You don’t need to be told that we’re living in unprecedented times. From sharp GDP growth to record inflation rates, we’re living in an economy that is expanding and changing rapidly.

If you’ve been following the bond market at all, you know that the Treasury Department made a shocking announcement about I bonds in November of this year.

Here, we’re going to answer questions you may have about I bonds from what they are to how to buy them.

Let’s dig in.

What Are I Bonds?

Series I savings bonds or I bonds are government-issued debt securities that accrue interest at a rate adjusted for inflation twice a year. Rather than having a single interest rate used to determine your return, I bonds have two: an inflation rate that changes every six months with the economy and a fixed rate that will not change throughout the entire life of the bond. These rates combine to give you a composite rate.

On November 1st of this year, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that I bonds will earn a variable rate of 9.62% for the next six months.

This new rate will apply to all new I bonds issued in the next six months before it is adjusted again at the beginning of May, at which time the variable rate may increase or decrease.

These bonds are considered to be incredibly safe investments because there is no risk of value depreciation. Interest accrues and compounds semiannually (every six months) for up to 30 years or until cashed out. Earnings are automatically deposited back into the bond. I bonds do not require high minimum purchases and offer tax advantages and protection against inflation.

Current Rates

The variable semiannual inflation rate for I bonds is 9.62% and the fixed rate is 0.00% (which has been the case for the past several years). This makes the composite rate 9.62%, the highest rate we’ve seen since 1998 and the second-highest rate on record.

All new bonds issued between now and October 2022 and existing bonds less than 30 years old will earn 9.62% interest. This rate is unheard of for I bonds and interest-earning deposit accounts.

As of May 2022, the national average rate for an interest-bearing savings account is 0.06% and for a 1-year CD is 0.17% APY according to recent FDIC data. At the top digital banks, the best you’ll get on a 1-year CD is about 1.25% APY (currently held by Bask Bank).

As you might expect, there is no way to tell for sure what the inflation rate will be six months or a year from now. May 2022 may bring a much lower earnings rate depending on inflation, which is expected to slow in the next six months.

Who Are I Bonds for?

If you are looking for somewhere safe to park your cash, these bonds may be for you. Many financial advisors and investment experts are recommending these securities to help hedge against inflation. If you can afford to lock some money up for at least five years (to avoid the early withdrawal penalty), an I bond is a good way to guarantee a small return.

Series I savings bonds tend to be best for investors seeking low-risk investments, but they shouldn’t be your only investment. They are good for medium- or high-net-worth individuals who want to diversify their portfolio and lower net worth individuals who want to secure a small portion of their wealth after maxing out contributions to a retirement account.

You are eligible to purchase an I bond if you meet one of the following requirements:

• You are a United States citizen living in the country or abroad
• You are a United States permanent resident
• You are a civilian employed by the United States anywhere in the world

Children under the age of 18 may qualify to own an I bond if purchased on their behalf by an adult. Parents and adult custodians can open a TreasuryDirect account for a child and use that to purchase I bonds, making the child become the bond’s beneficiary.

It is common for I bonds to be used to help pay for education and retirement or gifted to younger individuals. Using I bonds to pay for education comes with tax benefits. Any bonds you purchase for yourself count toward your own annual purchase limit but bonds purchased as a gift do not. When you buy a bond as a gift for someone else, it counts toward their limit.

There are electronic and paper bonds. Electronic bonds are available in penny increments of $25 or more and paper bonds are available in denominations of $50, $100, $200, $500, and $1,000.

Advantages

The main advantage of I bonds over other investment vehicles is that they freeze your money and thus protect it from losing value due to inflation for as long as it is still earning interest.

I bonds are also one of the most secure investments you can make. The U.S. Treasury has never defaulted on bonds before, so there is virtually no risk of bond holders losing their principal.

Another pro is that you do not have to pay state and local taxes on interest and you can avoid federal taxes too. There are no fees associated with purchasing or cashing out I bonds.

I bonds are an ideal method for saving for education. In fact, many people consider them to be good alternatives to 529 savings plans.

I Bonds vs. EE Bonds and Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities

Another type of bond you can purchase from the U.S. Treasury is a Series EE savings bond or EE bond. EE bonds share many similarities with I bonds: they mature after 30 years, are sold at face value, and earn interest monthly.

The biggest difference between EE bonds and I bonds is that EE bonds earn a fixed interest rate and I bonds earn a variable interest rate that is dependent on inflation. EE bonds guarantee a return equal to double your principal investment after 20 years (adjusted if needed by the Treasury Department), but I bonds offer no earnings guarantees.

Which Treasury bond is best depends on the market. If inflation rates are high or expected to increase, I bonds will likely end up earning more interest over their lifetime. But if inflation rates are fairly low, EE bonds will likely earn more interest. Given how much inflation has increased this year, I bond holders are coming out on top.

Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities or TIPS are also similar to I bonds. TIPS are designed to hedge against inflation as well, but they differ from I bonds in several important ways.

First, TIPS are riskier because the principal is adjusted for inflation and deflation. You lose principal if the U.S. economy goes into a deflationary period and gain principal if the U.S. economy goes into an inflationary period. TIPS are available in terms of 5, 10, and 30 years and purchased at auction rather than at face value. You can purchase between $100 and $5 million. Rates for TIPS change and you must visit a Treasury auction to bid.

Rather than earning interest monthly, TIPS earn interest just twice a year at a fixed rate. Interest is paid on the adjusted principal until the account reaches maturity. Unlike I bonds, you can sell TIPS before they mature. TIPS and their interest are exempt from state and local tax but subject to federal tax.

Considerations

There are a few important considerations to keep in mind when purchasing I bonds

The first is that I bonds have a low minimum purchase requirement. You can open an electronic I bond with as little as $25 and a paper I bond with as little as $50 (note that you can no longer purchase paper bonds at banks).

You can purchase up to $10,000 in electronic I bonds per calendar year and up to $5,000 in paper bonds. If you purchase an I bond as a gift, that amount will not count toward your annual purchase limit. Instead, it will count toward the recipient’s limit, and they will also be the one who is responsible for paying taxes on it.

Series I savings bonds are issued at cash value. Your bond will never be worth less than you paid for it and it is not possible to lose money on this investment. (There is no guarantee that you will earn money, but you will not lose any.)

If you decide to cash in your I bond before it matures, you may do so without incurring a penalty if you wait five years to do so. If you choose to cash out within five years of opening the bond, you will pay an early withdrawal penalty equal to the last three months’ interest. You can keep your bond open for as long as you like, but it will not continue to earn interest after 30 years. You must keep your bond for a minimum of one year, at which time it becomes liquid.

I bonds themselves are tax-exempt but the interest you earn is subject to federal income tax. You may enjoy additional tax benefits if you use your bond to finance education under the Education Savings Bond Program.

How to Buy I Bonds

Ready to join the wave of people purchasing I bonds for the first time at this incredible rate?

First, decide whether you will purchase an electronic or paper bond.

To purchase an electronic bond, visit the U.S. Treasury website at TreasuryDirect.gov.

You will need to create a TreasuryDirect account using your tax identification number and an email address.

At this time, you will link a bank account and personalize your profile. From your account, navigate to the bonds purchasing page and enter the amount you would like to purchase. Register the I bond in the name of its intended recipient (if you are purchasing for someone other than yourself, provide their information).

To purchase a paper bond, you will need to use your IRS tax refund. This is the only way to purchase paper I bonds. You will use Form 8888 to allocate your refund to be used for the purchase of a U.S. Treasury bond and specify that you want an I bond. You used to be able to purchase paper I bonds at banks and credit unions, but this is no longer possible.

You can purchase up to $10,000 in electronic I bonds per year and use your tax refund to purchase up to $5,000 worth of government I bonds per year. These limits can be combined for a total of $15,000 in I bonds.

How to Cash Out

When you’re ready to cash out your electronic I bond, visit the TreasuryDirect site again and navigate to the ManageDirect page. From there, link the bank account you would like to send the funds to and transfer the money.

To cash out your paper I bond, visit a bank or credit union and present your bond and identity verification documents.

Final Thoughts

While you won’t get rich from an I bond alone, this investment is a sound one, especially at the current earnings rate. We recommend I bonds to anyone looking for a safe investment to add to their portfolio. This type of security is ideal for conservative investors, not aggressive investors looking for an opportunity to grow their wealth dramatically. You do not risk losing your investment when you purchase an I bond.

The more you can afford to spend at the current earnings rate of 9.62%, the better, but any amount will likely be a worthwhile investment. When the bond turns liquid after a year, you’ll probably end up with more cash than you would have with another deposit account if you choose to cash out.

Founded in 1971 in San Francisco, California, Charles Schwab is the largest publicly traded investment services firm in the world with over $7.8 in total assets. There are an estimated 33.6 million clients with this brokerage across the world.

Are you interested in becoming a wealth management customer with Schwab? In this article, we’re going to go over everything you need to know about Charles Schwab Private Client and Wealth Management to help you decide if this firm can help you meet your long-term financial goals–and if it’s worth the fees.

What Is It?

Schwab Wealth Management is a subsidiary of financial services company Charles Schwab. This firm offers investment advising and portfolio management services to help you create a wealth management strategy at any stage of your life. 

Wealth management is available through Charles Schwab Private Client. This is a relationship package that connects you with a dedicated Private Client Advisor as well as a Financial Consultant. 

Your Financial Consultant will point you in the right direction when you have questions and serve as an intermediary between you and the brokerage firm. Your Private Client Advisor will help you manage your portfolio and provide ongoing investment guidance.

You must pay to be a Private Client and meet the requirements to qualify. See the next section for details.

How to Become a Private Client + Fees

To become a Private Client, you must have at least $1 million to invest when enrolling. If you already have a Financial Consultant with Charles Schwab, ask them about becoming a Private Client.

There is a fee for being a Private Client. The annual asset-based fee is 0.8% to start but decreases as your investment balance increases. Take a look at the fee tiers below:

• For the first $1 million in billable assets, you will pay a fee equal to 0.80% of your portfolio.
• For the next $1 million in billable assets (between $1 and $2 million), you will pay a fee equal to 0.75% of your portfolio.
• For the next $3 million in billable assets (between $2 and $5 million), you will pay a fee equal to 0.70% of your portfolio.
• For all assets in excess of $5 million, you will pay a fee equal to 0.30% of your portfolio.

There are no fees for making withdrawals, individual fees for consulting and advising services, internal transfer fees, or direct deposit fees. You will pay the same investing fees as anyone else investing with Charles Schwab.

All Private Clients receive the same level of wealth management features and benefits outlined in this article.

Who Is It For?

Private Client wealth management from Charles Schwab is designed for high-net-worth individuals. This is not a low-cost service, so it is not recommended for beginners or those just starting out with investing. 

To make the most of membership with this firm, you should already have at least some clear goals for your retirement, investments, and personal wealth. While you will collaborate with your Private Client Advisor to create a personalized strategy, you will benefit from their expertise most if you have specific questions about what investments you should be making.

You also must have at least $1 million to invest, which will be a significant barrier for most. And the more you invest, the lower your fees, so those with more than $1 million to invest will save significantly.

Schwab Wealth Management services can be especially beneficial for those with complicated financial situations or goals. With ongoing advising and tracking, you will have the support you need to make your strategy a reality no matter what changes may occur.

Features and Benefits

As a Charles Schwab Private Client, you receive comprehensive wealth management services that include the following: 

• Investment planning
• Retirement planning
• Tax planning
• Estate planning
• Risk management and insurance
• Banking and credit management
• Education and family support

All of the advice and guidance you receive as a Schwab Private Client is completely personalized to your situation and goals. 

Working with Schwab as a Private Client is an “ongoing collaboration, with you in control” that focuses on a wealth management strategy, an experienced team, and a personalized approach. Let’s dig into each of these aspects.

Wealth Management Strategy

You will work with your Private Client Advisor to develop a wealth management strategy that is goal-oriented, diversified, and disciplined. You will discuss the specific goals that you have now and in the future as well as needs that can be met through investing, whether that’s growing your personal wealth, planning for your retirement, or something else. 

You will have access to a wide range of investments through Schwab Private Client Investment Advisory, from stocks and bonds to ETFs and mutual funds. Advanced trading like options and futures trading is also available. Your Advisor will help recommend investments to you based on your income, risk tolerance, etc. 

On an as-needed basis (when you contact your Advisor), your portfolio’s performance will be reviewed to ensure that you are on track to meet your short- and long-term goals. Your Advisor will help you make adjustments as needed.

Experienced Team

All Schwab Private Client Advisors and Financial Consultants are experts in their field and highly qualified. Each Private Client has one of each kind of wealth specialist on their team. Your Financial Consultant will serve as a coordinator between you and your Private Client Advisor and you and the brokerage firm as a whole. Your Private Client Advisor will provide the following services:

• Portfolio evaluation and investment recommendations
• Assessment of your wealth management needs
• Progress monitoring for your wealth management strategy and adjustments

Your Advisor is an expert on topics including risk management, asset protection and hedging strategies, executive compensation, business succession, charitable giving, fixed income, liquidity needs, and more. You can contact your wealth specialists whenever you have a question or concern. Note that only Schwab Private Clients receive dedicated advising from an Advisor of their own.

Personalized Approach

The final component of Private Client wealth management is a personal approach to your strategy that includes conversations with your team of wealth specialists, collaboration between you and your team, execution of the strategy you agree on, and evaluation of your portfolio’s success on an ongoing basis. 

If at any point your needs change or you feel your strategy needs to be reassessed, your Private Client Advisor will review your situation with you to help you strategize and update your portfolio and financial plan. Every investment strategy is completely unique to the individual Private Client.

All of these services are included under the cost of being a Private Client. For example, you will not be charged a separate fee when you meet with your Financial Consultant or Private Client Advisor.

Pros and Cons

Pros

✅ Easy to use. The platform is comprehensive and fairly easy to use, making it a great choice for beginners and intermediate investors alike. Advisors are plenty knowledgeable and some of the best you could ask for, and this brokerage has a reputation for delivering quality recommendations and results overall.

✅ Many choices. With Schwab, you have a lot of choices when it comes to how you invest your wealth. Charles Schwab offers a robust suite of products to trade and tools you can use to make informed decisions about them, so you won’t really feel like you’re missing out on much if you go with this brokerage. Cryptocurrency options could be better but this shouldn’t hold you back much.

✅ Highly personalized. Private Client is a highly personalized wealth management service. You will not receive generic advice from anyone on your financial team. And with a dedicated Financial Consultant and Private Client Advisor, you will enjoy above-average customer service and have multiple options for getting help in a timely manner when you need it.

Cons

🛑 Fees. The fees for Charles Schwab Private Client are actually right around average for wealth management firms, but it’s still a lot to pay. Not only is the flat fee for Private Client services high, but trading fees for activities such as options trading and margin trading are rather high as well.

🛑 No automatic rebalancing. Your portfolio won’t be automatically rebalanced when the market is especially volatile. This is something that other brokerages might do for you. 

🛑 Your advisor won’t invest for you. Any time you want to update your portfolio or have a question about your strategy, you need to contact your Private Client Advisor yourself. They will provide recommendations but won’t invest for you. If you don’t know what questions to ask your advisor, you might struggle to make the most of this service. While it’s nice to have the option to reach out, you might be looking for something less involved.

Is It Worth It?

Whether or not the price of Charles Schwab Private Client wealth management is worth it for you really comes down to how you plan to use these services.

While you can find a wealth management account with lower fees, this is one of the most comprehensive products out there. If you have big investing goals, a complicated financial situation, or just a lot of money to manage, this service is going to be far more worth it than if you were just starting to invest and hadn’t thought about your long-term goals much.

You can probably find a service that will let you keep a larger percentage of your returns, but if you value customer service and personalized financial guidance, Schwab Private Client can provide these things. To really maximize the service, you should definitely contact your Private Client Advisor and Financial Consultant regularly with questions and use the resources available to you. 

Schwab also offers a satisfaction guarantee. If you’re not completely satisfied with your experience as a Private Client, you may qualify for a full refund of all eligible fees as long as you make your request within 90 days of paying the fee. For Schwab Private Clients, this includes your program or advisory fee. You can contact your Financial Consultant with any concerns or to request a refund. Trade fees do not qualify for a refund.

If you’re looking for a more affordable alternative, you might consider a robo-advisor. Robo-advisors use automated investing algorithms to choose and execute investments for you based on your profile. Because they are primarily digital, they are able to charge much lower fees than traditional wealth management and advising firms. This is also more hands-off for you, the investor, as the robo-advisor will do almost everything for you.

Related: Compare this to Citi Personal Wealth Management to see which one may be right for you.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Charles Schwab Private Client and wealth management is not a bad option for you if you meet the specific criteria for making the high fees worth it. It is a comprehensive service with many beneficial features for experienced investors with short- and long-term goals.

This service is not a good fit for the average investor but for high net-worth individuals who are more than happy to pay higher fees for more personalized advice and above-average customer service. Beginning investors may not benefit much from becoming Private Clients. If you’re looking for an option with lower fees, another brokerage or robo-advisory services could be better.

Commission-free stock trading is a relatively new phenomenon. The commission fees charged per trade by stock brokerages began rapidly declining in the last two decades of the 20^th century, but commission-free trading has only become widespread in the past couple of years.

Charles Schwab began the trend among major stockbrokers when it started offering commission-free trading in late 2019. Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, and E*Trade rapidly followed suit.

Brokerage firms have plenty of other sources of revenue besides stock trade commissions. Among the most common are the following:

• Investing and earning a return on money that’s sitting idle in trading accounts
• Providing investment advisory services
• Charging commissions on financial products other than stocks (e.g., futures)
• Various account fees, such as transfer fees or IRA management fees

In any event, commission-free stock trading has pretty much become the industry standard. Rather than commission rates, investors now focus their attention on the services and resources that a broker offers, such as its trading platform, charting tools, and research and educational resources.

In this article, we’ll take a look at the commission-free stock brokerage firms that offer the best trading platforms, trading apps, and overall resources and services on their websites. 

Top 12 Commission-Free Stock Trading Apps, Websites, and Platforms for 2022

Of course, the broker or trading app that’s best for you will depend on your personal investing needs and goals, the markets you trade (Just stocks? – Or futures? Forex? Cryptocurrency?), your trading strategy (Are you a day trader or a “buy and hold” investor?), and other factors, such as whether you do most of your trading on a computer or on your cell phone.

Note: There are two winners for best mobile-focused broker and best automatic investing app – just too difficult to choose one over the other in those two categories.

Best Commission-Free Stock Trading Platform – Thinkorswim

Thinkorswim is a stock trading platform offered by TD Ameritrade. It’s easily accessible – either online, with desktop software, or via mobile app – and is favored by many investors.

Thinkorswim’s long list of helpful features includes advanced stock screening, a wide range of up-to-the-minute market news and analysis resources, advanced charting and order customization, and live or demo (“paper”) trading. Users can enter trades across various financial markets, including assets such as stocks, options, futures, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and forex. Market news and analysis sources include Morningstar, the Federal Reserve Economic Database, and the Center for Financial Research and Analysis (CFRA).

The investor education and training resources that come with Thinkorswim are unparalleled. They include extensive tutorials on how to most effectively use the platform, daily live broadcasts and webinars, “social sentiment” data, hundreds of archived articles and videos, and community chat rooms where you can discuss specific trade ideas or trading strategies with other traders from around the world. TD Ameritrade also publishes thinkMoney, a quarterly magazine dedicated to investor education.

The all-in-one research, analysis, and trading capabilities available through Thinkorswim are the main reason that TD Ameritrade got the nod from stockbrokers.com as their #1 trading platform pick.

Thinkorswim is well-known for its outstanding research and analysis capabilities, such as its extremely advanced and customizable charting tools that enable users to:

• Access hundreds of trading strategies
• Get real-time price quotes, including Level II quotes
• Track specified chart patterns, and set price and/or chart pattern trading alerts
• Study and back test trading strategies
• Set up stock screens or automated trading strategies that use a combination of technical analysis and fundamental analysis indicators
• Create your own contingent trade orders – for example, you can enter an order to “buy 100 shares of American Express if it trades below $180 within the next 22 minutes”

Best Commission-Free Stock Trading Website – TradeStation

Two factors combine to put TradeStation virtually in a class by itself:

• TradeStation was designed by actual financial market traders; In contrast, most brokerage trading platforms and facilities are designed by software engineers who may or may not (likely not) be experts on the financial markets
• TradeStation was originally built and marketed as a trading software solution for professional institutional traders – Now, those tools and resources usually only available to such professional traders – like advanced screeners and the ability to easily create custom indicators – are now available to ordinary retail traders with TradeStation

Let’s get about the only negative with TradeStation out of the way right up front. TradeStation does offer commission-free trading of stocks, options, and ETFs – but it charges for trading just about any other financial asset. Mutual fund and bond traders get clipped for $14.95 per trade.

Let’s move ahead to the many TradeStation positives. First, investors can access virtually every financial market. Trading in stocks, options, ETFs, futures, forex, bonds, mutual funds, and cryptocurrencies is all readily available.

TS offers stellar research, news, and market analysis resources. The platform has its own market news network that enables clients to easily browse market news from multiple sources – Morningstar, Benzinga, etc. You can categorize your news feed to look at specific news areas, such as recent FDA decisions or news relevant to specific market sectors.

TradeStation also has its own YouTube channel, where clients can access videos on how to make the best use of every feature on the website. Live webinars, articles, and eBooks are all archived. In short, TS offers a university level education in financial trading.

TradeStation’s stock scanner can go toe-to-toe with high-end scanners that traders pay hundreds of dollars a year to access. You can choose from nearly 200 technical and fundamental analysis indicators to help you screen for the most promising trades throughout the day. Create watchlists, set up price alerts, and just wait for TS to notify you when a security has met your specified conditions for buying or selling.

The charting tools are just as advanced as the scanners. Charts can be customized from the shortest to the longest time frames, and overlaid with any of hundreds of indicators. In addition, the “EasyLanguage” feature enables traders to easily create their own indicators, without having to know any complex programming procedures.

TradeStation’s versatility reflects the fact that it’s a trading platform that was designed by traders, for traders. For instance, clients can place buy and sell orders from virtually anywhere within the website: from the order bar, from charts, from the “Market Depth” window – and by using tools such as customized hot keys or trading strategies with automated order execution.

Last, but certainly not least, TradeStation’s mobile app is one of the best in the business, providing nearly all the same advanced features as the desktop platform.

TradeStation Securities most recently won NerdWallet’s award as the “Best Online Broker for Stock Trading Platform and Research”. Stockbrokers.com recently recognized TS for having the “#1 Platform Technology” – for the 10^th year in a row. The platform’s vast capabilities make it suitable for even the most sophisticated traders, while the website’s comprehensive educational resources make TradeStation very friendly to even novice investors.

Best Commission-Free Stock Broker – Charles Schwab

It only makes sense that Charles Schwab makes our list of 12 best commission-free stock trading providers. It was Schwab that, as the first major “discount broker”, began drastically cutting broker commission fees.

In addition to offering commission-free stock and ETF trading, Schwab has a number of advantages that combine to make it an excellent all-round brokerage firm. There are too many Schwab advantage features to discuss them all in detail, so let’s just note them in a brief rundown:

• Tax-advantaged investing. If you’re in a high tax bracket, or otherwise focused on optimizing tax savings, Charles Schwab is looking out for you. It offers automatic tax-loss harvesting and suggests how to best structure your investments so as to minimize your tax liability.
• Excellent news, research, and education. Schwab’s investor education resources are among the best and most extensive offered anywhere. In addition to providing access to top market news sources such as Market Edge, Schwab issues its own stock “report cards”. Archived investor education tools include articles, videos, webinars, and Schwab’s “On Investing” newsletter.
• Broad market exposure. Investors can easily create a highly-diversified investment portfolio, thanks to the wide array of investment assets available to trade, including stocks – domestic and foreign, options, ETFs, mutual funds, fixed-income investments, commodity futures, and cryptocurrencies.
• Sophisticated trading platform. Whether you trade through Schwab’s downloadable “SmartEdge” trading software, the website, or the Schwab mobile trading app, you have access to a trading platform that’s very advanced, while also being intuitive and easy to use. Stock screeners let you choose from multiple filters or metrics to narrow down your search for great trading opportunities.
• Free Trade Advice. Schwab’s Trade & Probability Calculator will quickly calculate risk/reward factors on a trade or trading strategy for you.
• Account Choices. Charles Schwab offers regular individual investor accounts, joint accounts, retirement accounts (e.g., IRA), education/custodial savings accounts, checking/cash management accounts, and credit card accounts through a partnership with American Express.
• Automated Trading or Professional Advice. You can choose to utilize Schwab’s “Intelligent Portfolio” robo-advisor, or work one-on-one with a human financial advisor. In making trading decisions, you can opt in anywhere between totally independent trading and totally automated trading.

Best Mobile-Focused Stock Brokerage App #1 – Webull

Webull was purposely designed to appeal to cell phone traders – investors who prefer to do their trading via a mobile app.

What Webull offers that many mobile app competitors don’t have is a wide array of surprisingly sophisticated trading tools. Investors can access stock screeners, economic calendars, research agency stock ratings, level II market quotes, and choose from dozens of advanced technical indicators to apply to customizable charts.

Webull also stands out by offering investments beyond just stocks, options, and ETFs – such as individual retirement accounts (IRAs). Clients also have access to investing in nine cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin.

Low transaction costs are another plus for Webull. In addition to offering commission-free stock and ETF trading, Webull also offers option trading that is both commission-free and with no per-contract fees – a perk rarely found even among major brokerage firms.

2021 saw Webull garner a couple of notable awards:

• Crowned “Best Investment App” by Benzinga
• Rated “Top Broker for Fractional Shares” by stockbrokers.com

Webull has no minimum deposit requirement to open an account, and frequently offers a few free stock shares as an “open an account” bonus to new clients.

One area where Webull is somewhat lacking is investor education resources. However, that’s true of most mobile-focused stock trading apps.

Best Mobile-Focused Stock Brokerage App #2 – Robinhood

Founded in 2013, Robinhood was one of the first stock trading firms aimed at beginning investors who favor mobile trading. This “stripped down”, very easy-to-use trading platform has gotten hugely positive reviews from clients who just want the ability to trade stock and options quickly and easily. Robinhood’s two primary claims to fame are (1) commission-free trading, and (2) easy mobile application trading.

Robinhood has, from its beginning, placed a major focus on eliminating, or at least drastically reducing, transaction costs. Clients get commission-free trading of stocks, options, and ETFs (mutual fund investments are not offered). Like Webull, Robinhood also doesn’t charge any per-contract fees on option trades.

In keeping with its streamlined, no frills approach to investing, Robinhood only offers regular individual trading accounts. Tax-advantaged retirement accounts are not available.

Robinhood’s cryptocurrency market offerings are limited. However, unlike the majority of existing cryptocurrency exchanges that charge exorbitant trading fees (up to around 5% of trade value), Robinhood offers no-fee trading, just like with its stock and option trading.

Caution Note: Robinhood’s crypto trading is rather restricted in that you can only buy cryptocurrency with US dollars and only sell cryptocurrency for US dollars. That means you can’t send your cryptocurrency to an external account (such as a crypto wallet), nor transfer crypto you own from an outside source into your Robinhood account.

Robinhood has never touted itself as offering outstanding investor education, news, and market analysis resources. It does, however, offer links to daily market news, and has gradually built up a pretty good library of basic investing education articles, with topics such as “What is an Annuity?” or “What is the Dividend Payout Ratio?”.

When you open an account at Robinhood, you automatically get a cash management account that currently pays 0.30% APY and comes with a debit card. The account features no account minimum deposit or balance requirements, no overdraft fees, and no transfer transaction fees.

Robinhood “Gold” is a premium account option that, for a $5 monthly fee, enables investors to access margin trading. The Gold account option also gets investors access to advanced market data (such as Level II price quotes) and research reports on individual stocks.

Robinhood has experienced some significant bumps in the road. The trading platform has had more than its fair share of outages. The company had to pay a $57 million fine to FINRA to settle charges of misleading clients and violating options trading rules. And in November of 2021, Robinhood suffered a data breach that may have revealed clients’ personal information.

On the positive side, Robinhood’s customer service, previously something of a sore spot for the company, has been acknowledged as making major improvements in 2021.

Best for Automatic Investing – Acorns

Automatic investing apps are a recent innovation in the financial services world. They can be particularly helpful for beginning investors, investors with limited investment capital, and people who find it difficult to regularly save money to set aside for investing. Essentially, Acorns makes investing automatic and simple. That makes it an excellent tool for beginning investors.

Apps such as Acorns (and Stash – Acorns’ primary competitor) can be set to automatically draw from your bank account just a small amount of money every month to invest – as little as $3. It doesn’t require a conscious decision and action on your part every month to ensure growing an investment account for you.

Acorns “finds” money for you to invest by having you link one or more of your credit or debit cards to your Acorns account. When you make a purchase with a linked card, Acorns takes the “spare change” (rounding up your purchase amount to the next nearest dollar amount) and deposits it in your Acorns investment account. The program works better, thanks to the fact that you can purchase fractional shares of ETFs through Acorns.

Using an AI (artificial intelligence) driven robo-advisor software program, Acorns uses your investments to gradually put together a portfolio of ETF investments designed to match up with your financial goals and risk tolerance. Creating that investor profile to guide the creation of your investment portfolio is done simply by answering seven basic questions. (And if your financial goals or risk tolerance change – as they likely will over time – you can adjust your portfolio by editing your previous answers.)

Acorns has continually expanded its services since its inception in 2014. It currently offers four different account types:

• Acorns Invest – This is the basic personal investment account as described above
• Acorns Later – This is an individual retirement account (IRA) that Acorns offers. You can choose to set up a traditional IRA, a Roth IRA, or even a Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) IRA. You can contribute to a tax-advantaged IRA with recurring scheduled transfers from a bank account. An Acorns Later account uses the same investing methodology as the Acorns Invest account – the Acorns robo-advisor tailors investments, based on your investor profile.
• Acorns Checking – Acorns offers basic banking services, too, with a checking/debit card account.
• Acorns Early – Acorns Early account is an investment account you can set up for your minor children, under the Uniform Transfers to Minors Act (UTMA) or the Uniform Gifts to Minors Act (UGMA). UTMA/UGMA accounts offer an advantage over specialized education savings accounts such as a 529 plan. The funds in a UTMA/UGMA account can be used to benefit your child in any manner. They aren’t restricted to only being used for educational expenses. These accounts offer tax advantages: The first $2,200 of investment gains are only taxed at the minor child’s tax rate, typically much lower than the parents’ rate.

Acorns also offers a rewards program that adds money to your investment account in the form of “cash back” when you make purchases at certain retailers online through the Acorns “Earn” extension.

Best for Automatic Investing #2 – Stash

Stash is another automatic investing app, like Acorns, created with beginning investors in mind, or investors with only a small amount of investment capital. These automatic investing apps are also a good choice for investors who simply prefer a mostly “hands off”, “set it and forget it” approach to investing.

Stash was co-founded in 2015 (just one year behind Acorns) by former Wall Street executive, Brandon Krieg, who was previously a co-founder of Edge Trade, a pioneering trading software company. He and partner Eddie Robinson created Stash with the idea of making investing more readily accessible to the approximately 80% of the U.S. population who basically live paycheck-to-paycheck, have little or no savings, and fall into the category of “small retail investors”.

Stash offers automatic investing plans starting as low as $1 per month. You just set up your Stash account to automatically withdraw a specified amount of money each month from whatever bank account you designate to fund your “Auto-Stash” investing.

Stash will invest your money in individual stocks, ETFs, and/or cryptocurrency, using AI algorithms and your personal investor profile. The ability to get exposure to the cryptocurrency market is available with the Stash “Smart Portfolio” that comes with the $3/month Stash Growth Account or the $9/month Stash+ (“Stash Plus”) account.

Stash also offers clients a checking account (with no overdraft fees), through a partnership with Green Dot Bank (NYSE: GDOT). The checking account comes with Stash’ “Stock Back” debit card. Shop, using your Stash card, at retailers whose stock is listed on Stash – such as Amazon, Apple, or Starbucks.

A small percentage of whatever you spend (up to 5% of total purchase amount) will be used to buy you fractional shares of that company’s stock. (For example, the “cashback” you earn from buying coffee at Starbucks will get you a small piece of Starbucks’ stock. A nice extra is that you also get a percentage of cash back invested even when you shop with your Stock Back card at local or privately-held businesses. In those instances, Stash will use your cash back amount to invest in a stock or ETF that you choose.

Stash also offers retirement accounts in the form of traditional or Roth IRAs, and custodial accounts for children.

Both Stash and Acorns offer an extensive library of investor educational resources that can provide you with a solid basic education in personal finance and investing.

Best Multi-Asset Stock Trading Platform – Interactive Brokers

“Interactive” is a good name for this brokerage firm that offers exposure to the widest selection of investment assets. Traders with an Interactive Brokers account can execute low-cost trades in virtually every type of traded financial asset, including trading assets typically only accessible on foreign exchanges. Trading in stocks on foreign exchanges, such as the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, has become increasingly desirable with the rapid growth of China’s economy and the general increasing globalization of financial markets.

IB clients can trade on more than 130 exchanges, in more than 30 countries, and they can choose to fund their account in more than 20 currencies.

Investors can buy, sell, and manage investments in all of the following financial markets:

• Foreign and Domestic Stocks (including fractional shares)
• Options
• ETFs
• Mutual Funds
• Commodity Futures
• Precious Metals
• Forex
• Cryptocurrencies
• Bonds

In addition to offering direct trading access to many more financial markets than what’s available through most brokerage firms, IB offers notably low trading costs across the board. Clients can enjoy unlimited free trades on US-listed stocks and ETFs, and a paltry $0.005 per share on foreign stock trades. Maximum transaction costs are set at 1% of total trade value. IB also offers trading volume discounts that can lower your trading costs even more. Margin trading rates are also extremely low.

IB is almost in a class by itself in charging no annual account fees, no transfer fees, no account inactivity fees, and no account closing fees. That’s a rare combination of savings in financial services fees – even more rare among firms offering the broad market access that clients of IB enjoy.

IB’s desktop Trader Workstation is considered, by even the most demanding traders, one of the fastest and most reliable trading platforms. Features include the ability to create multiple screens, alerts, and watchlists, on a dashboard that you can also customize. The platform can handle executing complex, multi-trade option orders. The charting program enables clients to simultaneously compare up to five trading strategies.

Interactive Brokers is an excellent choice for traders that are:

• Searching for the lowest possible trading costs
• Wanting access to the broadest possible range of markets
• Executing complex trading strategies

It can be a bit confusing at first glance to navigate your way around the IB website, various areas of which are dedicated solely to institutional and proprietary trading. The trading platform has a learning curve that may be a bit steep initially, simply because it offers so many features.

Best Social Stock Investing App – Public

As a “social investing” app, Public is well-named. It aims to offer a “community investing” experience, with the stated goal of making it possible for any investor to own any stock, with an investment of any amount of money. Needless to say, Public offers trading in fractional shares. It’s an excellent choice for beginning investors who can only make investments in small increments. As, essentially, a social platform combined with a brokerage, Public – which has only been around since 2019 – is well placed to benefit from the growing trend of novice, small-time investors who believe there’s safety – or profit – in numbers. Investors can connect with other investors who have similar interests in various chat rooms and forums, and see what investments friends or other Public users are buying (or selling).

Since Public is specifically geared toward beginning investors, the app provides plenty of investor education material. Educational videos often feature respected business experts and market analysts. You can tailor your news and research sources to fit the kind of companies that you hold in your portfolio.

Investors can trade stocks or ETFs, commission-free. Through a partnership arrangement with Apex Crypto, clients of Public can also trade more than two dozen of the most widely-held cryptocurrencies.

One way to search for potential equity investments with Public is through checking out its “Themes” page. Public Themes are similar to market sectors, being composed of various companies that share certain characteristics. For example, one available Theme is “Women in Charge” – Click on it to bring up a list of more than 50 publicly-traded companies to choose from that have female CEOs. Other Themes include “Stay at Home” (shows work-at-home related companies), “Sports” companies, “Stocks with Crypto Exposure”, and “Payments” (payment processing companies, such as PayPal Holdings.

Public pays a generous amount of interest on money that’s sitting in your account, not currently invested. At last check, Public was offering a 2.5% yield when most banks were only paying  around 0.5%.

Best for Beginners – Fidelity

Fidelity Investments, founded in 1946, is one of the most well-known and well-respected financial services companies in the world. The Johnson family that founded the company still holds a 49% equity interest in the firm, and still has a family member – Abigail Johnson – at the helm as CEO.

With more than $5 trillion in assets under management (AUM), Fidelity has continually been a leader in the world of investing. It manages a large number of mutual funds and ETFs, began offering computerized trading as early as 1984, and was one of the first major financial services companies to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to offer a cryptocurrency ETF.

Fidelity has long had a reputation for being user-friendly for the average individual retail investor. It has always maintained a strong emphasis on providing excellent investor education resources, and it’s unlikely that you’ll find the wealth of educational material that it offers matched anywhere else.

Fidelity’s Learning Center can take you all the way from complete “newbie” to investing to being a legitimate expert investor. The vast library of educational resources it offers includes articles, videos (Fidelity, of course, has its own YouTube channel), podcasts, and complete investing courses. New material is added and archived every week. Fidelity currently produces more than 100 live webinars every month. You can even get AI-driven recommendations on what investor education materials would likely be the most helpful for you, as determined by your investing interests, the amount of capital you have to invest, your level of investing expertise, and your long-term financial goals.

In addition to offering a plethora of educational content, Fidelity goes the extra mile by making it as easy as possible for you to navigate your way through it all. Articles, classes, courses, videos, and webinars are all organized by category, content type, and investor experience level. Much of Fidelity’s existing educational content is already organized into a kind of investor education “roadmap”, complete with tools to track your learning progress.

Fidelity has garnered numerous awards and accolades for its “Youth Account”, an innovative brokerage account designed specifically for teenagers. The Youth Account even has its own learning center, with content tailored to young, novice investors. Fidelity’s Youth Account center is a great online spot to direct your high-school age children to if you want them to develop solid personal finance habits and learn their way around the world of investing.

Fidelity offers ongoing support with Grade A news and research resources, market analysis, and trade recommendations. Its 17 third-party stock research reports (and five more just for ETFs) is more than any other stock brokerage provides. “Fidelity Viewpoints”, the firm’s weekly investor newsletter, offers ongoing sector analysis, technical and fundamental analysis, trading strategies, and specific trade ideas.

You can generate your own trade ideas by using Fidelity’s top-of-the-line screeners for stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds. Scan for specified trade conditions throughout the trading day, using any combination you want of the dozens of technical and fundamental indicators provided.

Fidelity’s mobile trading app is noted for being both easy to use and for offering nearly all of the features included with the company’s award-winning desktop trading platform, Active Trader Pro. Fidelity’s name continues to pop up on lists of “Best Trading Platforms for Day Traders”, “Best Stock Trading Platforms for Trading Options”, or just “Best Trading Platforms”. And in case I forgot to mention it, there are no commission fees for trading stocks, options, or ETFs. (Mutual funds, however, carry a $49.95 trade fee.)

Best for Cryptocurrency Investors – eToro

Most of the major, traditional stock brokerage firms offer little, if any, exposure to the rapidly growing cryptocurrency market. eToro offers a solution, as it provides investors with access to approximately 50 of the most widely held cryptocurrencies (the list of available crypto coins is continually expanding – just a few months ago, the list only numbered a little over 20).

Stock trading, ETF trading, and cryptocurrency trading at eToro are all commission-free. eToro offers another bonus savings for stock traders: When you sell a stock, eToro pays the SEC and FINRA regulatory fees for you. eToro also offers the option to purchase fractional shares.

One current drawback with eToro is limited investment selection. You can choose from a little over 1,700 stocks, which ought to be enough to satisfy most investors. (There are about 6,000 stocks listed on the NYSE and NASDAQ exchanges combined.) eToro’s selection of equities provides adequate representation of all market sectors. But the selection of ETFs is rather limited at 221. That’s only about 10% of the total number of ETFs currently available on US exchanges. But, again, eToro does attempt to offer a broad enough range of ETFs to cover the market.

Are you anxious to trade cryptocurrencies, but far from being a crypto expert? Then you may want to check out eToro’s proprietary feature, CopyTrader™. CopyTrader enables you to view the cryptocurrency trades of approved traders and copy them in your own trading account in real-time. Best of all, there’s no cost for the CopyTrader service.

Rather than following an individual cryptocurrency trader, investors also have the option to choose from a handful of “Smart Portfolios”. These are ready-made portfolios that hold a bundle of crypto assets and that follow a specific cryptocurrency trading strategy.

What if you’re on the other side of the coin – a red hot, expert crypto trader? eToro will pay you to share your trades with other traders, through its “Popular Investor” Program. The more traders who copy your trades, and the more money they invest doing so, the more eToro pays you. Popular Investor compensation starts at $2 per copier and increases, as you gain more followers, to as high as 2% of AUC (assets under copy).

Your eToro News Feed, which you can customize to your interests, offers a channel for interacting with other members of the eToro community to discuss the financial markets, or share trading ideas and trading strategies. You can post updates, make comments, and share the posts of other eToro traders.

Neither eToro’s web trading platform, nor its mobile app, offer the level of advanced charting and screening features available with some of the other brokerage firms mentioned here. However, traders can set up personal watchlists and get trading alerts. Whatever the eToro trading apps may lack in advanced features, they make up for in ease of use. Both the web platform and the eToro mobile app operate very intuitively. Even novice traders can quickly become adept at navigating their way around the trading platform. eToro’s mobile trading app, in particular, has garnered lots of positive reviews for its simple, straightforward navigation setup.

Best “All-in-One” App – M1

“All-in-One” financial services firms are becoming increasingly popular. In the past, the traditional setup was to have your checking/savings account with a bank, your investment account(s) with a brokerage firm, and your credit card(s) through a credit card company. 

However, in recent years, more and more people are drawn to the idea of using an “all-in-one” financial hub – a single financial services company that provides everything: checking and/or savings accounts and debit cards, investment accounts, and credit cards and other loan services.

With nearly all personal financial business being conducted online, an all-in-one financial services website just simplifies your life. You can go to one website to manage all of your personal financial affairs. Transferring money from one type of account to another is much simpler than transferring money between two separate financial institutions – and usually instantaneous, rather than possibly having to wait up to five business days for a transfer to be credited.

M1 is among the most popular all-in-one personal finance companies. Offering commission-free trading in stocks and ETFs (including fractional shares trading), M1 gives investors a unique blend of investing automation and investor customization. With an M1 investment account, you create one or more investment portfolios that M1 refers to as “pies”.

M1 Pies

• You can create as many pies as you want
• Each pie can contain up to 100 different stocks and/or ETFs (each investment within a pie is referred to as a pie “slice”)
• You can choose from dozens of pre-built portfolio pies that match up with different financial goals, investing time horizons, interests, and risk tolerance; Create your own individual pie; Or select a pre-built portfolio and then customize it to your liking by adding or deleting specific investments

M1’s selection of more than 80 pre-built investment portfolios will especially appeal to socially conscious investors, as it includes offerings such as “sustainable businesses” and “women-led businesses”.

M1 also offers great flexibility in terms of how much you want to automate or self-direct your investing. You can make all investing decisions and choices as they come – deposits to your account, whether you want to reinvest dividends, etc. – or you can automate everything, setting up regular contributions to your account and automatically reinvesting dividends.

One nice bit of automation that M1 provides is automatically rebalancing your portfolio(s) whenever you add funds to your investment account or make a withdrawal.

M1 – A Unique Rewards Program

M1 offers a unique cash back rewards program with its “Owners Rewards” credit card. When you use the card to purchase goods or services from companies whose stock you hold in an M1 investment portfolio, you’ll get up to 10% cash back (minimum 2.5%). All other purchases with the card earn 1.5% cash back. You can designate your rewards to simply be credited to your card account or checking account, or choose to have rewards automatically invested in one of your M1 portfolios.

The debit card that comes with your M1 checking account earns 1% cash back on all purchases, and the checking account pays a 1% annual percentage yield (APY) interest rate.

M1 Borrow lets you borrow up to 40% of the value of your investment account, at rates as low as 2%.

M1 offers retirement accounts – Roth or traditional IRAs – and custodial accounts used to benefit children.

Final Thoughts

You can enjoy commission-free trading with any number of stock brokerage firms. So, how do you find the one that’s best for you? – By thinking about what factors, other than trading costs, are most important to you.

• What trading platforms are available? Do they suit your style of trading, and do you find them easy-to-use?
• What financial markets do you have access to? If you’re interested in trading futures, cryptocurrencies, etc., then make sure you have access to those markets.
• Investor education and research. Think about how much expert help you need or want with investing. Are you a novice trader, in need of a complete investor education? Or are you already an expert, with your own news and research resources?

There’s a great quote from famed investment fund manager, Peter Lynch, about picking a brokerage firm. He cautions that if you don’t take the time to compare them, then you’re likely to “have the same success buying stocks as you do in a poker game if you bet without looking at your cards”.

At a bare minimum, you want a trading platform that’s reliable (you don’t ever want to be needing to exit a trade but unable to do so because your broker’s trading platform has crashed) and a broker that offers good customer service. Look at recent online reviews and ratings of brokers that you’re considering. Doing that will also help ensure that you’re aware of any changes, positive or negative, that have recently occurred. A broker may have just added a new service – such as access to trading the crypto market – or may have dispensed with a previously available service.

Commission-Free Stock Trading – FAQ

Below are frequently asked questions that consumers have related to commission-free stock trading apps, websites, platforms and brokerages along with our responses.

What are the best mobile stock trading apps?

Younger investors who tend to do everything on their mobile phone also like to do mobile trading and investing. This has led to the rise of brokers, such as Webull and Robinhood, that put their emphasis on creating the best mobile app experience for stock trading. In technology development, this is called the “mobile first” approach, and it has proven successful in capturing the younger generation(s) of investors.

What is a robo-advisor?

A robo-advisor is a software program designed to suggest or pick investments for you based on your answers to questions about things such as your financial goals and risk tolerance. Since pioneer robo-advisors such as Betterment and Wealthfront first appeared, automated trading has become both more popular and more sophisticated with the development of artificial intelligence programs.

Is it possible to invest for free?

In terms of stock market investing, yes. All of the platforms listed above allow people to buy and sell both individual stocks and ETFs free of charge.

Can you start investing with $100?

Yes. And, in fact, many free stock trading apps and websites let you also buy fractional shares, so although you might not be able to afford to buy a share of amazon or alphabet (google) you can still own pieces of these companies.