Exchange traded funds have been touted for lower fees, especially in comparison to traditional index funds. The ongoing fee war between ETF providers and mutual funds has taken a turn, as index fund providers have fought back with Fidelity Investments leading the charge.
Fidelity has announced that they are cutting fees on 22 of its mutual funds, including the Spartan series, and will lower the minimum investment requirement to invest in the share classes, reports Christopher Condon for Bloomberg. Most minimum investments begin around $100,000, but will allow beginning balances as low as $10,000, reports Dan Caplinger for The Motley Fool.
“These latest moves are another example of our commitment to providing workplace retirement plan sponsors and individual investors access to a wide-array of high-quality index funds at some of the most competitive pricing in the industry,” J.S. Wynant, Fidelity’s executive vice president for product management and research, said. [ETF ‘Fee-War’ Spills Over to Index Funds]
The Spartan 500 Index Fund is the fifth-largest mutual fund in the U.S. with $48.5 billion in assets under management. Fidelity’s $16.2 billion Spartan U.S. Bond Index Fund is the fourth-biggest U.S. index fixed-income mutual fund.