Fund Insider

How Rebalancing Added Over 2% to the Returns of a Simple ETF Portfolio

I reduce taxes and transaction costs doing this by sweeping
all dividends to cash/mmkt and take that plus new deposits
to buy whatever is down below target allocation.

With this method, you can not only reduce cap gains after sales,
but also perform some strategic changes in asset allocation targets.
So if you are very bearish on stocks, your next purchases are based on a new target. If you must sell, I still avoid taxes by doing most of my selling inside 401k and IRA accounts (move them back and forth between bonds and stocks as needed, but mostly just buy new assets in taxable accounts).

ETF Family Attributes: Vanguard

Why does it matter how complete a suite of offerings are available from one fund family for ETFs ? To me one of the many benefits of opening a brokerage acct vs just opening a regular mutual fund acct at Vanguard (or elsewhere) is so that you are not locked into one fund family's offerings. If you want to stick with just Vanguard, you can escape commissions and just invest directly @ vanguard.com into their funds. You do lose some other benefits of ETFs that way, but you gain some too. As a direct investor in a fund, you are serviced directly by that fund. If you have questions, you are somebody to them and get service. As an ETF customer you are anonymous to them, not even a customer as far as they know.

I personally would use Vanguard for buy and hold investing of core index type exposures (low expense in common indices), but anything you want to trade, other ETFs offer additional options
(sectors etc) or for indices more liquidity (better for day trading
where price rather than expense ratios are more important).

Articles focusing on the best of breed in each type of exposure would be a better way to present. Which S&P 500 ETF is best ?
Which commodity ETF ? Which Bond ETFs ?