Fidelity brokerage has announced that it will be removing commission on all online US listed Stocks, ETFs & Options. Options contracts will still be charged at $0.65 per contract (which is similar to what most other brokerage charge). This announcement follows on the heels of similar moves made by Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, E*Trade, and Ally Bank.
Fidelity also recently added an option to automatically sweep any cash funds in your brokerage account into a competitively yielding money market fund. That makes them almost as good as the new Robinhood option which sweeps funds into an FDIC high yield savings account. I’m considering switching from Merrill Edge to either Robinhood or Fidelity for this sweep advantage.
Do you still prefer Fidelity for a ROTH IRA? Or where should I look to determine where to open a ROTH IRA?
To see if you are offered TurboTax for free, visit:
https://oltx.fidelity.com/ftgw/fbc/oftop/portfolio#summary
If you see “Get TurboTax® Premier free”:
“Get started now” > scroll down, under Download, “See Products”
To download again or see license code again:
https://shopping.turbotax.intuit.com/unified/downloads/myaccounts?route=MYACCOUNTS&cgcview=downloads
About the license code:
https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/tax-topics/help/activating-turbotax-cd-download-software/00/852971
“You’ll only need to enter it and validate the first time you install on a computer. You can, however, install the software on up to five of your computers using the same license code. If you need more, you’ll need to purchase another TurboTax license.”
https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=294389&start=100
When is Merrill going to add auto sweep?
Does Fidelity has any welcome cash bonus offer at this time? App/software perspective, TD is apparently the best for active traders. But let idling cash earning interest is also appealing. Merril on the other hand, does make the credit card spending more rewarding.
It looks like they currently have “X free trades” for moving money over. Clearly those promotions have no value anymore.
Wouldn’t be surprised if they offer something new, I know they used to offer $ for moving over money before based on I believe a % of the money you moved over.
“Does Fidelity has any welcome cash bonus offer at this time?” Only if you bring in $1M+
Another joins the bandwagon. Way to go!
The sweep feature isn’t a big deal for me. In my margin accounts at other brokerages at least, I don’t keep much cash there; if I want to buy stock, I pull money into the account after making the trade, and it posts before the trade settles (settlement is a couple days later).
The automatic sweep would be a little more convenient, but the sweep account rate is probably lower than my external savings accounts.
I prefer just send a chunk of cash to the brokerage and let is sit there for some months as I slowly buy in over the next few months.
For margin account, that’s not a problem, but for IRA, HSA etc cash account, the high yield interest is very useful.
Don’t do Robinhood. I don’t understand it fully but someone told me you buy stocks at a higher price with Robinhood because of bid/ask variance.
well you can always set a limit order, which means you wont buy stocks at a price you dont want. but the issue is they sell order flow, so your order may not get filled because someone at a different brokerage
Others could (obviously no guarantee but I’ve had it happen from time to time) buy at a price better than you wanted (i.e. limit order at $10.00, executed at $9.75), while Robinhood would probably happily pocket the $0.25 themselves and charge you the full $10 you “wanted”.
Same can happen for sell orders that has a limit (if it actually sells for $10.25 they’ll still only give you the $10 you “want”).
Is ‘free’ worth the $0.25? That’s a difficult question and I’m sure Robinhood has had customers and will continue to have customers that don’t care about this kind of ‘unnecessary details’ and would rather believe that “every firm does the exact same thing”.
Robinhood isn’t a great choice if you care about selling the specific lots to minimize tax burden as it sells in FIFO order.
They don’t give an option to choose which one you want to sell? In Merrill, it defaults to FIFO, but you can select whichever you want.
No, Robinhood doesn’t give you that option.
In fairness to Robinhood, most (maybe nearly all? not sure) brokerages make money that same way. Fidelity is the only one I know of that doesn’t do that.
It’s certainly not unique to Robinhood. It’s an industry-wide thing (minus Fidelity and maybe some others I’m not aware of).
Though, of course, just because it’s an industry-wide thing doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. It would be nice if the entire industry was more transparent about this.
Its so weird that Robinhood gets hate for this when as noted nearly every firm does the exact same thing
Yeah, I was thinking more of Fidelity. Thanks.
Does TD Ameritrade, Schwab, or E*Trade have the sweep option?
Robinhood and Fidelity are the the only ones I’m aware of.
would be nice if they enabled the default money market sweep for the cash management (checking account). i called about a year back and they said they didnt allow it on checking accounts (there is some kind of default sweep, but its very low .1% sweep). i wonder if this new change will enable it. oddly, my dad, who is a long time fidelity client, has the money market sweep enabled on his checking account, so he mustve been grandfathered into an old policy or potentially otherwise might get some form of special treatment. if anyone here has more experience with getting a default money market sweep on checking accounts (1.5%-2%) then i would love to hear about it
We wrote about that here https://www.doctorofcredit.com/whats-the-best-high-yield-apy-checking-account-option/
I think what people are griping about is that it can’t go the other way: have any cash available in the CM account auto-swept into the MM account.
The yield has actually been increased, you can find it if you go to the account page for the CMA and click the blue text under “Cash Available to Withdraw” which reads “FDIC Insured Deposit Sweep.” It’s 0.94% right now which seems to match FCASH but isn’t as high as the other options in the brokerage account.
You can just do all your normal banking (bill pay, ACH, direct deposits) out of your brokerage account as long as you have enough cash or money in FCASH/SPAXX/FZFXX and use the CMA only when you need to withdraw cash. I just transfer the amount I’m going to withdraw +$5 to cover any ATM fees whenever I actually need cash. But I don’t actually do any trading out of Fidelity so it doesn’t really bother me if my banking is mixed with my trading, I just use my brokerage account as a high yield checking with no requirements.
Come on Vanguard… everyone is doing it!
I thought Vanguard didn’t charge any fees on Vanguard ETFs already
Vanguard is doing free ETFs for more than a year now…
Vanguard also has individual stock trading (as well as options trading). There are several commission tiers for stocks (and options) at the Vanguard. At the moment, most Vanguard customers would be paying $7 per stock trade (and $7 + $1 per options contract).
I hope they don’t change that. I don’t want my Vanguard mutual fund expense ratios to subsidize someone’s individual stock trading.
Okay, but… Vanguard definitely will be changing to $0 commission. Paid stock commissions are definitely a thing of a past. Vanguard will be no exception. Or Vanguard will get out of the individual stock trading business. That’s a possibility as well.
As for your mutual fund expense ratios, that will continue to trend lower as well whether Vanguard charges for individual stock trades or not.
Stock trading commissions have been getting cheaper for decades. Mutual funds expenses ratios, load fees and whatnot have been getting cheaper for decades. ETFs expense ratios have been getting cheap for decades. Etc. Etc.
You don’t have to worry about your mutual funds. That will continue to get cheaper as well.
If Vanguard believes in buy-and-hold investing and discouraging day traders, then expect no better than Flagship fees for all. $0 for first 25 or 100 trades, $2 thereafter.
You can wish all you want. No one will pay it anymore regardless.
Vanguard will be forced to follow suit at some point