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E*Trade commission
The commission is per trade, there is likely a different commission based on the type of security you're trading, stock, options, bonds, over the internet, on the phone, etc.  It's not likely that they charge an account maintenance fee, but without knowing what kind of account you have it's hard to say. What you may be referring to is a fund expense ratio.  Most (all...) mutual funds and exchange traded funds will charge some sort of expense costs to you, this is usually expressed as a percent of your holdings.  An index fund like Vanguard's S&P 500 index, ticker VOO, has a small 0.05% expense ratio. Most brokers will have a set of funds that you can trade with no commission, though there will still be an expense fee charged by the fund. Read over the E*Trade fee schedule carefully.