Anyone know anything about these Index Funds?

[Guest LondonBroil]

I'm just signing up for my company's 401k program. They use Fidelity and there are 3 index funds I'm thinking about equally putting my contributions into. I'm 27 years old so I know I should be on the aggressive side. They are:

NTGI S&P 500 EQ INDX

NTGI RUSSLL 2000 IDX

NTGI EAFE INDEX

However, other than on my 401k's website, I cant find any mention of these funds. Nothing comes up when I try to google them, unlike the Vanguard funds I have in my Roth. The first one looks like Vanguard's S&P 500 Index fund, the 2nd looks similar to Vanguard Small-Cap Index fund, and the 3rd is an International fund.

Does anyone know if these are descent funds, if having these 3 would give me enough diversity, and if I should also throw a small percentage into a bond fund just to be careful?

[Demosthenes]

These are Northern Trust Institutional funds, tickers are probably BEICX, NSIDX, BIEDX. You need to confirm those ID's with the plan admin to be sure you have the right funds and classes.

These are all index funds for the S & P 500, Russell 2000 Small Cap and the MSCI-EAFE index, respectively. No front end loads, no contingent deferrred sales charge, lower that average expenses, but not the lowest for index funds.

Index funds are fungible which makes the expenses key, you're not paying for expertise, just the cost of running the fund.

Confirm the tickers and do your own due diligence. Mornginstar, Quicken etc have fund info, ranking tolls, and the ability to do sude by side comparisons.

P.S. It's unlikely that any one here will provide investment advice or portfolio allocation strategies other than the vaguest generalities. Unless I'm your investment advisor and know a lot more about your financial situation and goals it would be inappropriate for me to make a recommendation.

And No, I'm not looking for the job. There are too many good, free tools out there to make paying anybody for advice a good idea unless you have an unusual situation or significant assets

[GBurns]

Is Morningstar or any other rating service available to you so that you can look up past performance etc? Bear in mind that past performance is not and has not been a guarantee or indicator of future performance, but that is what is available.

If not do a Google search on each and see what performance figures are available and any comments etc.

When I searched on "NTGI Index Fund" I got 702 responses. I did not bother to do each individually since that was easily found. Check your search terms and try again.

[Kirk Maldonado]

Demosthenes:

You said:

There are too many good, free tools out there to make paying anybody for advice a good idea unless you have an unusual situation or significant assets

For those of us who are significantly less sophisticated on investment matters than you are (which probably includes the huge majority of the people on BenefitsLink as well as the general public), could you please provide the names of some of those "good, free tools" and how or where we could get them? That will be a big help to a lot of us.

[Demosthenes]

Here's a quick sample of some of my personal favorites:

For portfolio builders and fund screeners

CBS Marketwatch

http://cbs.marketwatch.com/tools/pftools/d...asp?siteid=mktw

Morningstar

http://www.morningstar.com/Cover/PersonalF...?topnav=finance

Quicken

http://www.quicken.com/investments/

Free, but requires a logon

E trade

https://us.etrade.com/e/t/invest/research

If you want some heavy weight analysis of asset allocation, try the knowledge center at

Ibbotson Associates

http://www.ibbotson.com/default.asp?Try=Yes

Most/all mutual fund comapnaies and Broker/Dealers have some type of advice areas for account holders and for the general public.

Also, a lot of DC plans offer advice from within the record keepers web site. Some are general asset allocation type sites, others are plan specific in that they'll present an asset allocation based on the specific funds available to your plan.

A word of caution, a good asset allocation plan can't overcome a stable of bad funds. If all the funds available to your plan stink, the results are going to stink too. So do some independent confirmation of the results if you do use this method.

[Guest Guest_named_mike_*]

so, did u ever figure out what the symbols are for: NTGI S&P 500 EQ INDX

NTGI RUSSLL 2000 IDX

I can not find them still ? please email me at bm2bmw@yahoo.com

[RCK]

Note to LondonBroil: In the old (really old) days you could probably assume that a mutual fund offered by a plan where Fidelity was the recordkeeper was a Fidelity fund. But current practice revolves around "open architecture" and Fidelity and other recordkeepers will handle funds from a wide variety of fund families.

As mentioned above, a key factor in your decision will be the expenses that you are actually paying, and that must be determined within your plan. Since expenses are a hot topic right now, you should be able to dig those out somewhere.