One can purchase more at TF using automatic investment feature on Fidelity for $5. Pimco institutional funds have $25K minimum at Vanguard and $1M at Fidelity, and we have taken advantage on several Pimco fund. With respect to transaction fee funds, it is $49 at Fidelity and $20 at Vanguard. We are investors and not a high volume traders, so this point is less important to us. One can trade Vangurad's ETF for free while iShares ETFs can be traded for free at Fidelity. Vanguard is more basic but equally functional. We had Fidelity as our 401(K) administor and their web service is excellent.

Ever since we use Vanguard and Fidelity as our main brokerages and they have served us well. We use TD Waterhouse long time ago before it merged with Ameritrade. I hardy hear any praise consistently with TD Ameritrade. There is something to be said about you get what you pay for. I am really unhappy with TDA, so will check around to see what else is out there. They do have a few enhancements but the general layout is fixed, not flexible like Elite was. Plus their ThinkOrSwim platform makes simple ordering very clunky and cumbersome. Even worse, those SAME FIGURES have been COMPLETELY DIFFERENT depending upon whether you access/print them through Chrome or through Firefox (when printed within a couple minutes of each other at around 11pm or so). But the NEGATIVES are AWFUL! Their accounting is so terrible that their process to determine the simplest Cash/Money market balances are so unrecognizable that there are at least two separate, distinctly different figures depending upon which tab you're looking at (i.e., positions vs History and Statements vs Balances). ONLY positives are: 1) they are honoring Scottrade's standard $17 Mutual fund fees (for those funds are not ntf), instead of charging their usual $49 for those and 2) they have quite a few more NTF for ETF's and MFs than Scottrade. I am one of those who had Scottrade when TDA bought them out. Are there any brokerages that have easy to use trading platform similar to the old Scottrade Elite? That platform was my only favorite thing about Scottrade.

Scottrade trading platform