Why doesn't a mutual fund in my 401(k) have a ticker symbol?
"That share class may not have a ticker symbol though ""Black Rock MSCI ACWI ex-US Index"" does have a ticker for ""Investor A"" shares that is BDOAX.  Some funds will have multiple share classes that is a way to have fees be applied in various ways.  Mutual fund classes would be the SEC document about this if you want a government source within the US around this. Something else to consider is that if you are investing in a ""Fund of funds"" is that there can be two layers of expense ratios to consider.  Vanguard is well-known for keeping its expenses low."
"As other responders said, you can certainly roll over multiple 401(k) into a single account. An added benefit of such rollover (besides the ease of tracking) is that you can shop around for your Rollover IRA provider and find the one that gives you the specific mutual funds that you want to invest in, the lowest expenses, etc. - in short, find the best fit to your priorities.  There are also ""lemon"" 401(k) plans and if you are in one of them, get out!  And rollover is the way out. There is also one possibility to keep an eye on as it happens rarely, but it does happen - rolling a 401(k) over into another 401(k).  I've done it once when I started a job at a company that had a great 401(k) with a good selection of low-cost mutual funds.  I rolled the 401(k) from one previous job in to this 401(k) to take advantage of it.  At the same time I kept a Rollover IRA, combining the 401(k) from all other jobs; it had more investment options and provided some flexibility." "All right, I will try to take this nice and slow. This is going to be a little long; try to bear with me. Suppose you contribute $100 to your newly opened 401(k). You now have $100 in cash and $0 in mutual funds in your 401(k) (and $100 less than you used to somewhere else). At some later date, you use that money within the 401(k) to buy a single share of the Acme World All-Market Index Fund which happens to trade at exactly $100 per share on the day your purchase goes through. As a result, you have $0 in cash and exactly one share of that fund (corresponding to $100) within your 401(k). Some time later, the price of the fund is up 10%, so your share is now worth $110. Since you haven't contributed anything more to your 401(k) for whatever reason, your cash holding is still $0. Because your holding is really denominated in shares of this mutual fund, of which you still have exactly one, the cash equivalent of your holding is now $110. Now, you can basically do one of two things: By selling the share, you protect against it falling in price, thus in a sense ""locking in"" your gain. But where do you put the money instead? You obviously can't put the money in anything else that might fall in price; doing so would mean that you could lose a portion of your gains. The only way to truly ""lock in"" a gain is to remove the money from your investment portfolio altogether. Roughly speaking, that means withdrawing the money and spending it. (And then you have to consider if the value of what you spent the money on can fluctuate, and as a consequence, fall. What's the value of that three weeks old jug of milk in the back of your refrigerator?) The beauty of compounding is that it doesn't care when you bought an investment. Let's say that you kept the original fund, which was at $110. Now, since that day, it is up another 5%. Since we are looking at the change of price of the fund over some period of time, that's 5% of $110, not 5% of the $100 you bought at (which was an arbitrary point, anyway). 5% of $110 is $5.50, which means that the value of your holding is now at $115.50 from a gain first of 10% followed by another 5%. If at the same day when the original fund was at $110 you buy another $100 worth of it, the additional 5% gain is realized on the sum of the two at the time of the purchase, or $210. Thus after the additional 5% gain, you would have not $210 (($100 + $100) + 5%), nor $205 (($100 + 5%) + $100), but $220.50 (($110 + $100) + 5%). See how you don't need to do anything in particular to realize the beauty of compounding growth? There is one exception to the above. Some investments pay out dividends, interest or equivalent in cash equivalents. (Basically, deposit money into an account of yours somewhere; in the case of retirement plans, usually within the same container where you are holding the investment. These dividends are generally not counted against your contribution limits, but check the relevant legal texts if you want to be absolutely certain.) This is somewhat uncommon in mutual funds, but very common in other investments such as stocks or bonds that you purchase directly (which you really should not do if you are just starting out and/or feel the need to ask this type of question). In that case, you need to place a purchase order yourself for whatever you want to invest the dividend in. If you don't, then the extra money of the dividend will not be growing along with your original investment." "To answer, I'm going to make a few assumptions. First, the ideal scenario for a pre-tax 401(k) is the deposit goes in at a 25% tax rate (i.e. the employee is in that bracket) but withdrawn at 15%. This may be true for many, but not all. It's to illustrate a point.  The SPY (S&P 500 index ETF) has a cost of .09% per year. If your 401(k) fees are anywhere near 1% per year total, over 10 years you've paid nearly 10% in fees, vs less than 1% for the ETF. Above, I suggest the ideal is that the 401(k) saves you 10% on your taxes, but if you pay 10% over the decade, the benefit is completely negated.  I can add to the above that funds outside the retirement accounts give off dividends which are tax favored, and if you were to sell ETFs held over a year, they receive favorable cap-gains rates.  The ""deposit to get the matching funds"" should always be good advice, it would take many years of high fees to destroy that. But even that seemingly reasonable 1% fee can make any other deposits a bad approach.  Keep in mind, when retired you will have a zero bracket (in 2011, the combined standard deduction and exemption) adding to $9500, as well as a 10% bracket (the next $8500), so having some pretax money to take advantage of those brackets will help. Last, the average person changes jobs now and then. The ability to transfer the funds from the (bad) 401(k) to an IRA where you can control the investments is an option I'd not ignore in the analysis.  I arbitrarily picked 1% to illustrate my thoughts. The same math will show a long time employee will get hurt by even .5%/yr if enough time passes. What are the fees in your 401(k)?   Edit - Study of 401(k) fees - put out by the Dept of Labor. Unfortunately, it's over 10 years old, but it speaks to my point. Back then, even a 2000 participant plan with $60M in assets had 110 basis points (this is 1.1%) in fees on average. Whatever the distribution is, those above this average shouldn't even participate in their plans (except for matching) and those on the other side should look at their expenses. As Radix07 points out below, yes, for those just shy of retirement, the fee has less impact, and of course, they have a better idea if they will retire in a lower bracket. Those who have some catching up to do, may benefit despite the fees." "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, Rollover IRAs were used for funds that came from (were rolled over from) a 401(k) account or a 403(b) account. All that money (including any earnings in the interim) could be rolled over into a 401(k) plan with a new employer etc.  One could make a regular contribution to a Rollover IRA but once such a commingling of money occurred, none of the money in the Rollover IRA could be rolled over into a 401(k) account etc. In those good old days when contributions to IRAs were made by paper check and ""deposit slip"", one had to write a letter to the Rollover IRA custodian certifying that the IRA owner understood that the contribution would destroy forever the possibility of rolling over the money into another 401(k) etc. All this went by the wayside a few years ago when the law changed and the distinction between Rollover IRAs and ordinary Traditional IRAs was eliminated. Commingling of IRA contributions and Rollover money from 401(k)s are permitted, and the entire IRA balance could be rolled over into a new 401(k) plan (provided the new plan accepted rollovers). However the adjectives still persist; like chili555, I too have IRAs that are still called Rollover IRA, they all have commingled funds, and if the law ever changes back, none of those IRA accounts would be eligible for rolling over into a new 401(k)." In my opinion, if you are doing long-term investing, this is a non-issue.  The difference of hours in being able to trade an ETF during the day vs. only being able to trade a traditional mutual fund at day-end is irrelevant if you are holding the investment for a long time. If you are engaging in day trading, market timing, or other advanced/controversial trading practices, then I suppose it could make a difference. For the way I invest (index funds, long-term, set-it-and-forget-it), ETFs have no advantage over traditional mutual funds. I find the reg, at last. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?company=Cornerstone+Strategic+Value+Fund&owner=exclude&action=getcompany Yes, its a common stock. "In the case of mutual funds, Net Asset Value (NAV) is the price used to buy and sell shares. NAV is just the value of the underlying assets (which are in turn valued by their underlying holdings and future earnings). So if a fund hands out a billion dollars, it stands to reason their NAV*shares (market cap?) is a billion dollars less. Shareholder's net worth is equal in either scenario, but after the dividend is paid they are more liquid. For people who need investment income to live on, dividends are a cheap way to hold stocks and get regular payments, versus having to sell part of your portfolio every month.  But for people who want to hold their investment in the market for a long long time, dividends only increase the rate at which you have to buy. For mutual funds this isn't a problem: you buy the funds and tell them to reinvest for free. So because of that, it's a prohibited practice to ""sell"" dividends to clients." When you invest in an ETF or mutual fund, you're not investing in stocks or bonds. You're buying shares of a company that invests in stocks or bonds. This level of indirection is what makes it so bond funds do not 'mature.' Bonds inside of ETFs or mutual funds do have a maturity date. When they mature, the fund manager uses the principal value that is returned to purchase another bond that meets the investment objectives of the fund. So the fund never matures, since it is always investing in more bonds when the old ones mature. Unit investment trusts made of bonds do have a maturity date as well, since the portfolio does not change once the UIT is issued. As the individual bonds in the portfolio mature, the principle value is returned to investors. So the overall maturity date is effectively the maturity date of the last bond in the trust. All of the statements quoted above are accurate in explaining why there is no guarantee of a return of principle when investing in bond funds (ETF or open-ended mutual fund). The bonds they hold do mature, but are replaced within the fund as needed. The investor will never see it happen unless they watch the holdings reports filed by the funds.  The only way to have an assurance of the return of principle is to invest in individual bonds, or in unit trusts made up of bonds.