Schwab, Fidelity, and Vanguard have all recently rolled out free ETF trades of one variety or another.

Schwab & Vanguard let their account holders buy and sell their respective ETFs free of charge while Fidelity offers a number of ishares at zero transaction cost to their customers.

Is this a good deal?  Well, free is certainly a good price.  However, you can trade ETFs at many other firms for as low as $4 and typically not higher than $10.  So unless you are using ETFs to dollar cost average into funds frequently in small transaction amounts, the difference might not be that material.

More importantly, there are many reasons to consider or reject a particular ETF that rank much higher on the list than free trades.  Such reasons include the index the particular fund tracks, the liquidity of the fund itself as well as the underlying securities it holds, the typical bid/ask spread of the fund, and the fund's propensity to trade near or away from its net asset value, among others.

Lastly, there is much to be said about the brokerage firm trading platform you use.  Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard (and almost all other brokerage firms) still use a cumbersome, "old school" share-based, individual security trading system which requires great effort and is prone to human error when executing an investment strategy.

My advice is not to choose your ETFs based on zero transaction fees, but instead select your funds based on the more important criteria mentioned above.

And do yourself a favor and check out Folio Investing.  Under their basic pricing plan, most investors pay between $50 and $150 a year to effect a sound, long-term buy and hold investment strategy. A small price given their superior investing platform.

Note:  I receive no compensation from and am in no way affiliated with Folio Investing.  I'm just a big fan of their technology platform and brokerage services.

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