Stock Talk - The Illusion of Free

It’s a golden age for investors. Never at any point in history has it been this cheap to get into investing. Management fees and trading commissions have been falling over the past 20 years, thanks mostly to technology which have improved speed and efficiencies of transactions. In the last year or so, the competition over lower fees has been quite intense with ETF companies like Vanguard and Blackrock going back and forth lowering fees to almost zero. This has trickled down into traditional investment products like mutual funds which have lowered their fees, albeit less aggressively.  Well the race to the bottom in fees has reached a new level.

Free. As in nothing. Nada. Rien. 

It’s a great time to be an investor. Eliminating a focus on fees can allow more due diligence on the investment itself, however I’ve been wondering if these products and service offerings are really free and is free in the grand scheme of things a good thing for investors? In this episode I dive into the the illusion of free that the investment industry has been pushing on us.