I'd love to hear a case made for Fidelity/Schwab being even with Vanguard. My understanding is that Vanguard's expense ratio is the best (and it goes without saying this makes a big difference over time). Has Fidelity's expense ratio recently moved to match Vanguard's?
This is obviously a Fidelity marketing spiel...but it's not a lie...Fidelity's active funds (which they made their name on) are definitely more expensive than Vanguard, but if you buy their passive index funds, you basically get equivalent expense ratios. (Same is true at Schwab.) And IMO, their website is far better than Vanguard's. I'll give Vanguard credit for jump starting passive investing for the little guy, but they aren't significantly different than their competition anymore.
>The $96.4 billion Fidelity 500 Index Fund (FUSEX), which tracks the S&P 500 Index, will drop its annual expense ratio by 0.5 basis point. The gross fee is now 0.10%, with a current net fee of 0.095% due to fee waivers. That will fall to 0.09% on July 1. In comparison, $45 billion Vanguard 500 Index Fund (VFINX) has an expense ratio of 0.16%
Fidelity also offer iShares ETFs (also low expense funds) as well as their own low expense ETFs commission free.
I can't comment on Schwab because I don't use them but from what I hear they have very similar offerings for low cost mutual funds and ETFs.
There was also just a commission price war a month or so ago initiated by Fidelity and as a result most brokerages dropped their commission significantly.
From what I understand Vanguard offers more services if you have a profolio over $1 million.
I'm very happy with Fidelity. I only purchase low cost index ETFs through them. You're going to pay more if you want active managed funds, but that's not the topic of discussion.
Even if you don't use their brokerage services you should use either Fidelity or Schwab's checking account. Really, a no brainer, banks don't offer anything even close to as good.
It's very competitive market nowadays and as another commenter pointed out, Fidelity has a much better website.
EDIT: What I meant by "their brokerage accounts are all very, very similar" I really mean "their brokerage account offerings are all very, very similar in price for someone interested in investing in low expense ratio index funds."
Schwab recently introduced much lower fees on their index ETF's. According to this, they're lower or equal to Vanguard (depending on how much you invest).
