I have traditional brokerage accounts at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. They are both the kind where you pay a small annual fee as well as a commmision for each trade.
However most of my friends have fiduciary accounts where they pay an annual fee based on the total amount in the account but no commissions.
The rational for the fiduciary account is that the broker makes more when you make more so they are your advocate. However since I am not a frequent trader what I pay between an annual fee and commissions is a fraction of what I would be paying if I had to pay an annual fee that was a percentage of the amount in my account. So what would be the advantage of paying much more because the broker makes more if I make more.
Need more info, my guess is you’re not aggressively wealth building right now. I am 90% equities and still aggressive. Half of my stocks are with Fisher investments (fiduciary) and I self manage the other half, no day trading. I pay Fisher 1.25% annually on first million and 1% after that on the whole portfolio, paid quarterly.
I think it’s money well spent as it takes the emotion out of it, I have no control over what Fisher buys and sells. If I were more conservative and looking for an income portfolio, I’m not sure I’d use Fisher as the fee would eat into my income. A lot of this is luck but Fisher has me up 75% since late 2022. If I were flat or down, I may not be so keen on paying 1.25% on all that money. Hope this helps.