What Investing Apps/Brokerages Do You Reccomend?

[james.hendrickson]

SA Forum Community,

The benefit of the lurkers here - what investing apps or brokerage services do you recommend?

[bjl584]

I have an account with Fidelity and am happy with the ease of use of their website and their customer service

[disneysteve]

Most of our money is with Vanguard. I have no complaints about their website.

As far as brokerage, I was with Scottrade which is now Ameritrade. I don't like their website nearly as much as Scottrade's but I hardly ever need to access it so it's okay. I'm not going to move my account just because of that.

[TexasHusker]

Reminds me of a commercial years ago about a guy talking about his "broker." He said "thanks to him, I'm broke-er." Or something of that levity.

[james.hendrickson]

Reminds me of a commercial years ago about a guy talking about his "broker." He said "thanks to him, I'm broke-er." Or something of that levity.

I think the key phrase there is "years ago", trading and commission fees have really declined a lot in the past two decades.

The reason I brought this thread up is a lot of the newer fintech brokerages don't necessarily have business models that are best for consumers. For example, I like stockpile, but it only gives you access to some ETFs and a few individual stocks - there isn't any way to get bonds or cash equivalents through them.

[JBinKC]

That's hard to say it really depends upon what kind of investor you are and what markets and investment products and even kinds of stocks you invest in. Different brokerages have different strengths and weaknesses.

For one I am not at all a fan of Fidelity. They have very quirky terms for international stocks that are very punitive for lower priced companies. A 1/4 cent vig plus a much worse conversion rate. I received a little more than 1 cent less per share on an arbitrage play that I carried to liquidation in a company that sold for about $1.80 U.S. compared to what I received in my Ameritrade account.

Given the size of my investment the penalty was substantial if I had used them exclusively. If the deal was done exclusively by Fidelity the loss would have been $8300.

So the lower commission from Fidelity means little when you are screwed indirectly from other means some in fine print and others hidden.