Mutual funds are a pool of all different companies (if it is a stock fund). There are small cap funds, large cap funds, tech funds, mixed funds, etc. Once you are in, they are managed by a professional. You don't have to do anything. You will get a statement each month - or you could go online to watch it. My advice would be to NOT watch it too often. It is money for your future that you don't need now so peek at it once a month. Call up the number that your company gave you. Tell them that you would like to invest X amount of dollars a month. Some companies allow you to make changes to your 401k a couple of times a year. So say you had most of your money in small cap companies and then decided to be a little more conservative, you could move some of the money (they usually let your do this on a % basis)into a large cap fund and leave say half in the other. Maybe I misunderstood your original question. I thought you wanted to put your 401k into a scottrade account and trade it with your other account. If your employer is using ML that is not a problem to have two separate accounts. Have your 401k with ML and you can do your side trading with scott.
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