most absurd ETF trade of all argues that about one-quarter of ETFs charge, before commissions, as much as or more than the average active mutual fund. Some of the data struck me as interesting, though the conclusion didn't. It strikes me as silly to compare ETFs with niche missions (that's typical of the high cost ones) against mutual funds with non-niche missions. Still, the cost warning seems worth it.
For what interest that holds,
David

I'm always looking for yield, but I'm at my limit with respect to risk tolerance, where I'm at right now. I've held PREMX since 2010, and was late for the 2009 run-up. In the 5 years that have followed, it's paid me handsomely while I reinvest everything. Yes, that is EM, not HY. I read the article which included the reference to TRP HY fund and like the rest of you--- I did see--- divorced from the reference, further down, that the fund is closed. A global substitute was offered. Noted already, above, in this thread.
In my portf, PRSNX is 11.46% of total. PREMX = 14.43%. DLFNX = 2.7%...... Then, there are also bonds being held in my PRWCX and MAPOX. Just threw some money at MAPOX. (IRA.) I'll be throwing more money at MAPOX, soon, again.