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There has been a change to Ally Bank’s website. Ally’s top navigation bar now includes an “invest” link that opens up an investment menu. Ally issued a press release today describing the launch of Ally Invest and its new integration of its brokerage services with its banking services:
Bank Integrates and Rebrands TradeKing Brokerage and Advisory, Bringing Low-Cost Investing Together with High-Yield Savings
In April 2016, Ally announced they had agreed to acquire the brokerage TradeKing. The move was seen as Ally wanting to expand its services to include trading and investing. ING Direct (which is now under Capital One) did this in 2012 when it acquired the brokerage Sharebuilder.
Both brick-and-mortar banks and credit unions have also been doing this. Large banks have their own wealth management businesses while small banks and credit unions have been partnering with brokerage firms. These integrations haven’t always been seen favorably by banking customers. Over the years, many readers have reported going into their bank or credit union to renew a CD and being referred to a financial advisor to discuss non-bank investment ideas.
If you’re an Ally Bank customer who also wants to invest in stocks, bonds, mutual funds and other investment products, Ally Invest may appeal to you. It’s designed to appeal to both the hands-on investor who wants to do self-directed trading and to the hands-off investor who wants managed portfolios. Ally is advertising low fees for both. In addition to low fees, Ally is touting the integration advantages in which you can access all of your online banking, brokerage and wealth management accounts via ally.com. In addition, you can transfer money between these Ally accounts.
My Take
For Ally Bank customers who already have brokerage accounts at places like Vanguard and Fidelity, I’m not sure if the current advantages of Ally Invest will be enough to make them want to move their investments. I can see Ally Invest being attractive to Ally Bank customers who are wanting to start investing. This gives them an easy way to start investing without having to open an account at another financial institution.
At Fidelity and TD Ameritrade lots of ETFs can be traded commission free after holding them for 30+ days.
If Ally were to offer commission free trading for ETFs without any hold period (like Schwab and Vanguard) then I will take a look.
But keep in mind that a whole lot of studies, both academic and real-world, show that 80 - 90% of individual investors time their "bets" wrong when buying or selling stocks or mutual funds, net of transaction costs.. For most of us, the more often we trade the worse we do.
Wonder how students who are performing these "studies" get the theories about the buying/selling by "individual investors". Wonder if they have some sort of tie-up with likes of Schwab/Fidelity that share the buy/sell data with the students. Or may be these students have some inroads with the IRS itself that shares massive data of the "individual investors" to draw some sweeping conclusions like 80% to 90%?
Wonder then why is it so hard to get simple data like (say) how much taxes has "the" Donald paid for tax years 1995 thru 2016. Just one individual you know !!
And if your don't believe them perhaps you'll believe the many publications by Bogle, Malkeil, Fama & French, etc. - the list is almost endless.
Credible data regarding the 'individual investors' is with (1) the brokers who carry out the trades, and (2) with SEC that wields authority to monitor each trade, and (3) with IRS that has details in 1099-B.
If the students of these so called "studies" have access to the above data sources then analysis made using this is credible. Else its questionable.
I can accept studies made using details like "Annual Statements" and "1099-B". (So called) Studies made using anecdotes has questionable value (if any).
I doubt that you would disclose your income tax information for everyone in the world to see. And probably would run as fast as you can to a lawyer if someone made it public without your consent.
And more important from where/how are these people getting trading data for me and my fellow individual tax-payers?
Hence my original question : Do these students of the so called "studies" have some inroads with IRS to get the 1099-Bs for all the tax-payers year after year? (Or they are using some anecdotal / imaginary / fake data?)
Maybe 111 has some answers? ... Or maybe not ...
... Wait ... lack of figures for taxes paid could mean there were none !!!
.... That's no surprise ...
By chance are you hinting that the students of so called "studies" conduct google search for all the "individual investor" tax-payers and obtain everyone's 1099-B?
But then there is that Reaganesque nagging little thingy "Trust but verify".
One way to verify appears to be going over 1099-B ... No?
None of these people have have Annual Statements for vast majority of Americans. They may for for themselves and their close friends/relatives, but surely not for vast number of 'individual investors'. Whatever they do and "111" cites above is not realistic.
Oh ... and costs me $0 commission for any stock trade at "robinhood".
If you are not very comfortable with use of smart phones for trading then I would not recommend robinhood. But for others check it out.