[tpeng]

The index fund is the greatest investing technology ever invented. The under-adoption of this technology is a behavioral problem. The solution definitely isn't additional layers of asset allocators taking fees on top of this.

I'm kind of confused by what Sam is talking about in the RFS about enabling lower cost index fund investing. VFINX has a minimum initial investment of $3,000 and minimum additional investment of $100. At 17 bps that's literally $5/yr. on the Vanguard S&P 500 fund. You are basically talking about a nominal cost to service accounts (send statements, support, backoffice, etc). It would be interesting to think about how technology can lower these costs, but cost isn't preventing anyone from participating.