My understanding of Fidelity fund commissions (may be out-of-date).
First, it makes a difference whether you have a Fidelity mutual fund account or a Fidelity brokerage account.
In a Fidelity brokerage account...
- There are hundreds of funds, including a number of Fidelity funds, available for no transaction fee. They can revoke your not-transaction-fee status if you trade these too much. And Fidelity Select funds are NOT in their list of no-transaction-fee (NTF) funds. So you would pay their normal ($25? $30? $35?) fee for buying or selling a non-NTF fund.
- You can also buy/sell stocks
- I don't know if brokerage IRAs get Fidelity loads waived for most Fidelity funds - I don't think so - and would not apply to Select funds (you would pay the load)
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In a Fidelity mutual fund account...
- You can only buy Fidelity funds
- For IRA accounts, loads are waived for most Fidelity funds (but still charged for Select funds and a few others. For non-IRA accounts, there are loads on many popular Fidelity funds, including Select funds. Once money pays a load, the money becomes "loaded" and if you sell that fund and buy another same-load fund, you pay no load.
- Except for Select Funds, Fidelity places limits on how often you can buy/sell a fund (I think they'll put up with up to 4 sells of the same fund in a 12-month period). They don't seem to have these limits on Selects.
- There is no transaction fee charged to buy any Fidelity fund except Select funds (they are loads though, as mentioned above).
- The transaction fee for Select funds varies depending on which method you use to buy the fund. I believe the lowest possible fee is if you trade via their automated touchtone method. This is the $7.50 transaction fee. If you trade directly from one Select to another Select this way, you are charged just one $7.50 fee. If you held the Select fund less than 30 days, they add on a surcharge of .75% of the total value of what you sold. This still isn't bad. For example, on a $3000 sell, that would be $22.50. I believe (could be wrong) that internet trades and live-broker trades of Selects have larger transaction fees (but same surcharge for under 30-days).
Carolyn S.
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