It all started with Charles Schwab announcing that they will eliminate commissions on U.S. stock, ETF, and option trades (they will still charge $0.65 per contract) as of Monday, October 7, 2019. I was then informed that TD Ameritrade has followed suit and will charge $0 commissions as of October 3, 2019.
In the middle of writing this post, I then heard from E*TRADE that they would also reduce their commissions to $0 on Monday. I have an old OptionsHouse account that is now administered by E*TRADE, and was already getting $3.95 trade commission.
So far, there is no news from Fidelity; I assume that they will continue to charge $4.95 per trade. This is another series of moves in the continuing price war among online brokers.
I stopped paying much attention to commissions when they dropped below $20 per trade, saying that "The difference of few dollars is not a big deal." But, it is interesting to note that stock commissions are still going down -- a true race to the bottom. I still remember the days when paying $45-50 per trade was considered very reasonable. We were comparing discount brokerages versus the full service guys at the time.
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