21.   And, in a swooning market, index funds might not have obvious appeal.

22.   Another attraction is that operating expenses are very low, even lower than index funds.

23.   Another approach to the same result is to invest in index funds, which are by and large the ultimate buy-and-hold investors.

24.   As a result, the Domini Social Equity fund has fees that are somewhat high for an index fund, though lower than most socially responsible funds.

25.   As a flood of money continues into index funds, competition is heating up, which translates into lower costs for investors.

26.   As a result, many investors have abandoned managed funds and shifted to index funds, which are designed to track the performance of various market averages.

27.   As for international index funds, the choices are few.

28.   As a result, advisers generally warn investors against buying into an index fund if they will need the money in a few years.

29.   As a result, the top-performing funds for the third quarter were index funds that mostly short stocks, or bet on market declines.

30.   As with index funds, spiders have no fancy investment strategies or pricey fund managers, so their management costs are minimal.