Institution guide

Fidelity

The easiest place to start: no minimums, index funds at 0.015%, and service that people actually praise. It also offers genuinely zero-fee funds — which come with a catch worth understanding before you use them.

No minimums Fractional shares Blended ~0.03%

U.S. stocks International Bonds

An example 60/20/20 mix. Choose your own →

The funds

Verify before you buy. Expense ratios and index methodologies change, and the figures on this page were compiled in early 2026. Every fund name below links to the provider's own page — check the current number there. A tenth of a basis point will not change your life, but a fund quietly changing what it tracks might.

The standard build — portable, transferable, boring in the best way
Sleeve	Fund	Index tracked	Expense
U.S. stocks	FSKAX Total Market Index	Dow Jones U.S. Total Stock Market	0.015%
International	FTIHX Total International Index	MSCI ACWI ex USA IMI	0.06%
Bonds	FXNAX U.S. Bond Index	Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond	0.025%

The ZERO funds — no expense ratio at all, and one significant string attached
Sleeve	Fund	Index tracked	Expense
U.S. stocks	FZROX ZERO Total Market Index	Fidelity's own in-house index	0.00%
International	FZILX ZERO International Index	Fidelity's own in-house index	0.00%
Bonds	No ZERO bond fund exists — use FXNAX for this sleeve either way.		0.025%

The ZERO fund trade-off, stated plainly

The zero expense ratio is real — Fidelity is not hiding a fee somewhere. It is a loss leader, designed to bring assets onto the platform. The cost to you is not money; it is optionality.

ZERO funds cannot leave Fidelity. They are proprietary and no other brokerage will accept them in a transfer. To move your account elsewhere you must sell first. In an IRA or 401(k) that is a non-event. In a taxable account it is a forced capital gains realisation on your own schedule — or rather, not on your own schedule. After twenty years of growth, that bill can be substantial.

FZILX is not a total international fund. It tracks a Fidelity index of large- and mid-cap companies, omitting international small caps entirely. FTIHX tracks MSCI ACWI ex USA IMI, where the "IMI" means small caps are included. That is a real difference in what you own, worth more than the 0.06% you save.

The in-house indexes are unaudited by a third party. Fidelity constructs and maintains them itself. In practice they have tracked the mainstream benchmarks closely, but there is no external index provider holding the methodology stable.

A reasonable rule: ZERO funds are fine inside an IRA or 401(k), where selling costs nothing and portability does not matter. In a taxable account, pay the 0.015% and use FSKAX and FTIHX. The lock-in is not worth fifteen dollars a year on a hundred thousand.

What Fidelity does well

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No minimums anywhere

You can start with any amount. Their index mutual funds accept fractional dollars, so every cent of a recurring transfer gets invested.

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Automatic investing that actually works

Set a recurring buy in exact dollar amounts across all three funds. This is the closest thing to a set-and-forget three-fund portfolio outside a target-date fund.

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Service and tooling

Phone support answers, branches exist, and the site is not a relic. Unglamorous, but you will spend more time with the interface than with the funds.

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Cash management

Uninvested cash defaults into a money market fund earning a market rate rather than a token bank rate — a quiet advantage over some competitors.

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