Super-generic mutual fund type
You can also create a CD ladder (say 1/3 in a 6 month CD, 1/3 in a 1 year CD, 1/3 in a 2 year CD) with half of your emergency fund money.  You always want to leave some of it in a liquid account so you can get at it immediately without any interest penalty.  CD's provide higher interest than a savings account.  By staggering the lengths of the CD's, you give yourself more options, and can roll them over into CD's with higher rates (since interest rates are soooo low right now) as the CD's mature. "Since this is your emergency fund, you generally want to avoid volatility while keeping pace with inflation.  You really shouldn't be looking for aggressive growth (which means taking on some risk).  That comes from money outside of the emergency fund. The simplest thing to do would be to shop around for a different savings account.  There are some deals out there that are better than ING.  Here is a good list. The ""traditional"" places to keep an emergency fund are Money Market Mutual Funds (not to be confused with Money Market Accounts).  They are considered extremely safe investments.  However, the returns on such a fund is pretty low these days, often lower than a high-yield online savings account. The next step up would be a bond fund (more volatility, slightly better return).  Pick something that relies on Government bonds, not ""high-yield"" (junk) bonds or anything crazy like that. Fidelity Four in One comes pretty close to your ""index of indexes"" request, but it isn't the most stable thing.  You'd probably do better with a safer investment." Congrats on having such a nice emergency fund.  That's pretty substantial. I don't want to be the one to suggest the One Investment To Rule Them All because I might be wrong.  :) I'd investigate other avenues for investment.  Here are a few (in no particular order): My two cents but I think you're wise to be wary of investing in US equities now. Hedging (both with your passive investments and with another source of income) is something you can afford to do. (But to answer your question, there are indexes that are broader than the S&P 500.  The Wilshire 5000 index has all of them, for example.) "It sounds like you want a place to park some money that's reasonably safe and liquid, but can sustain light to moderate losses. Consider some bond funds or bond ETFs filled with medium-term corporate bonds. It looks like you can get 3-3.5% or so. (I'd skip the municipal bond market right now, but ""why"" is a matter for its own question). Avoid long-term bonds or CDs if you're worried about inflation; interest rates will rise and the immediate value of the bonds will fall until the final payout value matches those rates." Since you already have twice your target in that emergency fund, putting that overage to work is a good idea. The impression that I get is that you'd still like to stay on the safe side. What you're looking for is a Balanced Fund.  In a balanced fund the managers invest in both stocks and bonds (and cash). Since you have that diversification between those two asset classes, their returns tend to be much less volatile than other funds. Also, because of their intended audience and the traditions from that class of funds' long history, they tend to invest somewhat more conservatively in both asset classes.  There are two general types of balanced funds: Conservative Allocation funds and Moderate Allocation funds. Conservative allocation funds invest in more fixed income than equity (the classic mix is 60% bonds, 40% stocks). Moderate allocation funds invest in more equity than fixed income (classic mix: 40% bonds, 60% stocks). A good pair of funds that are similar but exemplify the difference between conservative allocation and moderate allocation are Vanguard's Wellesley Income Fund (VWINX) for the former and Vanguard's Wellington Fund (VWELX) for the latter. (Disclaimer: though both funds are broadly considered excellent, this is not a recommendation.) Good luck sorting this out! If you are looking for an index index fund, I know vanguard offers their Star fund which invests in 11 other funds of theirs and is diversified across stocks, bonds, and short term investments.
"The difference between dividend and growth in mutual funds has to do with the types of stocks the mutual fund invests in. Typically a company in the early stages are considered growth investments. In this phase the company needs to keep most of its profits to reinvest in the business. Typically once a company gets a significant size the company's growth prospects are not as good so the company pays some of its profits in the form of a dividend to the shareholders.  As far as which is the best buy is totally a personal choice. There will be times when one is better then the other. Most likely you will want to ""diversify"" and invest in both types." "Here is the ""investing for retirement"" theoretical background you should have. You should base your investment decisions not simply on the historical return of the fund, but on its potential for future returns and its risk. Past performance does not indicate future results: the past performance is frequently at its best the moment before the bubble pops. While no one knows the specifics of future returns, there are a few types of assets that it's (relatively) safe to make blanket statements about: The future returns of your portfolio will primarily be determined by your asset allocation . The general rules look like: There are a variety of guides out there to help decide your asset allocation and tell you specifically what to do. The other thing that you should consider is the cost of your funds. While it's easy to get lucky enough to make a mutual fund outperform the market in the short term, it's very hard to keep that up for decades on end. Moreover, chasing performance is risky, and expensive. So look at your fund information and locate the expense ratio. If the fund's expense ratio is 1%, that's super-expensive (the stock market's annualized real rate of return is about 4%, so that could be a quarter of your returns). All else being equal, choose the cheap index fund (with an expense ratio closer to 0.1%). Many 401(k) providers only have expensive mutual funds. This is because you're trapped and can't switch to a cheaper fund, so they're free to take lots of your money. If this is the case, deal with it in the short term for the tax benefits, then open a specific type of account called a ""rollover IRA"" when you change jobs, and move your assets there. Or, if your savings are small enough, just open an IRA (a ""traditional IRA"" or ""Roth IRA"") and use those instead. (Or, yell at your HR department, in the event that you think that'll actually accomplish anything.)" A general mutual fund's exact holdings are not known on a day-to-day basis, and so technical tools must work with inexact data. Furthermore, the mutual fund shares' NAV depends on lots of different shares that it holds, and the  results of the kinds of analyses that one can do for a single stock must be commingled to produce something analogous for the fund's NAV. In other words, there is plenty of shooting in the dark going on. That being said, there are plenty of  people who claim to do such analyses and will gladly sell you their results (actually, Buy, Hold, Sell recommendations) for whole fund families (e.g. Vanguard) in the form of a monthly or weekly Newsletter delivered by US Mail (in the old days) or electronically (nowadays). Some people who subscribe to such newsletters swear by them, while others swear at them and don't renew their subscriptions; YMMV. It's not so much pros and cons as much as it is what are your savings goals? While it's best to start early to save money for retirement, you may have numerous short- to medium-term savings goals (school, down payment, etc). Here's a template you can consider. I would suggest that you open up an RRSP mutual fund or brokerage account and invest a certain amount that you feel free locking up for the next few decades and investing it in some sort of growth product (perhaps look at portfolios using the Couch Potato strategy). Then, also open up a TFSA mutual fund or brokerage account and use it to invest for medium-term goals (i.e. 5-10 years). Invest in products that will allow for some growth but with low chance of losing principle in that time frame. What I wouldn't do is open up a TFSA savings account and use it for day-to-day savings. The tax you save is negligible and you would need to keep track of deposits and withdrawals to ensure that you don't overcontribute for the tax year. Similarly, an RRSP savings account or GIC is far too conservative at your age, IMHO. Think of RRSP and TFSA as investment vehicles rather than accounts per se. Either type allows for you to invest in a vast array of products, including mutual funds, equities, some derivatives, gold, bonds, GICs, etc.  To conclude, my view is to use RRSP to invest for conventional retirement goals, and use the TFSA to invest for medium-term and early retirement goals. "The majority (about 80%) of mutual funds are underperforming their underlying indexes. This is  why ETFs have seen massive capital inflows compared to equity funds, which have seen significant withdrawals in the last years.  I would definitively recommend going with an ETF. In addition to pure index based ETFs that (almost) track broad market indexes like the S&P 500 there are quite a few more ""quant"" oriented ETFs that even outperformed the S&P. I am long the S&P trough iShares ETFs and have dividend paying ETFs and some quant ETFS on top (Invesco Powershares) in my portfolio." Virgin and AMP Flexible Super both offer funds that track Australian indexes. No, some of Vanguard's funds are index funds like their Total Stock Market Index and 500 Index. In contrast, there are funds like Vanguard PRIMECAP and Vanguard Wellington that are actively managed. There are index funds in both open-end and exchange-traded formats. VTI is the ticker for Vanguard's Total Stock Market ETF while VTSMX is an open-end mutual fund format. VOO would be the S & P 500 ETF ticker while VFINX is one of the open-end mutual fund tickers, where VIIIX has a really low expense ratio but a pretty stiff minimum to my mind. As a general note, open-end mutual funds will generally have a 5 letter ticker ending in X while an ETF will generally be shorter at 3 or 4 letters in length. There are legitimate multi currency mutual funds/efts. But I don't think their rate of return will produce the extra money you're looking for any faster than any other kind of investment with comparable risks. To make money fast, you have to accept nontrivial risk of losing money fast, which isn't what you seem to have in mind.