More and more brokers are increasing their fees for inactive accounts and small accounts.
The crazy fee I've seen at one particular broker...a $12.50 fee for any deposit less than $10,000 regardless if its via wire transfer, check or cash.
I saw another broker say "there may be an additional fee associated with large deposits". Yet, they didn't say specifically what is a "large deposit". Simply, the overall declining trading activity amongst retail traders are starting to push many brokers into behaving like BANKS with these silly new types of fees and increasing fees for normal (traditional) services.
It's starting to feel like these guys are going back to the days of the "full service brokers" that prevented many small traders from even opening a trading account.
Within the next few years, I expect to see additional fees for the following if there's no overall improvement in the volume of traders:
1) Fee for
not subscribing (paying) to their charting program.
2) Fee for installing their trading platform on more than one computer.
3) Fee for trading different trading instruments in the same day on the same exchange. For example, trading Emini ES and Emini NQ in the same trading day.