Seeking Alpha Seeking Alpha Portfolio App for iPad  As stock
market benchmarks go, few are as popular and compared with than
the Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 Index.  The S&P 500 Index was
created in 1957. It is a cap-weighted index consisting of 500
large-cap U.S. stocks listed on either the New York Stock
Exchange or NASDAQ. According to S&P, assets invested in
products indexed to the S&P 500 total nearly $1 trillion, a
figure that has increased as more investors have embraced
indexing as an investment strategy.  And that growing acceptance
seems justified. According to fund analyst Deborah Fuhr, 81.2
percent of active large-cap managers in 2011 didn't beat the S&P
500. So basically you can invest in a managed mutual fund that
charges a 1% or 2% fee or a passive exchange-traded fund with a
fee of 0.5% or less, and have no greater opportunity for higher
returns.  Exchange traded funds are investment funds, similar to
mutual funds that trade on stock exchanges. The difference
between an ETF and a mutual fund is