Vanguard Margin Rates

2019 current Vanguard margin rates: interest rates, fees, charged on trading account margin loans. Vanguard base lending rate (BLR), broker loan cost.

Current Vanguard Margin Rates

Debit Balance	Margin Rate
under $19,999	9.75%
$20,000 – $49,999	9.25%
$50,000 – $99,999	8.75%
$100,000–$249,999	8.25%
$250,000–$499,999	8.00%
$500,000–$999,999	6.50%
above $1,000,000	6.00%

Vanguard base lending rate on margin trading account is 7.00%.

Lowest Margin Rates

Broker	$0 - $4,999	$5,000 - $9,999	$10,000 - $24,999	$25,000 - $49,999	$50,000 - $99,999	$100,000 - $249,999	$250,000 - $499,999	$500,000 - $999,999	above $1,000,000
M1 Finance	4.25%	4.25%	4.25%	4.25%	4.25%	4.25%	4.25%	4.25%	4.25%
ZacksTrade	5.90%	5.90%	5.90%	5.90%	5.90%	5.40%	5.40%	5.40%	5.40%
TastyWorks	8.00%	8.00%	8.00%	7.50%	7.00%	6.50%	6.00%	5.50%	5.00%

Online Brokers Margin Rates

See Broker Margin Rates Comparison

Vanguard Review

Read full Vanguard Review »

The Vanguard Group offers a broad suite of financial services to the individual investor, including many options for investing inside of an Individual Retirement Account (IRA). As you may be aware, there are different types of IRA accounts available, including the traditional IRA, the Roth IRA, and others. Vanguard’s site provides a tremendous amount of information at many levels of complexity, catering to novices as well as the most sophisticated investors. This will enable you to select the right IRA structure for your financial situation, or even open multiple IRAs with Vanguard to give you added flexibility.

Once you have opened your IRA, you have automatic access to any of Vanguard’s mutual fund offerings. If you also open a linked Vanguard Brokerage Services account (no fee for this), you will have access to practically any type of financial instrument available through Vanguard.

In general, investing with Vanguard mutual funds is widely regarded as an excellent option for individuals with long-term investment goals because of their lower-than-average expense ratios. The mutual funds available to IRA holders are typically among the cheapest in the industry. Vanguard attributes the reduced cost of investment to the fact that they are “client-owned,” claiming that because their financial goals are aligned with the customer they are uniquely motivated to keep fees and expenses as low as possible. Brokerage clients additionally have access to Vanguard ETFs, which are very cheap to invest in, and other non-Vanguard products, which are decidedly NOT cheap to invest in. The bottom line is that IRA investing in Vanguard-owned mutual funds and ETFs is among the least expensive long-term investment options available.

It should be pointed out that the commitment to low-cost investing does not seem to apply to the purchase of financial instruments outside of Vanguard’s offerings. Investing outside the Vanguard family is probably not advisable for most IRA holders, as the transaction fees can be quite substantial. So, as long as you stay with Vanguard products, your costs will be low. For this reason, one strategy is to set up an IRA or other long-term investment account with Vanguard, but to do your single-stock and other short-term investing elsewhere. This will allow you to take full advantage of the Vanguard’s lowest-cost offerings while avoiding the more expensive Vanguard services.

Can I buy Vanguard funds through Scottrade?

Great news! Vanguard’s funds are all available to purchase through Scottrade. Scottrade offers a huge number of domestic ETFs and Mutual Funds, so it’s not extremely surprising that a juggernaut like Vanguard would be included in their offerings. The screenshot above shows Vanguard’s popular VTSAX fund.

The bad news: It’s a little more complicated than just buying the fund. Even though Scottrade allows its customers to purchase Vanguard mutual funds, the funds are a “transaction fee” mutual fund. This means that Scottrade will charge a $17 fee each time a customer orders a fund with the “transaction fee” designation. A normal purchase of an ETF or individual stock at Scottrade costs only $6.95. It should also be noted that there is a (very manageable) $100 minimum for this particular fund.

Vanguard Margin Rates