Warren Buffet, the sage of Omaha, and probably the greatest stock investor of all-time was on CNBC today and in this MarketWatch assessment of his statements:
Buffett gives nod to index funds over ETFs he appears to be dissing ETFs.

Well, I happen to think the writer took Buffet’s comments out of context at least in the creation of the sensationalized headline. Buffet clearly states that there’s nothing wrong with ETFs. The problem is when people try to trade them rather than buy-and-hold them which he has always advocated for individual investors. Further, he dislikes the fact that ETFs today are getting too niche-oriented (anyone want an Oil Sands ETF? they have one). Broad market ETFs, such as Vanguard Total Stock Market index VTI, are super low cost and allow an investor to get a diversified basket of stocks with even small investments. And, for a regular dollar-cost averaging investor, the commissions are sometimes lower for buying an ETF over a mutual fund. What’s not to like? These are the ETFs a beginner (and most people) should probably be looking at: VTI (represents the the entire U. S. Market; somewhat mimics the Russell 2000 index and carries a low, low 0.07% management cost. It doesn’t get lower than this.). If you dont want to be an active investor, you could make a strong argument for putting 85% in VTI and for international exposure, 25% in EFA, which represents foreign developed markets and mirrors the Morgan Stanley MSCI EAFE index. If you want to look at Emerging Markets, you’ll want to look at the iShares EEM index ETF. Personally, I would never put more than 10% of my liquid assets in emerging markets.