Should I always stick to big firms like Vanguard or Fidelity? Thing I don't like about firms like Vanguard and Fidelity is that you cannot buy fraction of a unit which Robinhood/Stash allow you to do.
Any advice?
Fidelity has started to offer fractional shares, but it has some limitations: Only market and limit orders, only trades through the basic trade ticket in the mobile app, limited to NYSE/NASDAQ stocks, etc. [1] Another thing to watch out for is that fractional shares can't be transferred; they must be liquidated if you want to switch brokers.
Schwab has said they'll be launching fractional shares over the summer.
Note that most brokers already support fractional shares indirectly through DRIP [2], but that's unrelated to trading.
[1] https://www.fidelity.com/trading/fractional-shares
[2] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dividendreinvestmentpla...
What happens if I buy .5 shares of AAPL every week for 53 weeks? Do I have 26 undivided shares that can be transferred and one half-share that has to be liquidated, or do they treat it as 53 half-shares that all must be liquidated?
If the latter, seems like a great way to keep people locked-in. But the former could be a headache for basis reporting, especially if you could transfer to a brokerage that doesn't natively support fractional shares.
Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, TD Ameritrade are all legitimate operations as well, but IB is what professionals use.
Pretty much anything else is just gambling.