Is it advisable to sell and rebuy stocks if I don't want to incur transfer fees when changing brokerage?

Hi Anon,

It depends on the size of the portfolio and the number of positions that you are transferring.

Commission fees for selling/buying of equities usually depend on the number of shares or the total trade value of the shares. Meanwhile, the transfer of shares between brokers depends on the number of unique positions you are transferring, since the costs are usually given per ticker.

Selling and rebuying your shares only makes sense if the commission fees you incur in total are less than the transfer fees. So you would need to know the commission rates for your current and new broker as well as the position transfer fee for your current broker (most brokers don't charge you for incoming position transfers).

If your portfolio size is relatively small, then selling and rebuying is usually the better way to go about it (I did this).

Hope this helps & all the best!

Regards,

thefrugalstudent