A bit of advise from my side - check out what the balanced funds invest in. If they spread their risks across the all share index, then there is not really much point in going the unit trust route, since you will effectively be paying a fund manager to perform what Satrix does passively. If they are selective, however, i.e. if they do not follow the top 40, then there are hundreds of reasons (each depending on your personal strategy) why you would or would not use them. As for the top20, well it can't be compared to SATRIX, because it filters out the bottom 20 (I am guessing), and that idea has some merit. Teh yard stick I would use is - has their performance since December 2008 outstripped Satrix? If yes, then the evidence is there that dropping the bottom 20 works, if not, then I would say that the top20 strategy does not really work. (You cannot compare earlier than that, IMO, because the crash skews all comparisons)