M1 Finance is a great investing platform for beginners and seasoned investors alike. We love their fractional shares, expert pies, and automatic investment options. Continue reading to see if M1 Finance is right for you!
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- Mixed robo-advisor and self-directed investing
- No trading or account fees or commissions
- $100 minimum
- $500 minimum for retirement accounrs
- Fractional Shares
- Automatic Rebalancing
- Only one trading window per day
- No tax loss harvesting
- No mutual funds
- Only for US Citizens and permanent residents
M1 Finance’s simple interface makes it great for beginners and seasoned investors alike. It’s also great for dividend investors, and for those who would like to have the option to automate their investments.
M1 Finance is not for day traders, or anyone looking to execute multiple trades per day. Because the platform only has one trading window per day, you won’t have as much control over the exact prices that you buy and sell at.
Creating an account is quick and easy. You’ll even have the opportunity to set up your first investment pie during the sign-up process. See the video below for a full step-by-step walkthrough of opening an account.
M1 Finance currently offers both Individual and Joint Brokerage Accounts. You can open one of this accounts with a $100 initial deposit.
They also offer a few options for retirement accounts, which can be opened with a $500 initial deposit. Traditional, Roth, & SEP IRAs, as well as IRA and 401k Rollovers are all available.
If you’re thinking about transferring an existing account over to M1 Finance, check their site frequently! They frequently run promotions that offer a bonus for transferring an account.
If you don’t want to build your own investment portfolio – you don’t have to. M1 Finance offers a variety of options for pre-built portfolios. These can range from retirement investing to dividend investing. Inside each of these expert pies, you can see a breakdown of the portfolios and choose a pie that fits your investing style. You even have the option to choose how aggressive your portfolio is.
If you’d rather choose your own investments, you absolutely can! When you build your own investment pie, you get choose what you’d like to invest in, and what percentage of your portfolio you’d like to allocate towards each “slice”. Each time you buy into your entire portfolio, M1 Finance will spread the money across your portfolio, and try to keep those desired percentages as close as possible.
Don’t have $2,000 to buy a share of Amazon? No problem! Possibly the best feature of M1 Finance is its fractional shares. This means that you can buy less than one full share of a stock. In this scenario if you only have $200 to invest, you could own 1/10 of a share of Amazon.
M1 Finance is the perfect platform if you’re looking to automate your investments, but still have a bit more control than you would with a robo-advisor. It’s easy to schedule deposits on a recurring basis, and to have M1 Finance invest your cash once it hits a certain balance.
If you’d like to learn how to set up automatic investments, watch the video below: