<prompt> Human: I have a 401k with a selection of Admiral-class Vanguard funds, but without any of the traditional whole-index funds. I was wondering what would be the best mix of these indexes for the highest rate of return over 30-40 years.The funds:Fund Name Ticker ER---------Vanguard Equity Income Fund - Admiral Class VEIRX 0.17Vanguard Growth Index Fund - Admiral Class VIGAX 0.08Vanguard Mid-Cap Value Index Fund - Admiral Class VMVAX 0.08Vanguard Mid Cap Growth Index Fund - Admiral Class VMGMX 0.08Vanguard Small Cap Value Index Fund - Admiral Class VSIAX 0.08Vanguard Developed Markets Index Fund - Admiral Class VTMGX 0.09Edit: These are not the only funds in the 401k, just the Vanguard stock funds with lowest expense ratios.  <response>: Small-cap and Growth are usually the buzzwords for funds managed for enhanced risk and ROI. Developing is, too, but here it says Developed, which means post-developing, which means less growth potential and more safety.Value funds attempt to buy things that are under-valued, and value investing is one of the ways Warren Buffett got to be a big deal, so its got a lot of cachet, but is a crap-shoot because they arent all managed by Warren Buffett.Equity Income would mean the fund buys stocks with high dividends. For old people the dividends usually get disbursed to pay bills, which is why its called income, but here the dividends would be reinvested in the fund, enhancing any gains from stock-price appreciation. Theres a dance between the company and the market, because paying dividends attracts income investors but reduces the profits that can make a stocks price go up; but that may be okay if theres nothing better to do with the profits; but that may not be okay if theres no place to reinvest the profits because the companys business prospects arent growing...Back to your question, the answer is, I dunno. With your long time horizon the riskier ones are probably what you want. Looking at charts of all of them over the past decade and a half albeit some didnt exist that whole time, the VIGAX seems to perform a lot better than the others when things are going well, and take the same sort of pain as the others when they arent. VTMGX is a dog; it basically got nothing out of the recovery, and took the biggest hit in the downturn; Id avoid that like an STD. 