Hi all,

Schwab and other US based brokers have now slashed their commission to $0, see
https://www.schwab.com/public/schwab...wab/compare_us

Is there anything I should be aware of?

Note: Interactive Brokers, which has been recommended in this forum before, is also about to introduce a "commission-free" version called "LITE", see https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=45196
However it looks like that "LITE" is only available to clients in US and India.

No. Both are large well capitalised firms and your money is held in a segregated account.
There's a price war going on and they now earn their money from funds and rebates from exchanges.

Nice environment for us investors! Schwab and IB are two of the big boy brokers in the US.

Note for IB Lite: If you hold substantial cash holdings (e.g. in USD) then note that IB Lite will pay 1% less interest than standard. So you may be better off in standard if you have a net value of >$100k, hold some cash and don't trade often.

TD Ameritrade too.. and unlike Schwab it doesn't require $25K in order to open an account.

https://www.tdameritrade.com/why-td-...k-trading.page

IB Lite is currently not available in Europe.

True... would expect it to roll out eventually though. In any case, keep in mind other factors like interest on cash (especially when a commission may be only $1 to start with)

TD Ameritrade and IB Lite are not available in Europe. What is available in Europe now with 0 (or very low) trade commission?

IB has very low commissions.
Degiro could be an option too.

IB Pro is available in Europe. Honestly commissions are next to zero and the account has more perks than IB Lite.

IB Lite is there to compete with Robinhood and the likes. It is not for serious investors.

TD Ammeritrade is available to Swiss residents as is Schwab, I used both when living in CH. Schwab even has a freephone Swiss no.

Trading212 is commission-free. I wouldn't trust that as much as a broker like IB, but as it's FCA-regulated your balance is safe up to £85k.


I'm using Trading212 to create stock 'pies', basically like your own ETF which can also use fractional shares.



If you put 1,000 in every month, and split it across 20 stocks then in IB that would cost you $20/month in fees, but it's free in Trading212.


The trade-off with commission-free is the spreads are a bit wider, but as I've analyzed this more than pays off vs even paying $1 per trade (assuming trade value isn't too high)

Do they also delay your trades a bit and sell the aggregated info to HFT-outfits, like RobinHood?


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...with-robinhood