E*TRADE

E*TRADE Financial Corporation (often referred to as E-Trade) is a large online broker that was founded in 1982.

Boglehead-style investing at E*TRADE
The building blocks of Boglehead-style investing are low-expense-ratio index mutual funds and/or ETFs. Vanguard fans would suggest that Vanguard has the best and most complete lineup of such funds, and that the most convenient place to hold Vanguard mutual funds is directly at Vanguard. Thus, the Bogleheads forum and Wiki tends to be Vanguard-oriented. But, investing according to the Boglehead philosophy certainly does not require you to invest at Vanguard nor use Vanguard products. Here are some notes on how to do it at E*TRADE.

The information below is up-to-date as of March 25, 2012. Writers have striven for accuracy, but investors should verify information before taking action.

Tools for Boglehead-style investing

 * E*TRADE has over 1400 NTF (No Transaction Fee) Mutual Funds, of which 49 have expense ratios under 0.50%.
 * In order to see the NTF Mutual Fund selection, the user must log on, visit the E*TRADE Mutual Funds Page, click on the "Mutual Funds Screeners" link, then perform a search using the "Expense Ratio <.5%" and "No Load No Transaction Fee" criteria.
 * In order to avoid the $49.99 short-term Mutual Fund trading fee, no shares may be sold for at least 90 days once a customer purchases a commission-free NTF Mutual Fund.
 * Additionally, E*TRADE has 80 commission-free ETFs. Please note that WisdomTree ETFs follow proprietary indices.
 * In order to avoid the $19.99 short-term ETF trading fee, no shares may be sold for at least 30 days once a customer purchases a commission-free ETF. Please see ETFs vs Mutual Funds for details on ETF pros and cons.
 * Some investors may wish to tilt their portfolio to increase Value stocks. These investors may consider using the following:
 * Large Value: WisdomTree Large Cap Value Fund (EZY; 0.38%), which follows a proprietary index.
 * Corresponding Growth ETF is also available.

E*TRADE tips, links, and general orientation
Whereas the default account at Vanguard is a mutual fund account, in which you can only buy Vanguard mutual funds (all other products require a separate Vanguard Brokerage Service account), the default account at E*TRADE is a brokerage account. You can buy mutual funds from various fund families, ETFs, individual stocks, bonds, and brokered CDs all within the same E*TRADE account. As of March 2012:


 * E*TRADE's full fee schedule is here.