I always see posts about people choosing Vanguard over iShares, but iShares tend sometimes to have less TER and more shares and participations.

Why is this, it is because they are more ethical? Because they repeat without thinking or because they simply choosed it in the past and now they are convinced are better than the other companies?

EDIT: For example, how it is possible that IE00B4L5Y983 (iShares Core MSCI World UCITS ETF USD (Acc)) has more "things" and lower ther than IE00BK5BQT80 (Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS ETF (USD) Accumulating))?

Thank you anyway!

European investor here. Buying Eur. acc SP500 index ETF. Options end up being either iShares(SXR8) or Vanguard(VUAA) The 2 main differences I can notíce are:

1. the overall asset value. The iShares(SXR8) is already 61B and the Vanguard (VUAA) is "only" 7,28B.

2. If buying by volume and not fractional, naturally the SXR8 individual volume is way way costlier.

Besides that I can't find any significant difference between them. Which begs the question:

• should I only choose 1 of them or both ?

I see a lot of people on here flogging VOO and VDY and the likes, a few talk about the iShares equivalents and even fewer about the bmo equivalents. What makes one better than the other? What’s safest? Not specific funds but more the providing companies.

I saw most of the people on this subreddit tend to choose IShares ETFs instead of the Vanguard ones. I tried to find out what's the reason behind it and might be related to the fact they are Ireland based and they don't charge foreign investor withholding tax but I'm not 100% sure if I should stick to Vanguard or switch to IShares.

Vanguard seems to have a smaller TER though: for example IShares MSCI 0.30% vs Vanguard Total World Market 0.10%

I also saw IShares has the ETF with the accumulating option (where dividends get re-invested instead of given to the investor), do you happen to know if Vanguard has a any similar option?

Considering the dividend tax in my country (Romania) is 5% and capital gains tax 10%, what ETFs would you recommend I should invest in for retirement (I can hold them up to 20-25 years)?

Also, I currently have an account with Drivewealth where I can buy US ETFs (currently 20k USD invested in US total market ETF and some tech ETFs) . US charges 10% of the dividends before giving them to the investor and then I suppose I have to declare them on my tax return every year to get charged 5% on top of that. Drivewealth charges 3$ for each transaction and 50$ withdrawal fee.

I have an account with ETFMatic (about 3k EUR invested in their stocks). They charge 0.48% under 50k invested and 0.29% over 50k.

I just opened an account with IB which as far as I understood charge 0 if you have funds over 100k with them. I plan to have more than 100k investments, do u think I should close DriveWealth and ETFMatic accounts and move everthing to IB and only invest in few ETFs?