If you have a bunch of money you should research it out and find a fiduciary. The more money you have the easier they are to find (I work for one). EDIT: Here'

If you have a bunch of money you should research it out and find a fiduciary. The more money you have the easier they are to find (I work for one). EDIT: Here's a start for search terms from wikipedia. Personal fiduciary services are often referred to as private trust, private client, private wealth management, or private banking services. >Some claim that index funds such as vanguard are also not guaranteed to go up as everybody and their dog switches to them vs managed funds. If the market's going up index funds are going up. Considering their relative performance think of it like this. If half of US stocks were owned by VTI and the rest were owned by, say, 20 actively managed funds then on average, before fees, they will both perform the same because they represent the same basket. The catch is that passive funds have low fees since they're easy to operate and active funds have high fees because they require more work. Also consider that in those 20 active funds there will be some winners and some losers and you'll have no way to know who they are. Setup a simple bogleheads-ish portfolio and go think about other things.