thx!
didn’t see 3.5K bonus but
https://www.tradestation.com/ does let you trade crypto in IRA… Interesting for a Roth.
What could possibly go wrong?
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You’re showing your unfamiliarity with crypto. Keeping track of the tax implications from crypto trading/mining/staking/rewards/etc in non retirement account is a HUGE headache. All the smart crypto traders with the funds to do it within an IRA are doing it in an IRA specifically to avoid the tax headache.
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I understand the advantages of trading in tax-deferred accounts, but I’m not yet convinced that this is not an oxymoron.
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Not to derail this thread but that was my point exactly. Back to OP
They finally got me. I signed up earlier today for Ally Bank’s self-directed brokerage account. There are probably better such accounts out there. But I’m already a very active Ally Bank account owner. The links between the two Ally accounts are seamless, work well, and are a help.
Ally got me by offering a $250 bonus for signing up. I needed to deposit just $500 into my new brokerage account to activate the bonus. It was easy to move that small sum over from my Ally Online Savings account. The transfer happened instantaneously.
I’m not at all a stock person and never have been. But I do still own one stock and need to move those shares now over to Ally. However:
The Ally brokerage fixed income offerings certainly caught my attention. I imagine all modern brokerage accounts have these. It certainly is different than it was years ago when I needed to speak personally with brokers, with human beings, to buy this stuff. Now it’s all online, it’s pretty cool, and I like this new (to me) way of offering fixed income securities.
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A minor brokerage, All of Us Financial, is being bought out by PayPal (who had explored offering their own stock trading platform last year, but I guess decided to just buy one).
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I talked to my Merrill Edge Rep. Learned that bonuses are once per year per social security number, and based on total amount brought over (sum IRA’s and taxable accounts). They look back 52 weeks and deduct any withdrawals from the accounts from the new money. If not aware of this, you could be expecting say $2500 from bringing over a million, and then find that this adjustment kept you from getting the expected reward. With required minimum distributions this could be an appreciable amount to be added to your new money tp be safe. For me, this could be an extra $100,000 when bringing over a million. Additional funds might be needed to cover 2022 required distributions. If my required distributions had been taken from another IRA, this would not be an issue.
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extra $100,000 when bringing over a million?? sign me up!
What I meant was to earn the bonus for a million dollars, I would have to bring over $1,100,000. Otherwise, your million dollars would be treated as $900,000 and you would not get the expected bonus.
I took their offer and did discover it was simple with their representative filling in the form (after I said which securities were to be transferred, and gave my account number), and I just had to say yes electronically. No faxing of documents.
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Thanks for sharing.
Their phone reps can typically also match other offers if they’re more lucrative than the standard ones. For example, they’ve been doing $1k at the $250k mark for cash and IRAs that excludes other accounts like trusts.
I have a trust account that I agreed to transfer over, and the phone rep agreed to match after conferring with marketing. But they increased the holding period from 3 months to a year.
The current offer also has a look-back period of 24 weeks (6 months), so it makes it easier to churn…
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Anyone have experience with M1? They have a pretty competitive bonus going until end of Feb. My intent would be to transfer VTI in kind, collect the bonus, and split in December when the holding period is up.
I’ve been using them since 2018. A few things to keep in mind. M1 is not a brokerage per se. You will not have the ability to do real time trades, nor do you have the ability to do anything other than a market buy/sell which occurs at one set window every day (9:30am Eastern, unless you pay for M1+ which gives you an afternoon trade window at 3:30pm which you can either trade both or one or the other). Apex Clearing is the clearing firm, and your brokerage account will be a margin account. They try to be tax efficient with sells but do not really have any tools to prevent wash sales. M1 makes it’s money via PFOF (I know that’s a hot topic and scary word these days) just in full disclosure. If you are buying ETF’s and/or buying to hold long term PFOF really has a negligible effect on your portfolio (that’s also a contentious point).
If you are looking for a proper brokerage for trading stock, M1 is not it. If you are a long term buy/hold and/or plan to buy ETF’s (a Boglehead style of VTI/VXUS/BND or comparable would work very well here since you have no control over timing or pricing of your buys) then M1 would work for you. The pie concept makes it very easy to set and maintain your preferred allocations without too much intervention on your part. Any buys that occur will go towards filling out the ratio of your pie to meet your allocation settings.
The value of M1 is not in the brokerage tools but in the integration into their Checking (and soon Savings), and Credit Card accounts. They offer a standard brokerage as well as an IRA. They have smart transfer rules which let you build automation into how you move money around your various accounts. You should use M1 for long term buy/hold and to utilize their “smart” rules for automating the flow of money in/out of the various accounts you have there. You should not consider M1 if you do any kind of serious trading.
You’ll pay a fee to transfer out so keep that in mind if you’re just looking to nab the bonus as that will cut into the value of the bonus. My gut reaction would be to tell you not to go with M1 just to try to game the bonus as there are horror stories about Customer Service and transfers in/out. Might not be worth the hassle.
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Bumping this thread. Trying to summarize which bonuses are still active
merrill 1000 for 250k
sofi 1k for 500k
chase 1.2k for 500k
citi 2k for 500k
trade station 2k for 500k (270 day holding period)
etrade (new customers 1.8k for 500k, existing 600 for 500k)
tdameritrade (new customers only) 1k for 500k
schwab (new customers only) 1k for 500k
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Robinhood - 1% uncapped match on IRA incoming transfers or contributions, but you have to leave the money there for 5 years to keep it.
Yeah, right.
I was puzzled that Fidelity has not had a bonus in a while. I asked my local rep who said there is one they don’t advertise for amounts above $1M but that you can ask for. I don;t have more details.
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they have a small one currently - $100 for $50 deposits The Fidelity Starter Pack℠ | First Step to Start Investing | Fidelity Investments
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