A gone-fishing portfolio has a limited number of investments with a balanced asset allocation that should do well with dampened volatility. Its primary appeal is simplicity, but a secondary virtue is that it avoids the worst mistakes of the financial services industry.

In the past, we have made several custodian-specific portfolios in order to take advantage of each custodian’s specific no-transaction-fee list. However late in 2019, several custodians switched to have no transaction fees for exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Schwab

Schwab was the first custodian to announce a switch to no transaction fee for any online ETF purchase. They now advertise “$0 commissions for online trades.” You can read more about this on their pricing page here .

Because all ETFs are now no-transaction-fee ETFs at Schwab, we would recommend that you use our standard Marotta’s 2020 Gone-Fishing Portfolio Calculator for accounts hosted at Schwab.

Fidelity

Fidelity now advertises, “$0 per trade for all ETFs.” You can read more about this on their pricing page here .

Because all ETFs are now no-transaction-fee ETFs at Fidelity, we would recommend that you use our standard Marotta’s 2020 Gone-Fishing Portfolio Calculator for accounts hosted at Fidelity.

eTrade

eTrade now advertises, “Enjoy zero commission trades… Online stock, ETF, and options trades are now commission-free.” You can read more about this on their pricing page here .

Because all ETFs are now no-transaction-fee ETFs at eTrade, we would recommend that you use our standard Marotta’s 2020 Gone-Fishing Portfolio Calculator for accounts hosted at eTrade.

TD Ameritrade

TD Ameritrade had two major announcements this past year. First, they announced “now commission-free” and then they announced that they were bought by Charles Schwab. You can read more about their transaction fees on their pricing page here and you can read more about the acquisition on Schwab’s website here .

Because all ETFs are now no-transaction-fee ETFs at TD Ameritrade, we would recommend that you use our standard Marotta’s 2020 Gone-Fishing Portfolio Calculator for accounts hosted at TD Ameritrade.

Summary

Now that several custodians have no transaction fees for buying exchange-traded funds (Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, and more), our default portfolio can be used at many different custodians. This change also eliminates the need to substitute at various custodians alternate funds because we can’t find the fund we prefer to use for no transaction fee. This change also allows us to better diversity a very small amount of money into many different funds for no additional costs.

We still love to make custodian-specific portfolios which take into account which funds have no transaction fee at the particular custodian. If your custodian has transaction fees and you’d like us to create one for your custodian, you can send us your request through our Contact page.

Here are all of our gone-fishing portfolios so-far for 2020:

Marotta’s 2020 Gone-Fishing Portfolio Calculator

by David John Marotta on February 3, 2020 with No Comments

This gone-fishing portfolio is our default portfolio which can be used at any custodian.

Marotta’s 2020 Vanguard Gone-Fishing Portfolio Calculator

by David John Marotta on February 3, 2020 with No Comments

We recommend this gone fishing portfolio for accounts hosted at Vanguard.

You can read about the changes from last year in our article “An Overview of Marotta’s 2020 Gone-Fishing Portfolios.”

Photo by Clint Patterson on Unsplash