Personal Finance & Money Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people who want to be financially literate. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
If I invest in mutual funds via one of the online brokers; such as Interactive Brokers, Fidelity, Vanguard, etc.; do I need to pay a 2% commission to the exchange in which the shares are bought? If so, is there a way to circumvent paying this fee?
My bank told me that if I open an investment account at my bank and invest my money via them, I would need to pay a fixed 2% commission to the stock exchange.
Your bank invented that.
You can either pay them or go to another bank, where it is free.
I have no idea what happens in Germany so this is a US centric answer:
Some mutual funds have a fee, some do not. That is dependent on the type of fund and the broker.
When you pay a commission on a mutual fund, it goes to the broker who you trade with and/or the company that manages the fund not to the stock exchange.
The only way to determine whether you will have to pay a commission at a broker is to contact the broker and find out which mutual funds incur a commission and how much that commission is.
Another US centric answer.
The SEC charges a small fee on stock transactions (https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/34-49928.htm). I interpret the rule as saying that a mutual fund transaction does not have any such fee.
My research does not indicate that either the NYSE or Nasdaq exchanges charge transaction fees or commissions on mutual fund trades to the retail customer. It seems to me that any such fee charged to the fund would be collected as part of the fund's expense ratio. (If I am incorrect, I welcome cites so that I may fix this.)
Accordingly (again from the USA point of view) the bank is going to charge a 2% commission, blame it on the exchange, and keep the money for itself.
