I've decided to re-do all my tax advantaged accounts, and use the Golden Butterfly approach spread across all 3 tax advantaged accounts (401k, Traditional IRA, Roth IRA). The 401k choices are rather limiting, but there is a decent managed Small Cap Value fund there, so I'm likely to use most of my 401k funds for that portion. As a rough percentage, the 401k is about 20% of my overall portfolio, my Traditional about 70% and my Roth about 10%. My questions, like the title suggests, is would I be better off using an index fund or an ETF for the Large Cap portion? Should I favor managed funds for the two bond portions (long date bonds & short term bonds) or should I stick with an index fund or an index ETF? (GLD is my only real choice for the gold portion, so an ETF it is)
Also, if your recommendation is a managed fund, do you have any favorites?
[edit] ETF's would cost me $8 per trade, so every rebalance would cost me up to $40, and if I were to contribute a little each month (as opposed to an annual lump sum contribution) and traded into the lowest percentage portion each time, that would cost me at least $96 per year.