Hey guys.....is it a good idea to keep a significant % of your cash in a Vanguard Fund? I'm currently self employed spending most of my time investing/working with a residential builder, and part time playing poker.....I constantly have money tied up with poker or with construction but want to know what to do with the rest of my cash that just sits in a bank account......I was looking at VTSAX earlier and noticed they averaged a 8-9% return over the past 15 years with low costs (.05%).....my thinking was instead of keeping 100% of my on hand cash thats not invested in the bank, I can take say 50% of it, put it in something like VTSAX and if I do need that cash I can sell shares off and move it to my bank.....the downside to this is the variance.....over the past 15 years they've had 3 losing years and those years were fairly rough average about -20% a year......I don't mind taking on the variance if I can earn those kind of returns but I might have to limit early on how much of my cash I stick in there to avoid a big loss early on.....

Since I'm a noob in stocks what do you guys think of this idea? Is this reasonable or am I missing something here? Also how liquid are these shares? I'm under the impression that I can sell off at any time and move the money to my bank but maybe thats not the case......I think I'd spread the money across a number of funds but VTSAX is the first one I looked at.....let me know what you guys think