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i don’t really separate the apps from the companies.
I always recommend the ones that have been around a while. Schwab and TD Ameritrade (now both the same company... Charles Schwab) or eTrade (now owned by Morgan Stanley). Fidelity and Merrill Lynch (Bank of America) should be solid. Interactive Brokers has good interest rates for leveraging and what they pay on uninvested cash.

RobinHood and WeBull are the new kids on the block. I wouldn’t rely on them when markets get wonky. I just don’t trust them to not have massive screw ups.

Morgan-Stanley is a solid financial institution with a long track record. They will stand behind eTrade. It will be interesting to see how they combine their platforms. Morgan-Stanley’s is kind of primitive and clunky. They bought eTrade for their platform (and the customer list). Morgan-Stanley is focused on wealth management. Locally they have the high dollar clientele. MS will push their high fee products like annuities.

Schwab has a lot of very efficient ETFs and a local office on Parkside Drive.

5 Best Trading Platforms 2021 | StockBrokers.com
Thanks. Just dipping my toes in. Appreciate the input of you experienced traders.
 
Thanks. Just dipping my toes in. Appreciate the input of you experienced traders.

I’m more of an investor than a trader. I rarely have more than 2 or 3 dozen transactions a year. Some guys in here trade that many times in a week.

Frequent trading is zero sum IMO. Somebody is up and somebody else will be down. Investment returns are longer term in nature.

Schwab/Ameritrade will have much better 24/7 support than the newbies like RobinHood and WeBull.
 
i don’t really separate the apps from the companies.
I always recommend the ones that have been around a while. Schwab and TD Ameritrade (now both the same company... Charles Schwab) or eTrade (now owned by Morgan Stanley). Fidelity and Merrill Lynch (Bank of America) should be solid. Interactive Brokers has good interest rates for leveraging and what they pay on uninvested cash.

RobinHood and WeBull are the new kids on the block. I wouldn’t rely on them when markets get wonky. I just don’t trust them to not have massive screw ups.

Morgan-Stanley is a solid financial institution with a long track record. They will stand behind eTrade. It will be interesting to see how they combine their platforms. Morgan-Stanley’s is kind of primitive and clunky. They bought eTrade for their platform (and the customer list). Morgan-Stanley is focused on wealth management. Locally they have the high dollar clientele. MS will push their high fee products like annuities.

Schwab has a lot of very efficient ETFs and a local office on Parkside Drive.

5 Best Trading Platforms 2021 | StockBrokers.com
Newbs perspective: Robinhood is a joke. I tried multiple times to use their service and they kept denying my bank statement saying it was from a business account instead of personal. Pretty sure it was bots. I never spoke with humans. Schwab much more professional.
 
I’m more of an investor than a trader. I rarely have more than 2 or 3 dozen transactions a year. Some guys in here trade that many times in a week.

Frequent trading is zero sum IMO. Somebody is up and somebody else will be down. Investment returns are longer term in nature.

Schwab/Ameritrade will have much better 24/7 support than the newbies like RobinHood and WeBull.
What's your favorite long-term investments? I'm just getting started so trying not to do anything too risky.
 
I’m more of an investor than a trader. I rarely have more than 2 or 3 dozen transactions a year. Some guys in here trade that many times in a week.

Frequent trading is zero sum IMO. Somebody is up and somebody else will be down. Investment returns are longer term in nature.

Schwab/Ameritrade will have much better 24/7 support than the newbies like RobinHood and WeBull.
My goals will be similar to yours, but I wouldn't mind getting into a few good opportunities if they look really promising and relatively safe. Probably start with some of the big dogs, tech, maybe a little medical, and I'm going to gamble a little that travel is going to pick back up this year (hotel groups, airlines, cruises).
 
My goals will be similar to yours, but I wouldn't mind getting into a few good opportunities if they look really promising and relatively safe. Probably start with some of the big dogs, tech, maybe a little medical, and I'm going to gamble a little that travel is going to pick back up this year (hotel groups, airlines, cruises).

I use Etrade and its sufficient for what I do.

Would like a doctor's perspective. What do you think of the following 3 medical companies I've started positions in the last 30-40 days

Teladoc (TDOC)
Vertex (VRTX)
Intuitive Surgical (ISRG)
.
 
My goals will be similar to yours, but I wouldn't mind getting into a few good opportunities if they look really promising and relatively safe. Probably start with some of the big dogs, tech, maybe a little medical, and I'm going to gamble a little that travel is going to pick back up this year (hotel groups, airlines, cruises).

The JETS ETF should be a reasonably safe bet on travel. SAVE is a pretty well capitalized individual airline name (although it has already doubled since November). CCL might be worth taking a risk on, but I’m not sold on cruise lines just yet. All those people crammed onto a boat, really expensive illiquid assets that haven’t been in service anywhere close to capacity for a long time now. At least airlines can move freight.
 
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What's your favorite long-term investments? I'm just getting started so trying not to do anything too risky.

Vanguard broad market ETFs (especially VTI) and SPDR Sector ETFs. Also QQQs, DIA, MDY, and SPY. For actively managed ETFs those from ARK are very attractive (ARKF, ARKG, ARKK, ARKQ, ARKW) although they carry a fair amount of risk.

Individual securities I always like healthcare names due to demographics (although the Dems tend to be disruptive with their ideas) and the financials. But individual names are moving targets (I just noticed that SAVE has been on a run and is now over $30, doubled since November). I prefer higher market cap stocks (BLK- BlackRock). Good stories get unreasonable valuations very quickly in the current environment of gonzo trading.

I think that the current administration could be good for industrials and materials if the crazy fiscal spending becomes more targeted toward infrastructure. But those sectors haven’t necessarily been under pressure and might have already made their biggest runs.

I’m kind of hanging tight at the moment, not really looking to buy right now, and haven’t been watching individual securities real closely for a few weeks.
 
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What's your favorite long-term investments? I'm just getting started so trying not to do anything too risky.
The lesson of history is SPY or VTI or VTSAX. Boring get rich slow. People will torment you with their euphoric stories, but then after they lose it all, they don't say as much. Could you pick a stock with the growth potential of an Apple? Yes you can. Apple is a 40 year old company. It takes time. Can you tell the difference between Apple and Texas Instruments? Maybe not.

If that's too volatile you can do a target date fund and they have done much better than I ever thought they would. Vanguard swallowed up a fund called "Wellington" that was probably one of the first asset allocation funds, founded in 1929. It does spectacularly even today for what it is. It's even more boring than VTSAX, but it has returned 9.52% for 10 years, compared with 8.34% per year since 1929.

Something I think new investors might benefit from is portfoliocharts.com. the guy who created that site is a good thinker. There are of course a million other things you could look at. If you want to experiment with portfolios, there is a site called portfoliovisualizer.com that will do that for you free, and it has all the data built in, but only back to about 1985.

Backtest Portfolio Asset Allocation

I actually owned 100 shares of Apple in about 1995, but you see I would have needed to keep it 25 more years AND I would have lost 2/3 of it, not once, but twice!
 
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Thanks. Just dipping my toes in. Appreciate the input of you experienced traders.
Check out Public on the App Store.

It's social media meets investing - and it's a cool way for beginners to see what more experienced investors are doing. I highly recommend it.
 
For actively managed ETFs those from ARK are very attractive (ARKF, ARKG, ARKK, ARKQ, ARKW) although they carry a fair amount of risk.
One wonders, given their limited investing criteria, how much in inflows is too much?

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

Less than two weeks after hitting $50 billion in assets, the red-hot firm now manages more than $60 billion, as funds flow into Wood’s exchange-traded funds at the fastest pace ever. Last week alone, the Ark family added almost $3.8 billion with five of its funds notching record weeks of inflows, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
 
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My CBAT and DPW adds have been the only thing staying green for me today. CBAT on a dip would be a nice buy. Provide batteries for the EV company, NIO. They are like china’s version of Tesla.
 
Anyone here use Acorns or something similar? Started my account about ten months ago and it’s remarkable what I’ve set aside.
 
Yeah, luckily they showed up while I was still making up my mind.

I never know when to sell this stuff. I have been lucky on some of it, where it doubled, so you can sell half and then you have this attitude that whatever is left is free. CCIV quadrupled.
 
Yeah, luckily they showed up while I was still making up my mind.

I never know when to sell this stuff. I have been lucky on some of it, where it doubled, so you can sell half and then you have this attitude that whatever is left is free. CCIV quadrupled.

I’m turrible at it as well. As long as you make profit, I guess it’s a good trade. Just learn from the chart and see if you can time your exit better the next time.
 
Please, no robinhood. I have webull and E*TRADE. Would like to eventually consolidate my account to just webull. They have the best trading hours, more app stability, and better charting.

I don't really agree here (though lots of people say this). For instance, I can't put in a trade right now on webull, but I can on ToS and other platforms.

But I think it depends on your preferred hours (besides the normal market hours). Webull is open super early (for americans), but not super late. I personally look at stocks at night quite often and sometimes want to put in limit orders when I'm thinking about it - not set a reminder to remind myself to put it in the next morning like I have to do with webull)

but other than that, it seems to be a solid platform - the mobile app and desktop app are nice. I do know that lots of people complain about their customer service (slow to respond, and aren't great at communicating in English), so I am somewhat concerned if I ever have to deal with the CS team
 
I don't really agree here (though lots of people say this). For instance, I can't put in a trade right now on webull, but I can on ToS and other platforms.

But I think it depends on your preferred hours (besides the normal market hours). Webull is open super early (for americans), but not super late. I personally look at stocks at night quite often and sometimes want to put in limit orders when I'm thinking about it - not set a reminder to remind myself to put it in the next morning like I have to do with webull)

but other than that, it seems to be a solid platform - the mobile app and desktop app are nice. I do know that lots of people complain about their customer service (slow to respond, and aren't great at communicating in English), so I am somewhat concerned if I ever have to deal with the CS team

I hear so many complaints about ToS app being slow or down completely.
 
The remaining 50% of my RIOT position executed a sell limit at 70 yesterday. Now sitting on almost 60% cash looking for some buying opportunities.
 

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