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Comment by ilamont | Hacker News Reader

Not mentioned in any of the coverage I've seen (or the interview with Vanguard's new CEO in the WSJ) is Fidelity.

Fidelity used to be known for actively managed funds, but has been eating Vanguard's indexing lunch for the past 10 years or so. Part of this relates to its dominance in workplace accounts, but Vanguard hasn't helped itself with some bad customer-facing software updates and a perception that its service levels are poor compared to Fidelity.

Cutting fees helps, but Fidelity has shown its willing to do this, too, including no fee "Zero" index funds: https://www.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/investing-ideas/index-... (note Fidelity is very clear about who it's competing with)

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One other differentiation that Vanguard has is that it is owned by the fund holders

“Vanguard set out in 1975 under a radical ownership structure. Our company is owned by its funds, which in turn are owned by Vanguard’s fund shareholders. We focus on meeting the investment needs of our clients.”

So in short, vanguard is customer-owned, where fidelity is owned by mostly the founding family (the Johnson’s).

https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/c...

But does that structure confer any realistic chance of voting control by any real humans who aren't already employed by vanguard?

Funds aren't known for being voting activists.

Even so, I think the incentives are still for the Vanguard management to make as little profit as possible so that they can compete and have more funds under management. Controlling more billions of dollars of stock shares is kind of its own reward and brings many opportunities for enrichment, and if they don't have to worry about making money for shareholders, they can pretty much always engineer the lowest fees.

Yes, in theory the fund-owned structure should mean they can charge lower fees than profit driven competitors. However, if competitors are doing things like zero fee funds as loss leaders, or have a banking side to diffuse costs, then it gets less clear.

This kind of thing makes me nervous. What kind of opportunities? Can they somehow loan out shares for example?

Even if you don't touch a dime of it, "had $X million in funds under management" is good for your next job. In business better to be the CEO of an ailing billion dollar business and drive it into the ground than actually do a good job managing a firm 1/10th the size.

Would you rather be a dairy cow on a farm owned collectively by the dairy cows, or owned by one billionaire family? Is it that hard to see how that's immediately a huge positive even if you can't identify individual instances of the billionaire abusing their position?

Bad analogy. There are many dimensions in which my experience as a dairy cow may be affected by ownership.

In the case of an investment fund, there's really just customer service and rate of return. If I have a good experience in those dimensions, why should I be concerned with ownership structure?

Having seen companies go bust and then the employees discovered their pension was invested in now worthless company stock I oppose all schemes to get people to invest in their own company without having significant control over the direction. (I didn't directly see this - it was before I was born but I meet a relative who worked there for 20 years) Pension laws now do not allow pensions to invest in company stock like that. Everyone I know who has worked for an employee owned company talks about how much $$$ they have in the company now - none have any other retirement plan and I can't help but think how bad they would be hurt if things went wrong.

If you are not Cxx level at a company or at least in a high role with a reasonable shot of getting to a Cxx position in the near future don't put your money in the company you work for. Diversity is important in investing and the company you work for is the least diverse of all investment options since you could lose both your savings and your paycheck at the same time.

Agreed. If you feel that your company is a good forward-looking investment for whatever reason (appreciation/dividends), it doesn't hurt to keep some holdings--from RSUs or otherwise. Though with transaction costs what they are somewhat per this article/discussion, the right question should probably be "If I had the money in cash, would I buy these shares." Employee stock purchase makes things a bit more complicated depending on the exact terms. Post dot-bomb I got a lot more conservative in terms of holding company stock from RSU/ESPP after a decade with a couple of private firms which doubtless cost me some money but I think I took a reasonable approach overall.

Starting end of Nov 2024, Vanguard is actually beginning to roll out proxy voting capabilities to fund holders (in the US). This looks to be the beginning of deeper proxy voting capabilities, but not much information out there yet.

https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/c...

This is academic. I have equal control over both, which is to say none whatsoever. Capacity to influence a company falls to the following (in order)

1. Executives

2. Large shareholders (usually institutional and rarely individuals)

3. Customers

4. Employee unions (if present)

The tech industry is an anomaly where 1 and 2 largely overlap, but this is not true in most industries. Unless you are super rich, you will never be able to have more influence over a large company than you do in the role of a pissed off customer ready to take his money elsewhere.

This alone is why I will always choose Vanguard if possible.

TBH, I trust vanguard more, even if their website is absolutely worse. There's a saying, 'if you're not the customer, you're the product'. I expect trades on those index funds are getting 'front run' much like robinhood is getting front run. You might have a lower ER but your nav might effectively be higher when buying and lower when selling.

Of course, I'm a 'buy and hold' investor so this doesn't really effect me much, but it's the principle of the matter.

Front running is illegal.

Only if you get caught. And the fine needs to be higher than the profit.

It’s pretty easy to learn how fidelity and others make money on fee-free index funds. Perhaps something to look into before accusing them of committing a crime.

Considering someone or some activity to be criminal, and accusing them of being a criminal, are two completely different things.

I consider most financial institutions to be criminal because it is always their clear intention to circumvent the spirit of the law as closely as possible. The intention is to reap the benefits of breaking the law, without the risk of consequence. When the pitchforks come, these are going to be the criminals being chased down the street.

By the same token, I do not consider a parent who writes a bad check for groceries to be a criminal.

PFOF does not violate the spirit of the law

The client generally saves money in the PFOF situation. They benefit, their broker benefits, and the market maker they deal with benefits. The only loser is the abstract rest of the market being able to get fewer penny shavings.

What in particular do you see as against the spirit of the law?

I think the fine needs to be higher than the profit difference between the (illegal) and not illegal option.

If you have a legal route to $1M and an illegal route to $1.5M, the rational calculation for fines is against the $0.5M delta, not the full amount.

Only if they're mutually exclusive.

The illegal 1.5 is always the optimal game theory choice because the chance of getting caught is not 100%

To use an absurd example just to make it incredibly obvious why what you said doesn't make sense, would that hold up if the fine if caught was $10 trillion dollars?

Then shareholders would demand executives have skin in the game and suffer if a company got the death penalty like you describe. Would likely lead to a much better world. Golden parachutes would not be a thing if shareholders got liquidated like that.

In finance, nothing is illegal if the profits outweigh the fines.

Citaldel paid handsomely for order-flow information from Robinhood. They made a lot of money off retail traders. They paid a fine IIRC equivalent to a few day's profits.

PFOF is neither front running nor illegal.

If you are curious about a brokers position on PFOF you can look up their disclosures. SEC Rule 605, 606 and 615 are the search terms you want when looking these up. Fidelity has a similar disclosure on this as Vsnguard, which is that they don’t engage in PFOF except for some options markets.

Robinhood got in trouble for false advertising about PFOF not because they engaged in it, because again, PFOF is not front running and not illegal.

PFOF isn't (typically) illegal, a better word might be "controversial". There's nothing free in this life: the zero commission brokers are making it up somehow.

While the studies on how PFOF effects execution quality are varied, this summary [1] from Wharton seems fairly balanced. It's not as simple as citing NBBO and moving on.

Personally I'm suspicious of the practice mostly because of the pretty clear conflicts of interest that it creates. Again, this is controversial, but the people arguing it's ok are for the most part making money from it.

[1] https://wifpr.wharton.upenn.edu/uncategorized/research-spotl...

Robinhood makes the majority of their revenue on options and crypto. Vanilla equities is becoming less important.

The zero commission brokers typically make most of their revenue on net interest margin. PFOF is a smaller portion.

securities lending doesn’t hurt if your clientele likes heavy short-interest-worthy meme stocks

Yeah I'm mostly talking about traditional discount brokerages (Fidelity, Schwab), not Robinhood.

PFOF is not front running. Market making is not front running. Full stop. This fact is only controversial if you fundamentally misunderstand what market makers do.

Isn't it just PFOF? Is that actually illegal?

Edit: No, it's not in the US at least. It mostly just allows the broker to internalize orders if they prefer.

The riskier the road, the greater the profit.

There's a lot of confused comments on this thread. "Front running" in the strictest sense means illegal trading that involves taking advantage of trades that you know will happen and you have a responsibility not to exploit. "Front running" is also used informally to mean legally trading prior to trades that you anticipate happening. Studying the rules of an index and buy a stock just before its added to the index and index funds are required to buy it is "front running" in the second sense.

How do you front run a mutual fund? The price is the price.

You mean an index fund?

An index fund is a type of mutual fund

Yeah but you can front run a (active) mutual fund

Wouldn’t index ETFs be index funds that are not mutual funds?

Yes and they trade during market hours the same as stocks so I understand front running those trades.

Predict or react to index changes faster than the funds that are compelled to follow the index.

But you can't front run shares of mutual funds; they always trade at close of business at NAV.

You could potentially front run ETFs, but if you're worried about that, you can use limit orders and get the price you want or not transact. As long as you use a competent broker that offers limit orders.

That’s not front running! Front running requires a fiduciary obligation to who you are trading on behalf of.

Investopedia disagrees:

> A form of front-running in index funds is common and isn't illegal.

> Index funds track a financial index by mirroring the index's portfolio. The composition of the index changes periodically to balance it accurately as the stocks that make it up change dramatically in price or as stocks are added or removed from the index. That forces the fund's managers to buy or sell some components of the index.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/frontrunning.asp

Then investopedia is wrong. Front running is a very specific thing, a) it requires private information, b) requires trading on behalf of someone and c) requires a fiduciary duty to the person

If we use that expansive definition of "front running", is it "front running" if I buy stocks trying to squeeze short sellers? What about if I thought people would buy/sell telsa stocks because of musk's role in the culture wars, and tried to get ahead of that? Is "front running" just buying low and selling high?

Well, let's not call a short squeeze by another name.

Otherwise, I wouldn't call those things front running, as there's no indication of imminent activity.

If a material increase in lending rates on a heavily shorted stock was announced, and you bought because you were pretty sure the shorts would be buying to close, that could be front running, yeah.

I dunno about market moves based on Elon's role in the culture wars, but maybe if he did something in particular.

In general, buy on the rumor, sell on the news could qualify as front running under this definition, but I think I'd want to narrow it a bit to working to trade ahead of perceived imminent and definite trades. Most of the illegal front running is trading ahead of specific trades in response to seeing those orders.

>Most of the illegal front running is trading ahead of specific trades in response to seeing those orders.

Any evidence this is actually happening, rather than something like "this ETF rebalances every quarter, they're unbalanced, and are expected to rebalance in this way", or "this company is probably going to get included in the S&P 500 because it's doing really well"? What makes this sort of "front running" less acceptable than buying because "I like the stock", or trading on technical analysis?

Here's three SEC press releases that seem to indicate there's evidence of illegal front running:

https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021-118

https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021-186

https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022-228

Trading ahead of index funds when an index change is announced is front running in my book, but it isn't illegal front running; but I don't consider it less acceptable than buying because the graph makes a funny shape.

All 3 examples you provided are for people trading on material nonpublic information. In other words, some guy working at an asset manger knew they were going to execute trades on behalf of a client, and then made his own trade ahead of that. That's textbook front running, no denying it, but that's not anywhere close to what's happening with "ETF rebalancing" or PFOF. It's perfectly legal, for instance to speculate on whether TSLA or whatever is going to make it into the S&P 500 and "front run" that. It's also not clear why such trades would be immoral or unfair.

>https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021-118

>Wygovsky repeatedly traded in his family members’ accounts held at brokerage firms in the United States ahead of large trades that were executed on the same days in the accounts of his employer’s advisory clients.

>https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021-186

>Polevikov had access to real-time, non-public information about the size and timing of his employers' securities orders and trades, and used that information to secretly trade on, and ahead of, his employers' trades.

>https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022-228

>Billimek would inform Williams of the asset management firm’s market-moving trades prior to their execution

> but that's not anywhere close to what's happening with "ETF rebalancing" or PFOF. It's perfectly legal, for instance to speculate on whether TSLA or whatever is going to make it into the S&P 500 and "front run" that. It's also not clear why such trades would be immoral or unfair.

I never said trading a stock ahead of it being added or removed to the S&P 500, or between the announcement of it being added or removed and index funds actually purchasing it is illegal, immoral, or unfair, or less acceptable than any other trade.

Just that it's front running. And then you asked if there were examples of illegal front running, so I provided those --- which aren't examples of trading ahead of index funds, because trading ahead of index funds isn't illegal.

I'm not really sure what you're asking at this point.

If you know the index rules, it's fairly simple to calculate the turnover it is going to generate when it rebalances and subsequently the impact the rebalance is going to have on prices. This is a fairly well known behavior and a lot of players have been doing this for a long time. Basically every index of any significance is already being monitored and rebalancing effects are "front-run" this way.

I put the word in quotes, because this is a perfectly legitimate way of front running. The major indices are all public, and anyone can take a crack at this. In other words, if I announce to the world a month in advance that on a specific day and a very specific time of the day (at the closing auction) I'm going to buy X amount of specific stocks and sell Y amount in other stocks, I can't blame people for using that information against me.

This is not what "front running" means.

Yeah duh. I was explaining to the parent.

No, you're still saying it's front running.

> Basically every index of any significance is already being monitored and rebalancing effects are "front-run" this way.

> I put the word in quotes, because this is a perfectly legitimate way of front running.

No; it is not "front running."

How do you front run a mutual fund?

as a "consumer" of the mutual fund, you can't.

but the mutual fund itself makes large trades: somebody downstream executing those trades or having access to that data could front run.

Fidelity uses those funds as marketing, and they make up for it with all the other services and funds they offer. It's intentional, and it's working.

Vanguard is more and more becoming a group that just wants to run ETFs and if you want to use them, they're making it harder and harder. They recently dumped all their 401(k) and similar plans from being in-house to some other provider.

Saves costs, makes support annoying.

Of course, you can use a Fidelity account to own Vanguard ETFs if you wanted.

>Of course, you can use a Fidelity account to own Vanguard ETFs if you wanted.

Which I would highly recommend if you ever want to change brokers. the fidelity ZERO products are great but can only be held at fidelity while VOO shares can be transfered to any broker.

I presume the main advantage of transferring shares is to avoid taxation on realised gains. Secondary is to avoid transaction fees?

I sold and bought recently (because transfer looked like paperwork hassle to me): had a small transaction cost, and the main disbenefit was losing transaction history e.g. buy date was now reset; it was tax neutral for me either way.

> Fidelity uses those funds as marketing, and they make up for it with all the other services and funds they offer. It's intentional, and it's working.

> Vanguard is more and more becoming a group that just wants to run ETFs and if you want to use them, they're making it harder and harder. They recently dumped all their 401(k) and similar plans from being in-house to some other provider.

If this is true, then it must for individuals.. My company moved a little over a year ago TO vanguard for 401ks

It was only for solo 401ks and small business with less than $20M in assets.

Vanguard is still offering IRAs last I checked.

It's not clear to me exactly what they have moved, but two of my (very old) Simple IRA accounts got forcefully moved without my approval, and a 401k rollover into a self-managed IRA is still around. Not sure what the difference was exactly.

https://www.ascensus.com/about-us/press-room/news/ascensus-t...

This post was a reminder to get those moved out of Ascensus into Fidelity if possible.

Thanks for the reminder to move some old IRA accounts they dumped onto some random provider to Fidelity.

Horrible move on their part, if I didn't want some provider diversification I'd just move everything over entirely at this point.

The pennies that they scalp off you on the trade by "front running" the order is much less cost than the annual fee if you are a long term investor.

There’s not really much money to be made front running someone’s deposit into an index fund that’s gonna sit there for the next 40 years. It works on RH because generally those users are transacting much more frequently and in much less liquid things like options.

Front running customer purchases is not the concern. In the running of an index fund there’s many levers you can pull to create revenue streams that don’t show up on expense ratios.

Funny business can absolutely be pulled during rebalancing.

Another big one is securities lending income. Vanguard pays that out to investors which effectively creates negative expense ratios in certain funds. Index funds from other issuers don’t necessarily share that securities lending income with customers.

I’m not disputing other funny business, I just don’t think they are making money front running passive index investors.

It's not about front-running investments _in_ passive index funds, it's about front-running investments _by_ passive index funds, which, of course, ultimately comes out of the investors' wallets.

As a practical matter, since dealing in mutual funds' shares is settled after market, "front running" these transactions would be problematic. (Impossible, I'd say?)

I trust Fidelity. I used to work there years ago. It is a conservatively run place, careful with changes, which is a good thing when managing large amount of money. The tech and web interface might not be the shiniest, but I'd rather have my money there than vanguard/schwab, etc...

I trusted Vanguard more until they became a broker and forced all their fund customers to have a brokerage account with them.

You expect wrong. I think you're talking about Payment for Order Flow (PFOF) which Fidelity does not use.[0]

[0] https://www.fidelity.com/trading/execution-quality/overview

I don't think vanguard's core customer base cares about what hungry competitors are doing to entice them to move. Just look at Robinhood: they offered the biggest financial incentive for users to switch of any broker in the industry and I doubt many vanguard customers took them up on that. Stability, trust, and low fees are all buy and hold investors at Vanguard really care about.

They only offered it for a month or 2 and pulled it pretty quick

I have accounts at both, and my perception is that Vanguard is pretty much exclusively low cost, but Fidelity does have some very competitive options if you can find them. They just also have a lot of overpriced junk.

Fidelity’s technology and customer service does generally seem better. Although they were completely baffled when their app refused to run on a rooted phone with an error message along the lines of “your account is frozen” after I logged in. (It wasn’t, and worked fine after I realized that was the issue and put it on the deny list.)

Overall, I trust Vanguard more, but both have their strong points.

The overpriced junk is wedged into bespoke employer 401k programs that are managed by the brokers. There is usually only one or two low fee options hiding in the list and you have to be savvy to find them. Most employer 401k programs suck because they (custodian) are agreeing to the fund composition based on price to them. If you are lucky you might not end up in John Hancock or Transamerica. Yuck!

Matt Levine has a bit about the best customer service your broker can provide is not picking up the phone in a crisis.

Bad UX is, intentionally or not, consistent with Vanguard's long-term index investing philosophy. Call us? Use our website? Whatever it is you are trying to do, you probably shouldn't be doing that.

I kid, but only a little.

It's interesting everyone's saying the UX is bad. I've had consistently good interactions with Vanguard's support over the years. I regularly get to talk to an actual human without waiting more than 10-20 minutes, and they're very helpful about getting things done and giving even basic advice about tradeoffs in different investing options.

The website isn't amazing, but I don't feel like it's terrible either. There's much worse 401k/IRA providers out there.

It’s hard to beat Fidelitys offer right now. They give you a 2-3% checking account. A 2% cash back credit card, access to their low cost funds and a decent enough website. All in one place.

Other brokerages are better at their niche but the fidelity package is quite competitive

Fidelity has great features, but is hamstrung by their awful execution.

The app is clunky, slow, and looks like something from the 90s. Just logging in takes an average of 10-15 seconds. The credit card is serviced by Elan, who is awful, but aside from that, the UX is abysmal. It feels like it redirects no less than 8 times to get to the credit card page. My phone won't even load it, so I have to do it on my computer.

It's so frustrating to me because I feel like they're 90% of the way there and just need a bit of UX work. But I've had that feeling for years now, with no real progress made, so am slowly moving away. If you don't touch your money often, it's probably fine - great even, but it became too frustrating for me in the end as an everyday use account.

Good to know that Elan services the card and is terrible. I’ll avoid

FWIW, I've been using the card since late 2019 and had zero issues with it. There aren't a lot of 2% cards that just straight give you 2% cash back w/o any hoops[1]. The Fidelity card is no muss no fuss for me. 2% just magically appears in my designated Fidelity account at the end of the month.

I have not had to interact with Elan customer service, so I can't speak to that. I also don't care about the Fidelity mobile app (I use fidelty.com from my laptop). I haven't had any issues using fidelty.com to manage the card.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/CreditCards/wiki/list_of_flat_cashb...

I used this card for a few months before usbank launched their smartly card, at which point I moved 100k from fidelity to a usbank IRA and now enjoy 4% cash back.

Elan is a division of US Bank, so while the branding on your card might have changed, its being run by the same company.

I've had to replace the card once or twice for various reasons and never had any issues. It's a good enough offer that I'm not likely to jump through hoops or create some big other account to improve on. I'm not down to a single account but I've simplified things and diversified.

Isn't this about the funds, rather than using Vanguard as a broker? Can't you buy Vanguard funds while on Fidelity, or vice versa?

You can. There's usually a hefty transaction fee when purchasing a funds not managed by whichever service you're on ($49?).

Might be manageable if you're purchasing in enormous quantities; but a 5% fee on $1000 hurts if you're in normal consumer purchase ranges.

This is true for mutual funds, but Vanguard ETFs are available on Fidelity with no fees.

And ETFs are generally more tax efficient anyways. I'm not sure what the benefit to funds are.

It used to be you could buy fractions of a mutual fund, but not ETFs. Recently, brokerages have started allowed you to do fractional ETFs as well though.

There are some minor advantages to funds left, especially in taxable. Some of the funds do their best to allocate certain costs to the ETFs so that ends up more favorable tax-wise.

The real main advantage of funds vs ETFs is they don't bounce around in price every millisecond.

Just because mutual funds are priced and traded daily doesn't mean their market value isn't still bouncing around every millisecond.

One benefit to Mutual Funds is that you can do things like reinvest dividends, or investment plans. It's not a fundamental advantage that a mutual fund has, but no brokers that I am aware of would let you do those things with an ETF. So if you have long term "forget it" account, with ETFs it will accumulate cash from dividends. And the tax benefit of ETFs doesn't really help in a tax advantaged account (e.g. retirement). Finally, theoretically at least, when you buy an ETF there is an explicit "transaction cost". Even when they don't charge you a commission, there's a bid ask spread. Mutual funds trade at NAV both ways (unless of course there's an external transaction cost separately disclosed).

We tried using vanguard. The UX/UI was so bad we went through the work of transferring everything to fidelity. They've got a pretty decent app.

Vanguard has so much friction on what should be very simple and common tasks.

There's no excuse for that. I can say pretty confidently that cutting fees won't be enough. They need a total rewrite of all their customer facing software and web stuff, and they probably need to revamp their customers service as well. They screwed up my wife's name and she tried for months and months to fix it before giving up.

Vanguard recently made two horrible mistakes: 1. a typical "Grand UI Redesign" that made the site worse and removed a bunch of previously working features, and 2. They made all their users "migrate" their accounts from one type to another, a process that I found to be error prone and clunky.

For 1, all of us software people have seen companies do this over and over, and it always sucks. For 2, why they couldn't do whatever backend migration they needed to do without having it disrupting retail customers, I have no idea.

Both of those point to a software organization way below where it needs to be competence-wise.

Vanguard's grand UI redesign was poorly done. At the time each team was responsible for some software product, and had a good ownership model. The issue imo was that the internal UI component library was poorly made and funded, and that the UX team was very old (most of the people were lifers that were hired in the 90s, no real experience in UI/UX,etc.) So people were just making the designs they were given. The Grand UI Redesign was a single new team that just made a heavy Angular UI application for the major areas, forcing product teams to be backend only. This caused discontinuity and didn't really fix the core issue.

I've had the same Vanguard accounts for 15 years (Rollover IRAs, Roth IRAs, non-retirement) and I don't remember having to migrate anything. If something was migrated, I wasn't even aware it happened.

That's because Vanguard is a buy and hold philosophy. They have previously stated that they designed their site for the bulk of the users. Those users log in just to check their balances in the 5 or fewer funds/ETFs that they hold. So instead of building something that would be reasonably easy for everyone, they built something that was easy for their primary (aging) user base. It's the same sort of mentality how they don't allow inverse ETFs, they aren't going to offer any crypto related stuff, etc.

At some point you need to realize your gains—perhaps to rebalance a portfolio, or to pay for an expense, or because you’re retiring and now it’s time to enjoy the profits of your buying and holding. And a lot of people elect specific-lot cost basis accounting to minimize tax burden.

Supposedly they have a tax loss harvesting and "min tax" tool for that.

The “tool” was sorting your lots by cost basis, which is what Enginerrrd is saying was taken away.

I would guess it's still there but buried in some UX hell hole

I did some rebalancing recently, and couldn't find it. You can sort by capital gain per lot, which isn't very helpful if your lots are vastly different sizes. Thankfully I don't have that many lots, and had plenty of capital loss carryover to offset the gains, so it doesn't matter that much, but it's annoying, and it's probably the straw that's going to get me to actually move to a better brokerage. (which I guess is fine for Vanguard, if I'm at a different brokerage, it reduces Vanguard's costs)

They can't even correctly donate from a Vanguard brokerage account to a Vanguard DAF without breaking the cost basis.

> They need a total rewrite of all their customer facing software and web stuff,

They've done that. And now you can't sort by capital gain/loss per share when picking lots to sell.

They're also almost done forcing everyone into the brokerage side, which is less flexible with some things like reinvestment of dividends. On the nice side, it includes foreign dividend info on the 1099s so you don't have to find a separate document to get those percentages.

The idea of making financial decisions based on UI/UX is extraordinary to me.

It is to me too! I would never do that normally. It's just that it was THAT bad.

It took me MONTHS to figure out how to sell a particular fund to buy another one. Somehow every time I tried to do it, it failed. I kept coming back to it over and over and different things went wrong. It was also very difficult to figure out the status of an order.

It was literally that clunky, and I've been trading for decades. I run multiple businesses, I know how these things work, but their UI was awful.

Twice I've been unsure how to move move money with their site and twice I've contacted their customer service center who was more than happy to guide me through the process.

This particular one was only a few thousand dollars worth, and so the issue just never reached a high enough priority for me to invest the time to call ciatomer service.

I just kept checking it once in a while when i had a few seconds to spare.

I guess you’ve never had the displeasure of using treasurydirect.gov.

It's slightly better now. I think they removed the onscreen keyboard and finally let you type your password directly.

But it's still bad.

Do you like radio buttons? I hope you like radio buttons.

Even if the thing that you're using for really, really shouldn't be a radio button.

It's so bad. I don't even like logging in anymore. Padding/whitespace everywhere, no more alternating row colors. I despise mobile-first UIs. The old one many have looked dated but it was more information dense without being overwhelming.

Vanguard's website revamp in the past three years was disappointing because in the past, I can visit just one (landing) page and get almost all of the info I need about my holdings + actions I could take on them and my accounts. Now, I have to click through a myriad of pages to do what I want. Plus, in Firefox browser at least, if you want to 'Exit' the order and some other pages, it simply doesn't work, so I have to type the 'vanguard.com' in the browser's URL field and ping it again.

This is an example of not breaking what was not broken (or at least, keep most of what was useful instead of replacing everything with "new and cool" stuff just because <no reason?>).

> Vanguard's website revamp in the past three years was disappointing because in the past, I can visit just one (landing) page and get almost all of the info I need about my holdings + actions I could take on them and my accounts.

Bookmark https://holdings.web.vanguard.com/

RE: Fidelity Zero

The downside, as I understand it, is that Fidelity Zero doesn’t offer ETFs, and that the Fidelity Zero mutual funds can’t be transferred to other brokerages. Depending on your preferences their expense ratios might justify the vendor lock-in, but Vanguard ETFs are hard to beat IMO.

I wonder what the tax efficiency looks like when comparing a zero fee fund to its low fee ETF counterpart. Is it possible an ETF under 5 or even 10 basis points is still a better deal if it's tax efficient (taxable accounts only)?

I tend to only use the zero funds in tax advantaged accounts. Primary example, I needed to move an HSA to avoid a $20/month fee from the idiots at Health Equity when I switched jobs. Moved it immediately to Fidelity since they offer an HSA account and used the zero funds.

If I were to ever need to move the HSA money elsewhere, they can sell the funds to transfer, since it's not a taxable event, that's fine by me.

I won't buy the zero funds for my brokerage account though, I stick with Vanguard ETFs.

Fidelity's "Zero" funds are great, but only for specific scenarios IMO. They can't be held outside Fidelity accounts, so what happens if you get caught up in some KYC nonsense and Fidelity closes your account? Are you forced to liquidate and incur capital gains? There are also some embedded tax efficiencies inherent to ETFs, like 351 exchanges, which aren't popular now, but may become popular in the future. TBH, this mainly applies to taxable accounts. For nontaxable accounts, Zero funds don't have much downside.

The zero fund I am familiar with (FZILX) has a once-a-year dividend schedule which I'm sure nets them a lot of money, vs paying out more frequently. If you want to unload, you can only do it once a year without throwing away your earned dividend.

That's not how dividends work.

You have to hold the fund on the ex-dividend date...

Pays out once in Dec. If you buy in Feb and sell in Oct, you're not getting your dividend although you earned most of it... If you had VTI, you'd get 3 of them.

Dividends are built into the NAV price. It just becomes taxable income when it is paid out.

Ah right

I'd also thought your idea sounded like it made sense, sort of like how a trader can attempt dividend stripping, but looks like the user baking cleared that up.

They raise a good point, which I've never considered before. This could be considered a form of dividend arbitrage based on the difference in scheduling between the component dividends vs the fund dividends, based on the knowledge that a non-zero amount of fund holders will exit the fund before the once a year dividend date, but not before the fund earned dividends based on the fund components.

Nevermind, it looks like baking cleared up my misconception in another reply.

> They can't be held outside Fidelity accounts, so what happens if you get caught up in some KYC nonsense and Fidelity closes your account?

This literally happened to me. I'm banned from Fidelity for some unknown (AML presumably) reason but have no other issues with any brokerage, bank, or exchange.

Fortunately I just held a bunch of ETFs, so it was straightforward. But it does happen.

I'm waiting for negative fee funds that delivers better than indexed returns by loaning out the shares to shorts.

Many funds do make revenue with share lending. I don't know that there's enough lending to get expenses below zero, at least as of yet, though.

Also, sometimes the lending revenue is just added to the fund, rather than being used to offset expenses. The end result is the same, but the accounting numbers look different.

As a result, when comparing two index funds that track the same index, you should look at actual total returns rather than quoted expense ratios.

I started using E-trade because of this instead of transferring my vested stock to Vanguard. Already had an account so it was zero effort to convert to my usual funds as ETFs which has the bonus of being transferable between brokerages unlike mutual funds.

You can frequently do in kind transfers of mutual funds, particularly between the big funds and brokers.

You can’t for funds that are only available at a single brokerage. This describes a lot of index funds and wrapper funds.

The big index and wrapper funds at vanguard you absolutely can.

> convert to my usual funds as ETFs

Do you mean that you sold mutual funds at Vanguard, and used the cash to buy ETFs at eTrade? This means you had to pay tax on capital gains, right? Or is there some trick I don't know about, vis-a-vis converting mutual funds into equivalent ETFs, without a taxable event?

Many Vanguard mutual funds offer ETF as a share class of the fund. For those funds, shares in the traditional share classes can be exchanged for ETF shares, if you hold them at Vanguard.

But not all of the funds have an ETF share class. And if you hold Vanguard mutual funds elsewhere, you'd need to transfer them in-kind to Vanguard to convert.

The funds come from selling stock as it vests. Stuff already in Vanguard stays there until I feel annoyed enough to move it.

Yeah, as a litmus test of how much they care about their customers try to call in and get something done.

Vanguard will throw you into an automated labyrinth with the only exit being a poorly-trained rep in india or pakistan that has no real understanding of what you're trying to do.

Their website is complete trash compared to the other big two. Often down, you can only check your balance, etc.

Fidelity will within a matter of a couple of minutes connect you with someone that seems too good to be true. Knowledgeable, friendly, going out of their way to help you, they follow up on what they say (like calling you back, etc).

Once I got a taste of how Fidelity treats people and their broader set of products I moved everything over.

Vanguard is circling the drain if you ask me.

I'm wondering if I'm on some very different account/plan than everyone else. Any time I've ever called Vanguard, I've gotten a super well trained rep without much of a wait or a call tree. I also had good interactions with Fidelity when I used them.

Were you on a plan run through an employer? Or individual?

It might be related to how much money you have invested. They publish a list of levels that provide different levels of service. https://investor.vanguard.com/client-benefits

The breakpoints are $50k, $500k, $1M, $5M.

Enough to not be treated like I was. Sorry that's vague.

Also, that page seems to be talking about like... financial advisor services. Most of the time I was just calling in to ask for help rolling over a 401k or something. I don't think I've ever called for actual investment advice of the sort that they seem to gate behind certain account sizes.

I'm wondering if it's something where company-sponsored plans sometimes have bad CS support because their support contracts are paid/arranged separately from if you just have a personal account. Or if some company plans have better support because they pay for it?

It's really annoying that people here are talking about "Zero" fee funds as if they were zero-fee funds. As far as I can tell "Zero" means less than 0.05% fees.

No, zero means a 0% expense ratio and no minimums, as listed for the four funds at the top of https://www.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/investing-ideas/index-.... Unlike most other funds, these are captive to Fidelity so if you ever do an ACATS transfer they have to be liquidated.

That's the key, though if it's a tax-advantaged account it's not a major issue (as you can just transfer to an appropriate ETF and then ACATS that).

In taxable it could cause you to have to stay with Fidelity or eat a tax bill.

It's an interesting reversal and highlights the power of competition - as a young part-time employee in college, my employer automatically contributed a few hundred dollars for me to a 403(b) type of retirement savings account. Fidelity was the custodian and after I left the job, it imposed a substantial monthly fee that eventually ate all of the money in the account, leaving me with zero. I always remember that episode when dealing with Fidelity.

FWIW, I’ve hd excellent customer service / support experiences with Vanguard - and the opposite with Fidelity.

and Vanguard keeps fading the crypto vote, and Fidelity is the exact opposite

everyone can vote with their wallet

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