Merrill Edge brokerage hidden fees for 2025. Merrill Edge trading fee for selling stock, option, mutual fund, inactivity cost, and maintenance charges.

Merrill Edge Commissions

Merrill Edge Hidden Fees

Merrill Edge has a mostly upfront pricing schedule that states in plain language what the broker charges for specific services. A few of the broker’s fees, however, may not be widely known. These include:

$19.95 for each transaction of a non-NTF mutual fund. This results in a round-trip cost of at least $40. Multiple sales and purchases of the same fund will increase the total trade cost. Other brokers have lower fees for fund trades. Firstrade, for example, charges a hard-to-beat $0 for each purchase or sale of a mutual fund.

$49.95 to transfer a full account to another firm. Not all brokers have such a charge. Fidelity and Vanguard customers, for example, pay nothing to move an account to another broker-dealer.

$24.95 for each outgoing wire.

$125 government security transfer fee. Merrill Edge and Merrill Lynch seem to be the only brokers to charge this fee.

$30 for voluntary security reorganizations. Some brokers charge less than this amount. Webull charges nothing for reorganizations.

2% for transactions in a foreign currency with a Merrill Edge Visa debit card. Fidelity customers pay just 1%, and Schwab imposes no surcharge at all.

No reimbursement of ATM fees. If you use your Merrill Edge Visa debit card at a non-Bank of America cash machine, you’ll probably see a small charge appear on your statement. If you had used a Charles Schwab debit card instead, the surcharge would have been reimbursed. Using Merrill’s debit card to make regular withdrawals at an ATM could really add up over time.

$5 for each paper statement. By default, all account documents at Merrill Edge are in electronic format. Paper statements are available, but the broker charges for each one that is mailed. Other brokers have more generous policies. Fidelity and Schwab, for instance, mail out statements at no charge for all clients. Charles Schwab offers free paper statements.

$3 for each trade confirmation. Hard-copy confirmations are free for all customers at Charles Schwab.

Regulatory Fees

One type of Merrill Edge hidden fee you will see on your statements is a regulatory fee. Each regulatory body governing the financial markets imposes a small fee on every trade. The most common fees come from the FINRA and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

FINRA’s Trading Activity Fee (TAF) is based on the type of security being traded and is only charged on the sell side of the transaction. For bonds, you will pay $0.00082; for options contracts, $0.00218; and for equity shares, $0.000130.

The SEC regulatory fee is currently set at $22.90 for every $1 million sold.

Another type of Merrill Edge hidden fee comes from the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC). The fee is called ORF and combines the exchange fees of several other exchanges, including AMEX, ARCA, CBOE, Gemini, and several others. The OCC charges investors for each purchase and sale of an options contract, and the current fee is $0.01815.

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