Online broker E*Trade cuts stock trading commissions in the US to zero, joining rivals like TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, and Interactive Brokers Group
Annie Massa / Bloomberg :
Context & Ripple Effects
E*Trade was the last of the big US discount brokers still charging per-trade commissions, so this move completes a price war that TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, and Interactive Brokers had already joined. The timing matters: within months of going to zero, E*Trade stopped being an independent broker at all, when Morgan Stanley agreed to buy it for about $13B — the largest American bank takeover since the financial crisis.
First-order effects
- US retail investors can trade stocks on E*Trade with no commission, removing the last major price difference between it and its three named rivals.
- E*Trade gives up a direct fee line overnight, forcing it to lean entirely on other revenue — interest on client cash, margin lending, and order-routing payments — to replace it.
Second-order effects
- With trading free across all four brokers, differentiation shifts from price to balance-sheet heft, which is precisely the dimension on which Morgan Stanley's $13B acquisition competed E*Trade away from standalone survival.
- Zero-commission equities become the template other asset classes copy: FTX.US later launches a zero-commission stock feature (FTX Stocks) to pull retail flow into crypto apps, and by 2026 Morgan Stanley is running an E*Trade crypto pilot priced below Coinbase, Robinhood, and Schwab.
Third-order effects
- The brokerage stops being a product and becomes a distribution channel: once commissions are zero, the valuable asset is the customer relationship, which banks and crypto platforms acquire outright rather than build — a pattern running from Morgan Stanley–E*Trade through eToro's $231M deal for TradeZero.
- Retail pricing converges toward zero across asset classes, pushing brokers' economics toward spread capture, float income, and paid premium tiers, and leaving regulators the question of who really pays for 'free' trading.
The trend: Zero-commission trading is turning US brokerages from fee businesses into acquisition targets and multi-asset distribution platforms owned by banks and crypto firms.