Dont forget to carefully look at the charges and expense ratio's of mutual funds.

Clearly, any long term strategy generally yields a higher rate of return. In my experience, I invested 6,000 in Putnam Grwt and Putmam New Opp fund in 1992. These got clobbered during the tech down turns.. I am barely recovering my monies to date.

I have now tended to be a bit conversative and invest in diverified portfolio that have stocks with moderately priced P/E that also have dividend yield.

But, most importantly I think one should also research the Mutual Funds through MorningStar etc. Make sure the managers have good performance behind them as well.