I believe Ray is correct in everything he said.  However, keep in mind that a drawback of CREF's retirement Stock account and Global account is that they combine U.S. as well as foreign holdings and a mix of large, medium, and small caps.  This makes it difficult to track your asset allocations and (nearly) impossible to know why kind of style drift may be taking place.  I think you would have better control over your asset allocations and style using Vanguard index funds, which tend to have lower cost ratios.

This weakness may be a strength for an investor who needs asset diversification but has no idea what to do and doesn't mind paying a bit more for the service.
Rip
 

Ripsaw3 said:
"However, keep in mind that a drawback of CREF's retirement Stock account and Global account is that they combine U.S. as well as foreign holdings and a mix of large, medium, and small caps."

I say:
This is a PLUS, not a drawback, for folks (even some with an idea of what to do) looking for a one-stop-shop "fund" for equity investment. (I'll add that the Stock Account and Global Equities Account also include emerging markets and international small-cap)

Ruprecht, I've been a big booster of the CREF Stock Account, but I'm getting tired of its continuing expense rate increases, and its close tracking just behind its unmanaged benchmarks, despite the gloss that it's a managed fund.

It would be nice if there were a complete, up-to-date list of the expense ratios of all the Institutional Mutual Funds (IMF), but you have to look them up individually on the web site, or use the slightly out of date listings in the latest prospectus.

It appears to me that only the IMFs that are Index funds have respectably low expense ratios, and as you have certainly seen, Vanguard's are much lower.  In addition the funds have (in comparison) relatively short histories to study, and surprisingly low total assets under management.  For example, Large Cap Growth Fund TILRX has a net expense ratio of .77%, while Large Cap Growth Index TRIRX has a net expense ratio of .34% . This makes CREF Stock Account look pretty good, despite rising expenses! 

Actually, the numbers are worse than this, but some of the IMF expenses are currently being waived.  I find it suspicious that TILRX has such a good 1 year record (even though that's the only record it's old enough to have!)  Could it have not been fully invested during the downturn?  (Just speculating.)

One of the key questions is whether you have investments (taxable or not) outside of TIAA-CREF already.  If so, the difficulty of getting certain diversification sectors that may appeal to you (like emerging markets, energy, health care) inside TIAA-CREF isn't so important. (Note that I'm not advocating or debating the use of such sectors, I'm just talking about availability.)  So I wonder if you might care to make use of Equity Index TIQRX and S&P 500 TRSPX because they have bearable (if not impressive) expense ratios.  I should also note that CREF Stock Account has a tremendous large-cap bias.  Yes, it's well diversified, but since Int'l Equity Index TRIEX is available, you don't have to do without absolutely necessary diversification (as opposed to slicing and dicing with Energy, etc.)

However, TRIEX's expense ratio is .40%, getting up near the CREF Stock Account level.  So I want to draw a distinction.  Perhaps like me, you want to make a fine-pointed, careful decision.  But for many retirement investors, the enemy of a good plan is a perfect plan, and they might in fact do well to just buy CREF Stock.

Tim 

This is a PLUS, not a drawback, for folks (even some with an idea of what to do) looking for a one-stop-shop "fund" for equity investment.

I agree. Dividing up your portfolio into the many asset classes of various proportions seems intellectually to be the wise thing to do. However, there are too many factors that have little to do with rationality and a lot more to chance and other factors unknown to us. You might as well leave it to the experts. Cref Stock is dedicated to attempting to provide us with one-stop-shopping as far as equities are concerned. And yes, you can get a similar thing from Vanguard for a lower ER, but you have to assemble it yourself from several parts.

Sy