The news today that Merrill Lynch is offloading its mutual fund business in a deal with BlackRock, a money management firm, may on its face have little to do with how you and I choose to invest our pea-sized Numbers.

According to the Wall Street Journal and other reports, the Merrill transaction — merely the latest in a line of fund-industry consolidations and mergers — has to do with a lot of things bigger than everyday, small-time investors: a somewhat tighter regulatory climate (Spitzer’s Revenge); huge outflows of Big Money out of mutual funds into hedge funds; the vast number of mutual funds out there scratching and clawing for market share; and, not incidentally, paltry stock-market returns of the last few years.

But there’s another explanation that indeed may have to do with us, and it’s a heartening one: the Merrill deal may be a sign that small-time players are slowly but surely getting smart — that it isn’t generally necessary to cough up heathy fees to fund managers who have a hard time beating the market, that we’re opting instead for low-cost index funds or exchange traded funds, which operate more or less on autopilot, and are therefore able to get by on teeny tiny fees and transaction costs (John Bogle’s Revenge). In other words, the reorientation of the fund business may be a sign of advancing financial literary on our part — a damn good thing now that we’re personally responsible for the results (and the cost) of our own long-term financial destiny.