Merrill Edge ® Self-Directed
Best for: Managing finances under one roof
Merrill Edge is a great choice for Investors who want the choice of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, CDs, and options. Merrill Edge is an especially good option for people who want access to real-live financial advisors, as Merrill is owned by Bank of America and has advisors in many of its branches across the country.
TD Ameritrade
Best for: Research
TD Ameritrade is one of the most popular brokers in the world, and for good reason. The platform is a great fit for investors who want a well-rounded brokerage experience, great customer support, and lots of account and investment options. TD Ameritrade has excellent educational resources for beginners, several trading platforms for investors of all skill levels, and pretty much every type of brokerage account you can think of.
SoFi Active Investing
Best for: Membership ecosystem
SoFi can be a good fit for investors who want an easy-to-use stock trading app that offers other financial products and services as well. SoFi has some unique features, such as cryptocurrency trading, fractional share investing, and access to IPO investing for smaller investors.
E*Trade
Best for: Mobile platform
E*Trade is a solid choice for investors who want a top-notch trading platform, great educational resources, and many different investment choices. E*Trade offers a wide variety of account types and is a great well-rounded brokerage that will meet most investors’ needs.
Robinhood
Best for: Mobile investing
Robinhood is a good option for investors who want a standard brokerage account where they can buy and sell stocks and/or cryptocurrencies through an easy-to-use app. Robinhood allows users to buy fractional shares of stock, and also is one of the few brokers to offer commission-free options trading.
Charles Schwab
Best for: Retirement investors
Charles Schwab is a good brokerage choice for Investors who want lots of investment and account type options, several ways to get customer service, as well as great banking and cash management products. Schwab offers some great features such as fractional share investing, and also has an excellent robo-advisor platform for investors who want to take a more passive role in their strategy.
Acorns
Best for: Rounding up spare change to invest
If you don’t want to choose individual stocks and funds to invest in, Acorns can make good sense for you. The Acorns platform is best suited to investors who want to completely automate their investment strategy. Acorns is a robo-advisor that makes investing easy, with features like automatic round-up of purchases to the nearest dollar and investing the change.
Vanguard
Best for: Low-cost index investing
Vanguard is a good broker for investors who want to put their money into ETFs or mutual funds, particularly Vanguard’s own. Vanguard’s low-cost ETFs and mutual funds are rarely on any brokers’ no-transaction-fee (NTF) lists, but investors can certainly buy them directly and avoid commissions.
Fidelity
Best for: DIY investors
Fidelity is a solid broker for investors who want a well-rounded broker with excellent customer service and low fees. Fidelity is one of the few large brokers to offer fractional share investing, and it also has a branch network throughout the United States.
Cash App Investing
Best for: Mobile investing and banking
Cash App isn’t exactly a full-featured broker, but it can be a good fit for beginners who want a simple platform to occasionally buy and sell stocks. Cash App isn’t a feature-packed investment platform, but it offers fractional share investing and Bitcoin trading, as well as one of the easiest setup procedures in the industry.
