Keep an eye out for other fees in stock trading

Some brokers are emphasizing that there’s more to investing than stocks and ETFs — and that these offerings can bring in new revenue.

TradeStation — which also just eliminated commissions — is planning to launch crypto trading later this month, said John Bartleman, the company’s president. Unlike its free stock trading platform, TradeStation will charge small commissions to trade bitcoin, ethereum, ripple/XRP and several other cryptocurrencies.
“We’re going after serious traders with a competitive offering,” Bartleman said, adding that the company may eventually launch a crypto trading product for retail investors without commissions.

Webull, another commission-free online trading platform, makes money from lending products, such as margin loans to customers who want to borrow money to buy more stocks, according to CEO Anthony Denier. Webull also issues stock loans to short sellers who sell borrowed shares with the hopes of buying the stock back at a lower price. Webull also generates fees from routing orders to the exchanges.

“Now that the playing field is level, we have to go back to what broker-dealers are supposed to do: offer a better platform and customer experience. Consumers have so much more power these days,” Denier said.

Brokers to act more like banks?

Industry participants said all brokers are going to have to start offering more services if they want to stay competitive.

“For every broker out there, trying to sell services with explicit fees is going to be almost impossible. The next frontier will be centered around providing more financial well-being solutions — expanding beyond just brokerage products,” said Bill Capuzzi, CEO of Apex Clearing, a custodian firm that holds securities for brokerage firms.

Capuzzi said brokerages may look to take on more deposits and offer debt consolidation loans, for example.

“The brokerages need to connect the dots between banking, investing and lending,” he said.
Capuzzi added that an unintended consequence of a growing number of brokerages offering zero commission trading accounts is that they may tack on larger minimum account balance and cash requirements and reduce the number of ETF and mutual fund options to make up for the hit to fee revenue.

The one major online broker that has yet to cut commissions to zero is mutual fund giant Fidelity. The company touts how it offers a higher rate of return to customers by automatically putting their excess cash into higher-yielding money market accounts — a service known as a cash sweep.

“It’s interesting that Schwab, TD Ameritrade and E-Trade have deliberately chosen not to help the greatest number of their investors by automatically providing the highest interest rate on their cash sweep like Fidelity does,” the company said in a statement to CNN Business.

So even though the race to zero is now pretty much over, the online brokerage marketing wars may have only just begun.

Online Stock Trading is Free Now

New York (CNN Business)There is no such thing as a “discount broker” anymore. In the span of just a few days, nearly every major online brokerage company eliminated commissions. It’s now essentially free to trade.

So what will companies like Charles Schwab (SCHW), TD Ameritrade (AMTD) and E-Trade (ETFC) do now to differentiate themselves in an increasingly crowded market where price is no longer a selling point?

“In a world of equal footing, it’s all about what you are offering,” said Steve Quirk, TD Ameritade executive vice president of trading and education, in an interview with CNN Business.

Quirk said that there is more to investing than just free commissions. He argues that TD Ameritrade offers more services and advice than many of its rivals to help people who have questions about what types of stocks and ETFs to buy.

E-Trade touted its customer service and easy-to-use technology. The company recently launched a service that lets clients use Google Assistant Voice commands to check their brokerage accounts, for example.

Brokers need to tout products that go beyond zero commission trading

“Price really hasn’t been a competitive differentiator for some time, and we have always believed it’s about the customer experience more than anything else,” said Alice Milligan, chief customer officer for E-Trade, in an e-mail to CNN Business.

Schwab was not immediately available for comment for this story.

Online brokerage business growing increasingly crowded

Competition in the industry remains brutal.

Several other companies have announced plans for brokerage services with no commissions in the past week. And many are adding their own twist to try and stand out from the pack.

Robinhood, one of the first online brokers to go to zero commissions when it launched in 2013, put out an ad this past weekend about the moves made by Schwab, TD Ameritrade and E-Trade. The tagline: Change Doesn’t Happen Overnight Until it Does.

Ally Financial’s (ALLY) online brokerage arm Ally Invest touted portfolios that allow risk-averse investors to hold up to 30% of their money in cash, for example.

Stocktwits, a social networking firm for traders, launched its own no-fee online brokerage offering too. Phil Pearlman, chief community officer for Stocktwits, said the company hopes to take advantage of the fact that younger traders want to share ideas. So as part of its Trade App online brokerage, users can post — or “tradecast” their history of trades.

“This is the heart of social trading. You make a trade and it’s there for your followers to see. It’s a trusted ledger of your trading history,” Pearlman said.

Stocktwits is also offering fractional trading, which lets people invest as little as $5 to buy a small percentage of a stock instead of a full share. That can come handy in for someone that doesn’t have a lot of disposable income to invest and wants to buy a piece of a company like Amazon (AMZN) or Google owner Alphabet (GOOGL), which each trade for more than $1,000 for just one share.

Webull Announces its August Referral Competition

NEW YORK, August 1, 2019 — Webull Financial LLC, an independent, self-directed broker dealer focused on zero commission trading and in-depth market data, has launched an August referral competition where participants can win either a Nintendo Switch or a MacBook Air.At the end of this event,the top 5 users that bring in the most successfully funded referrals* will win a MacBook Air. (Retail value: $1299). The next five (those who place 6th to 10th) will win a Nintendo Switch. (Retail value: $300) come the end of August 30st.

Referral = Successfully opened brokerage account that funds the account with $100 or more with initial deposit.

The details are as follows.

Event Duration：From August 1st, 2019, 00:00 ET to August 30th, 2019, 16:00 ET

During the event, there will be a leaderboard that will monitor all users for the number of funded referrals they bring in from August 1st to August 30st. At the end of the competition, the top 5 users on the leaderboard will win a MacBook Air. (Retail value: $1299). The next five users on the leaderboard (those who place 6th to 10th) will win a Nintendo Switch. (Retail value: $300)

Ranking Rules: A referral will only be counted if their initial deposit is at least $100 and made within 30 days of said referral’ss account approval. If there ends up being more than ten people at the top of the leaderboard with the same amount of funded accounts, rewards will be given to the first ten users to achieve said number of funded accounts.

Participating in this event doesn’t mean you can’t join the referral program, too. Successfully funded referrals will get you a share of stock worth $8-$1000 each. You will also be able to get a $10 gift card and a $50 gift card if you bring in one successfully funded referral account and three successfully funded referral accounts respectively.

Learn more about the August referral competition here.

Webull Financial LLC has been in the retail trading space since only May of last year, but they already boast hundreds of thousands of trading accounts across the United States. The company’s market data platform is used globally by over 10 million users for real-time market updates as well as paper trading and ticker fundamentals. All these features are gathered together to ensure users can test out trades and make smarter trading decisions.
Webull’s comprehensive market data platform makes sure that users do not have to leave the app in order to get all the technical and fundamental information that they need. Webull’s charts hold over 25 different indicators and the time interval data can be boiled down to minute-by-minute intervals. With side-by-side chart comparisons, traders can even compare individual stocks against industry ETFs.
All these features are supported by Webull’s Live Help desk, which ensures Webull’s customer issues, no matter how big or small, are resolved. Users can reach our customer service representatives through the Live Help button, social media, or email us at customerservice@webull.com.

About Webull Financial LLC
Webull Financial LLC is a broker-dealer registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and is a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). The headquarters of Webull Financial LLC is located at 44 Wall Street, New York, NY, USA. System response and account access times may vary due to a variety of factors, including trading volumes, market conditions, system performance, and other factors. Risk Disclosure: Trading of stocks and all other investment products involves substantial risk of loss and it is not suitable for every investor. The value of stocks may fluctuate and as a result, clients may lose more than their original investment. Free stock trading refers to $0 commissions for Webull Financial LLC self-directed individual cash or margin brokerage accounts that trade U.S. listed securities via mobile devices or Web. Relevant SEC & FINRA fees may apply. Download the Webull App in the Apple App store or Google Android Store for free. To learn more about Webull Financial LLC and its app, please visit webull.com.

CEO of Webull on CAT’s Earnings, Fintech’s Future and Millennial’s Investing

As the Wall Street titans Caterpillar (CAT – Get Report) and Boeing (BA – Get Report) missed the Q2 earnings forecast this morning, should investors be worried?

Well, the CEO of Webull, Anthony Denier is not.

Katherine Ross: This morning we saw our first major earnings miss with Caterpillar. Looking at just generally this earning season, was this miss an isolated event or should investors expect more misses ahead?

Anthony Denier : Well, there’s a big macro theme going on here, whether it’s China, whether it’s a, whether it’s a debt ceiling. So there’s always may be some little misses peppered in, but overall the economy’s strong.

Katherine Ross: Now you’re the CEO of Webull, which is a trading platform. Looking at what your traders are doing, what stocks are they trading?

Anthony Denier : They tend to trade the active stocks, right? So anything that has a lot of volatility where zero commission platform, so they get in and out in names and they can scalp them quickly.

Katherine Ross: When you say active stock, what do you mean by that?

Anthony Denier : To be specific? HI volume names Tesla, Tilray, C. R. O. N., right? So anything that’s active in volatility and has a high movement intranet.

Katherine Ross: What about sectors? What sectors do you see get traded the most?

Anthony Denier : Well, lifestyle sectors are usually the most common. We have a younger investor base so they invest in what they know, right? They know Tesla, they know Beyond Meat, right? They know the names that are in the news. And that seems to be the most active.

Katherine Ross: Now, I’m glad that you say that you have a younger audience ’cause I do want to ask about that millennial. Now millennials, we know they’re scared to trade, they don’t like spending money. So commission is kind of asking a lot out of them and they don’t trust Wall Street. So taking that and looking at, how you guys have a commission free trading platform, how is that bringing in millennials?

Anthony Denier : Well, a zero commission trading platform allows investors to get in and out of names without having to pay the high commission costs and trading costs of the commission. Now traditional brokerage is usually, forget those newer novice or maybe a lower investment account individuals. They are our bread and butter, right? So they come, they come to our platform and they can use all the tools that we have and trade without having to incredible large costs.

Katherine Ross: And why should they trust you?

Anthony Denier : Well, they should trust us because we’re there for them. Right? So we are, we are fin are registered where SCC registered, we have SIPC insurance, we are a US registered broken dealer. And our goal is to educate newer investors and to give them all the tools that they find on all the larger platforms, but not pay a subscription, not pay a membership fee and not pay commissions. And we put a lot of effort into using programs like our paper trading, competitions and our paper trading simulators so they can use virtual money trading to learn how to do it by experience before they actually use their own capital.

Katherine Ross: Let’s talk about Fintech. Sure. We are moving away from cash. I’m a frequent Venmo user myself. And I got to ask, as a Fintech CEO, where do you see Fintech in the next 10 years?

Anthony Denier : I see it continued to expand. We’re just going to continue moving into new products, whether it’s money management trading or investments that again, that traditional and the larger banks forget about the smaller users and the newer users. It’s because it’s expanding at an explosive rate. Now we’re seeing a lot of investment come in to expand those services and it’s going to continue to grow.

Katherine Ross: Thank you so much for joining me.

Anthony Denier : Thank you for having me.

source: https://www.thestreet.com/video/-webull-ceo-cat-earnings-fintech-future-millennial-investing-15031186

Webull Financial, the Zero-Commission Broker

Webull Financial LLC, an independent, self-directed broker dealer focused on zero commission trading and granular market data, released its first paper trading competition today. In an effort to democratize trading, the brokerage will incentivize users to learn and trade through daily and weekly competitions. The top three traders everyday and every week will receive monetary prizes. See Terms and Conditions.

The Webull Paper Trading Competition is done in preparation for a much bigger, real-money trading competition in the second-half of 2019. While paper trading competitions allow users to trade on a T+0 basis, real-money trading competitions adhere to market rules. Both competitions are designed to improve people’s financial literacy and reward those that put forth time and effort into their trading strategy.

Webull Financial LLC has been in the retail trading space since only May of last year, but they already boast hundreds of thousands of trading accounts. The company’s market data app is used globally by over 9 million users for real-time market updates as well as paper trading. The paper trading feature allows users to test out investment strategies and see what hypothetical positions and portfolios would look like.

Webull’s comprehensive market data platform makes sure that users do not have to leave the app in order to get all the technical and fundamental information that they need. Webull’s charts hold over 25 different indicators and the time interval data can be boiled down to minute-by-minute intervals. With side-by-side chart comparisons, traders can even compare individual stocks against industry ETFs.

Once users have practiced enough on the paper trading feature of the platform, they can stay logged into Webull to execute on their learnings with real funds in their Webull Financial account. With the app’s built-in trading platform, users can open a cash or margin account with zero minimums and trade with zero commission. If Webull traders have the risk appetite for it, they can open a margin account with Webull. [[1]]

All these features are supported by Webull’s Live Help desk, which ensures Webull’s customer issues, no matter how big or small, are resolved. Users can reach our customer service representatives through the Live Help button, social media, or email us at customerservice@webull.com.

To learn more about Webull Financial LLC, the app, or to book an interview, contact Gabriel Cao at 917-267-5556 or email gabe@webull-us.com, or visit the website at http://www.webull.com

[[1] ] Margin accounts need $2000+ in net equity in order to take advantage of 2X or 4X leverage. Some tickers cannot be bought with leverage or can only be bought with 2x leverage.

About Webull Financial LLC

Webull Financial LLC is a broker-dealer registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and is a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). The headquarters of Webull Financial LLC is located at 44 Wall Street, New York, NY, USA.

System response and account access times may vary due to a variety of factors, including trading volumes, market conditions, system performance, and other factors. Risk Disclosure: Trading of stocks and all other investment products involves substantial risk of loss and it is not suitable for every investor. The value of stocks may fluctuate and as a result, clients may lose more than their original investment.

Free online stock trading refers to $0 commissions for Webull Financial LLC self-directed individual cash or margin brokerage accounts that trade U.S. listed securities via mobile devices or Web. Relevant SEC & FINRA fees may apply.