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[quote=Anonymous]Morningstar has ratings for ETFs too.

ETFs are generally cheaper but Vanguard funds are pretty cheap too.  The expense ratio can be compared between fund and etf.  I don't really understand this completely but there is a spread issue that may inflate the cost over the NAV if its a smaller ETF.  Look at the bid and ask and some of the ETFs have a big difference where a mutual is one price per day (there have been some cheating with this which really annoys me on mutual funds).  ETFs trade like stocks and should be closely aligned with their NAV.

My understand on the tax issue is that with mutual funds you can get hit with capital gains distributions when stocks are sold within the fund.  So you may have to pay an unexpected tax on this and sometimes it seems quite random ie you buy the fund in sept and get hit with a big distribution in dec.  In a taxable account (not IRA/401K), this can greatly increase your taxes that year and you have no insight that this is going to happen which stinks if you like to plan your taxes.  ETFs seem to throw off very little of these distributions as they don't sell stocks very often.

One difference is if buy say $1000 a month then you may have to pay a brokerage fee like a stock but many brokerages waive that for their own funds.
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