[gila]

This is a very simplistic take...but, what it really comes down to is the expance ratio; if you are going to invest all your money in one lump sum then EFT would be the cheapest, Index funds second, and mutual funds the most expansive, on average. On the other hand, if you plan to dollar cost avg. then Index funds are probably the cheapest, followed by mutual funds then EFTs. And yea, only about 20% of the mutual funds will outperform the correspoding Index funds(mostly because of this expanse ratio). And you can buy EFTs that follow the index.