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Comment by jglamine | Hacker News Reader

Fidelity has been killing it with their passive investing options. Zero expense ratio funds, cash management account.

I am going to switch, will save perhaps 30k in fees over next few decades

I like Fidelity (and Vanguard), but at the metric the OP post uses (% employees handling passive products), Fidelity is likely far, far worse than Vanguard - Fidelity has 4 employees for every 1 Vanguard employee. And the whole point of passive products is that you don't have an employee managing a fund whose expenses eat into returns. Vanguard and Fidelity both continue to offer excellent passive products, and Vanguard also continues to cut fee ratios on its passive products, while some of their competitors have been incredibly anti-consumer by launching new lower-fee versions of a fund instead of lowering the fees on their existing fund.

It's also great that Fidelity has their “zero” offerings, but 1) they are mutual funds so considered less tax efficient in the long term if in a taxable account, and 2) can't be transferred to a Fidelity competitor brokerage, which can also be an issue if in a taxable account.

The zero index funds have slightly more tracking error than the vanguard funds.

Also if you are in taxable I would be worried about being locked in if fidelity start charging fees on them.

I think vanguard is a safer bet to keep fees low long term.

And ultimately 4bps is irrelevant.

Rather than switch completely, consider putting your eggs in two baskets?

Absolutely. Fidelity has been closer to Vanguard's historical reputation than Vanguard itself in recent years.

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