Vanguard expands commission-free trading to 1,800 ETFs

Ratching up the competition for investor dollars, Vanguard said it would offer commission-free online transactions for nearly 1,800 ETFs, up from the current 77. The commission-free ETFs include most of Vanguard's offerings, as well as ETFs from BlackRock, Schwab, and State Street Global Advisors. Commissions will continue to be charged on inverse and leveraged ETFs, Vanguard said in a release. Vanguard said it expects commission-free online transactions to be available in August. It said the program includes the majority of ETFs traded on major exchanges and "constitutes the largest suite of ETFs available to investors without commissions." ETFs have grown tremendously over the past 10 years, as a broader range of investors have increasingly gravitated to low-cost index strategies, according to Vanguard. Financial advisers have increasingly employed ETFs as low-cost, diversified building blocks on behalf of their clients and, more recently, retail investors are beginning to adopt ETFs as a preferred investment over actively managed mutual funds and individual securities, the company said.