My friend opened an IRA with NW Mutual and had purchased about 7k of a mutual fund with like 5.7% load. They charge like 50.00/year just to have an account open plus other fees. So i was looking at having him transfer to Scottrade which has no yearly fees or anything. He should be able to transfer this to Scottrade without having to sell the mutual fund right? He wont have to repurchase and pay the 5.7% load again? Through google research it seems he should be able to but i havent found a real definative answer. He's going to email scottrade and ask but i thought id see what the answer is. thanks.

The short answer is yes, he should be able to transfer without selling. There used to be problems with some funds as certain brokers had sole rights to buy/sell/hold them, but I think that is a thing of the past.