See my edit of the post. I was referring to Merrill Edge
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it’s still the case.
no charge for secondary market tho
They can make money on the bid/ask spread so they do not have to charge a fee.
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yeah it’d be nice if the actual markdown/up was shown at trade time
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Pretty small bonus but may be worthwhile in two person mode.
Moomoo invest is offering $300+ worth of stock as a referral for transferring $5k and holding it (must maintain actual $5k value rather than just value when transferred in) for 60 days. Can buy SGOV and just ACH in. If you refer someone and they do the $5k offer, you also get $300. More information at Moomoo Invest - Sign Up With $5,000 Deposit & Get $320-$460 Value - Doctor Of Credit . We and are doing it with funds currently in savings (our EFs have grown a bit larger than anticipated) and I referred my spouse. Happy to answer any questions via forum or PM/DM.
I think for getting $300 for referring someone deadline for their funding to post is July 1st, so timeline might be a little tight but doable.
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I’m not a huge fan of the Robinhood brokerage (they’re ok), but they have a good promo running Jan-Apr’24 where you can transfer in retirement assets and earn a 3% unlimited bonus.
note: this is on retirement account transfers, not just annual IRA contributions (which they still do and offered previously, but the size of those is much smaller).
So if you move in a $1 million IRA, you would earn $30,000 and it’s paid into that account so tax free (Roth) or tax deferral (Traditional). There are a few caveats, but the offer seems a good fit for accounts that are simply or passively invested, ie ETFs or large stocks. The caveats are:
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To get the 3%, you need Robinhood Gold with $5/month fee. you can cancel Robinhood Gold and switch to regular Robinhood after one year.
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The IRA money has to stay at Robinhood for five years or you lose the bonus. I think you can take out appreciation if you want.
I think the only real issue is possible opportunity cost of doing say 1 transfer a year on the same money between other brokerage promos, and whether you could average more than 0.6%/year. Off hand I found this link for transfer bonuses and several currently offer 0.3-0.5% on $1M+ amounts for a 1 year hold, Tastytrade being the best currently, although many of these won’t do retirement accounts. So the 0.6%/year average seems quite competitive.
In summary, if you’re looking for a bit less hassle for chasing bonuses for the next few years and want to lock in a good one, I think this Robinhood deal looks good.
(It won’t work for me due to my active investment/trading approach.)
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I’m not sure I follow how they’ll count whether the IRA money stays with them or not. What if you take distributions, including RMDs? Would you lose the bonus? I guess you could factor that in and only transfer to RH Gold a portion of your IRA assets that leaves out what you intend/have to withdraw for 5 years. Still that’s a pretty important gotcha but I guess the juice may be worth the squeeze.
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0.5% / year - $60 is decent, plus $150 net for the next 5 years assuming 7k ira contribution per year?
Robinhood has limited investment options though, only Stocks, ETFs, Options, ADRs. Not mutual funds, bonds, tbills, OTC etc.
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I pulled the trigger on Robinhood. Got like $9k in my Roth. Can’t wait to move it somewhere else in 5 years assuming they aren’t acquired by somebody first. lol. I won’t be making any new contributions there (unless they still give 3% on contributions next year, I guess I’d consider it…but not at another 5 year lock up on those new contributions, so perhaps not)
Kinda thinking about making the move too since we’re very passively investing in our Roth accounts. If it’s going to sit tracking a market index for years, may as well collect 3% ($15k or so) and avoid the hassle of chasing bonuses for 5 years.
Only question is how are they making money from me if I transfer $500k Roth IRA to them and leave it 5-years in SPTM or VTI?
They aren’t, but when they sell the biz to Schwab or Fidelity, they’ll be valued off some multiple of total assets and so they want to pump this up.
I remember gift card sale promos with no fees for CC purchases by some bank years ago. Everyone thought “how can they be making money eating all these CC fees?” Some bought the cards and flipped them for 2%, some didn’t and fretted. But the bank sold to another bank a year later on the strength of the massive growth in their online gift card revenue (not profits), so the shareholders took that one to the bank and the buying bank, well, they probably overpaid.
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Which bank was that? I only remember WaMu selling GCs (without fees IIRC), but it didn’t help them 
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Charter One back in 2004, bought by Citizens
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Oh yeah, I remember now. Dam we’re all getting old. 
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I was thinking they’d try to entice people to trade more, maybe to collect margin interest or option premiums. A bit like credit card companies having signup bonus offers where they take a loss from some customers but gains from the ones who end up carrying a balance.
But I did not consider artificially bumping your total assets as strategy. Could be very ironic since I’d be transferring our Roth IRAs from a brokerage which might end up buying RH.
Now I wonder what happens to the terms of the bonus in case they are bought by Fidelity or Schwab. Probably nothing if they remain a separate brand but if they forced customers to merge/migrate accounts, the 5 year period provision may be void.
They publish how they make money.
Not all investors are passive also.
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I wonder what happens if they have your IRA and you die. Is the bonus lost?
If you pass away, that becomes an inherited IRA with new owner(s) but the new owner(s) could keep the account at the same custodian at least for the remainder of the 5 -yr period. So that may not count as a transfer of assets out of RH which would trigger the claw back. Either way, RH grabbing back a 3% bonus right after someone died would be a pretty nasty PR move.
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Any ideas of good, safe place to park funds there?
Hi, a few years ago I had Self Directed account with Chase.
I just signed up with Chase about a month ago for round 2 with a Self Directed account for my coming $700.
Chase is good for a brokerage account, just not as nice as place like ETrade or the old TDA was; but Chase is fine for parking some stocks and occasionally trading stocks.