HAPPY NEW YEAR! We at Wall Street Survivor are incredibly excited to start the new year off with a bang! Our New Year's resolutions involve investing more, stressing less, and giving away $2200 in prizes to our users in the 2022 Kickoff Contest. This seven-week competition will start on Monday, January 10th and last through the fourth week in February.

Make sure you sign up now  for a shot at $2200 in prizes!

Prizes

There are $2200 in prizes up for the taking in the Holiday Trading Contest! Here's the breakdown:

• Leader at the halfway point of the contest (November 19th): $550
• First place overall: $800
• Second place overall: $550
• Third place overall: $300

Leaders and winners are designated by largest overall portfolio returns.

Contest Calendar

January 10th: Contest Begins – SIGN UP HERE!

January 28th: Halfway Point

January 31st: Winner of Halfway Point Prize Announced

February 25th: Contest Ends

March 3rd: Winner of the 2022 Kickoff Contest Announced

If you’re looking for options to up your trading game in order to snag those cash prizes, check out some of our partner companies that produce our favorite investment research tools. The Motley Fool is one of the best stock pickers out there, and their Rule Breakers list is full of high-growth stocks that can take your Wall Street Survivor portfolio to the next level. Zacks is one of the most popular investment research platforms on the market, and their extensive research tools can give you the power to truly understand what you’re putting into your portfolio.

Contest Updates

Contest Rules

• Each individual is allowed only one portfolio in any contest.
• Winners will be contacted by email to receive their prize. This must be the email address associated with your account. If you need to change your email address, contact support@wallstreetsurvivor.com.
• Every contest has a starting portfolio value of $100,000 USD, allows only US equities and ETFs.
• Day trading and short selling are permitted in all contests.
• 500 max trades per account.
• 25% position limit.
• Margin trading is allowed. 8% interest will be charged on loan balances.
• All winners will be audited, and disqualifications will take place at our team’s sole discretion.
• Winners must claim their prize within 30 days of the results being announced.
• We may ask winners to provide a photo ID upon claiming their prize as part of our auditing process.

We can't wait to see you go for the gold in the Holiday Trading Contest! SIGN UP NOW and compete for $2000 in prizes!

The post 2022 Kickoff Contest appeared first on Wall Street Survivor.

So, you've taken a look at your financial situation and decided you're ready to join the world of investing as a long-term investor!

Well, this article is made just for you.

Today, we'll be discussing some stocks for long term investors as well as strategies that you'll find useful as a long-term investor.

Let's get started!

ETFs

Exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, are funds made up of stocks from a specific index, sector, or other group. 

ETFs offer natural diversification as they let you invest in plenty of different stocks at once.

Some ETFs, like ones that track the S&P 500, are great long-term investments because they let you invest in the market as a whole, which gains an average of 8% per year in the long term.

Other ETFs, like target-date funds, do some risk-mitigating work for you by adjusting your risk exposure as you get closer to retirement.

For example, if you’re around 20 years old and plan on retiring around the year 2060, you could invest in a 2060 target-date fund. This fund will take an aggressive approach at first, exposing its investors to smaller-cap stocks and foreign equities. Then, when investors are starting to buy houses and take financial responsibility for dependents, the fund will lower the risk by investing in blue-chip stocks and some bonds. As the year 2060 approaches, the fund will turn into a low-risk investment that is heavily exposed to bonds and lower-risk stocks. 

You can also use a target-date fund to save up for a big expense before retirement, such as buying a car or paying for your child’s education.

Blue Chip Stocks

A blue-chip company is one that is large, mature, and has a great reputation for securing profits and providing value to its shareholders.

The term “blue chip” is derived from the colors of poker chips. Blue poker chips are more valuable than red and white chips (although they are not the most valuable chip), so they came to represent companies that are considered high-quality.

Blue-chip companies tend to be big names that most people recognize.

These companies have often had decades to prove their worth through consistent profits, reliable dividends, performance during bad economic times, and strong financial statements.

According to the Motley Fool, the best blue-chip stocks are:

• Apple (AAPL)
• Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, BRK.B)
• Coca-Cola (KO)
• Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)
• Walt Disney (DIS)

Do you recognize some (or all) of these companies? There’s a reason for that!

Blue-chip companies are often household names whose goods or services you might even use on a regular basis. 

Buying stock in a blue chip company is considered a “safer” bet in the world of equities.

While a single stock won’t offer you the same level of diversification that a fund full of blue-chip stocks would, a single blue chip is still considered less risky than a smaller company.

Of course, this lower risk will usually come with lower reward.

Blue-chip companies are known for their stability and lack of volatility, so don’t expect to double your money in a month by purchasing a blue-chip stock.

But a blue chip can be a great addition to a long-term investor’s portfolio as it can provide steady growth over time, leading to a nice nest egg by the time you’re ready to retire.

Dividend Stocks

When a company makes a profit, its board of directors can choose to reinvest that money back into the company, give out the money to the company’s shareholders, or any combination of the two. 

When the company chooses to give some of its profit to its stockholders, the payment is called a dividend.

Dividends are usually paid in the form of cash (which usually shows up right in your brokerage account) or additional shares of stock.

Many companies give out dividends several times a year, which is something that income investors like to take advantage of. 

If you put a large enough amount of money into dividend stocks, your income from dividends can end up being enough to replace your salary.

For example, if you put $1000 into a company with a dividend yield of 5%, you’ll receive $12.50 in dividends every quarter, or $50 a year.

If you put $10,000 into that company, you’ll get $500 in dividends per year. If you invest $100,000, you’ll get $5000 a year. A $1,000,000 investment will get you $50,000 per year.

Now, keep in mind that dividends are not guaranteed. A company is not required to pay dividends to its shareholders, and can choose not to issue a dividend in any given quarter.

This is why you should go with a company that has a history of both issuing and raising its dividend amount every year.

The Dividend Aristocrats are large, regularly-traded companies who have increased the dollar amount of their dividends every year for at least the past 25 years.

While dividends are not guaranteed, investing your money into a company that qualifies as a Dividend Aristocrat gives you a good chance at consistently collecting a growing dividend every year, which can be a huge benefit in the long run. Just remember to reinvest those dividends!

Click here to see a current list of the Dividend Aristocrats.

Also keep in mind that while a company might reliably issue a dividend every quarter, that doesn’t mean that the value of your original investment is safe. 

The company’s stock price could plummet at any given moment, leading to a loss. Of course, this is a risk that you run anytime you choose to invest your money in the stock market.

How To Find Long-Term Investing Strategies

If you’re looking for some help setting up a plan for your long-term investing needs, we highly recommend checking out the Motley Fool. The Motley Fool is a stock picking and education platform made for buy-and-hold investors who want to maximize their long-term gains. Their stock picking list, Stock Advisor, has beaten the market by 500% since it was started in 2002!

Tax-Loss Harvesting

If you’re planning on investing for a long period of time and making consistent gains, you’ll inevitably have to face that dreaded time of the year: tax season.

When it comes time to do your taxes, you’ll take a look at the gains you’ve realized in the past year.

If you’re unfamiliar with the difference between realized and unrealized gains, it essentially comes down to which stocks you’ve sold for a profit.

If you bought a stock for $100 and the price rose to $110 but you haven’t sold yet, then you have $10 in unrealized gains.

Once you sell the stock and collect your profit, you have realized that $10 gain.

So, you’ll have to pay taxes on whatever realized gains you have for the past year, and those taxes can add up bigtime, especially if they’re short-term gains (gains realized from stocks you held for less than a year).

But the good news is that there are ways to offset, or decrease the amount of capital gains tax you have to pay. This can be done by realizing a loss from the sale of another stock.

Some smart investors will purposely sell their losers so that they can decrease their capital gains tax burden. This is a strategy known as tax-loss harvesting, and it can really make a difference when you do it every year.

Some brokerages will automatically harvest losses for you by selling your losing stocks, so keep that in mind as you search for a brokerage!

Dollar-Cost Averaging

If you’re planning on investing for a long period of time, it’s important to be conscious about not only investing your money across a variety of securities and asset classes (diversification), but at different points in time as well.

The strategy of taking a sum of money and investing it periodically over time rather than all at once is called dollar-cost averaging. It’s a method that has received mixed reviews from investors, but its aim is essentially to mitigate risk by avoiding a huge loss.

Let’s say you just got a bonus check for $12,000. You decide to dollar-cost average this money by investing $1000 every month for the next year.

Unfortunately, this year ends up being a rough one for the stock market; the market declines 5% every month. How much money do you lose?

Well, you lose $460 of the first $1000 you invested. You lose $431 of the second $1000 you invested, and so on. Since you invested your last $1000 in the last month of the year, you only lose 5%, or $50, of that investment. All in all, you lose $3267, or 27%, of your $12,000, leaving you with $8733.

What if you had just invested the entire $12,000 all at once at the beginning of the year? You would have lost $5515, or 46%, of that bonus check, leaving you with $6484. Not as good, right?

This is the purpose of dollar-cost averaging. You invest your money periodically over time instead of all at once so that you won’t lose as much money in the event of a downturn in the market. Then, when the market eventually goes back up, you make even more gains off of the investments you made when the market was at its lowest points!

There are some opponents of dollar-cost averaging who don’t think it’s useful.

Their argument is that, historically speaking, the market has gone up more often than it has gone down, so it’s worth investing all your money at once right now in the hope of seeing the market go up and securing more gains.

They have a valid point, but it really just comes down to how much risk you’re willing to take on.

Final Thoughts

While there are plenty of different stocks and strategies out there that you can use to build your long-term investing portfolio, the most important step in this process is to START.

You have to take those first few steps: budget your money, open up a brokerage account, and set up a regular automatic transfer from your bank into your portfolio.

Once you actually start investing and making gains, you'll be set up up for long-term success!

The post Stocks for Long Term Investors appeared first on Wall Street Survivor.

If you've done your initial research on what the stock market is and how it works, then you're finally ready to build your own portfolio!

But deciding which stocks to include in your first portfolio can be a stressful task. What if the company you invest in isn't reliable? What if the stock you're looking at doesn't have the right level of risk for your specific risk tolerance?

Well, we're here today to talk about some of the best stocks you can buy as a beginner.

We'll break this article down into several different investing strategies so that you can pick out which stocks suit you best.

For even more information, head to the Investing Ideas section up in the toolbar!

The Best Beginner Stock

The best stock for a beginner portfolio…

…Isn’t actually a stock at all. It’s an ETF, or exchange-traded fund.

An ETF is like a mutual fund, except it’s less costly, easily tradable, and usually managed passively. 

See, many investors are under the impression that they need to pay a big upfront fee plus management fees to join a big mutual fund so that they can make money and beat the market.

But in reality, actively managed funds typically aren’t that great.

In fact, according to S&P Global, less than 20% of large-cap funds in the U.S. have beaten the S&P 500 over the last decade. 

So, if so many active managers underperform the market, why not just invest in the market as a whole at a lower cost? If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right?

You can buy an S&P 500 ETF and gain exposure to ALL 500 STOCKS in the index with very little management fees.

An S&P 500 ETF tracks the S&P 500, meaning that if the S&P 500 goes up 5%, your ETF’s price will go up 5%. If the S&P 500 goes down 3%, your ETF will go down 3%, and so on.

Some of the most popular S&P 500 ETFs include SPY (from SPDR), IVV (from iShares), and VOO (from Vanguard).

I know that we at Wall Street Survivor have given you this advice plenty of times, but the reason why we keep repeating it is because it’s SO important.

The ability to invest in a low-cost security that usually beats fund managers and comes pre-diversified is too cool not to share!

What About Individual Stocks?

The S&P 500 is a collection of large, reliable stocks that can be used to represent the stock market as a whole, and an S&P 500 ETF is a great introduction to the world of investing. But if you want to buy individual stocks, you’ll need to choose an investing strategy that suits you. 

If you’ve gotten a feel for the stock market and you want to venture into individual equities, you can refer to the Investing Ideas menu up in the toolbar to help get you started. 

Here are some examples of individual stocks for beginners taken from the different sections of the Investing Ideas menu.

Value Investing

Value investing is a true fundamental investing strategy. 

It involves finding stocks that are underpriced by evaluating fundamental factors such as their financial statements, their leadership, and the economy as a whole.

You then buy the underpriced stock and hold it in the hopes that it eventually reaches its true value.

Some important value investing stocks on our Value Investing page brought to you by U.S. News are:

• Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT)
• Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. (VRTX)
• Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC)

Dividend Stock Investing

If you’re less concerned about making money through an increase in a stock’s price and more concerned about making steady, reliable income from your investments, then an income investing strategy might be the right choice for you.

When a company makes a profit, its board of directors can choose to reinvest that money back into the company, give out the money to the company’s shareholders, or any combination of the two. Many companies give out dividends several times a year.

There are some companies that have even increased their dividend consistently over the last several decades, known as the Dividend Aristocrats.

Investing your money in stocks with reliable (and constantly rising) dividends is a great way to earn passive income; you can sit on your stocks for years without worrying about constantly having to buy or sell stocks.

Here are some great stocks from our dividend stock investing list, brought to you by the Motley Fool.

• Lowe’s Companies Inc. (LOW)
• Realty Income Corporation (O)
• Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)

Small Cap Investing

If you’ve done some research into the world of investing, you’ve likely come across the term market capitalization, or market cap. 

Market cap is a number used to measure the size of a company and is calculated by multiplying the stock price by the number of shares outstanding. 

The three big categories of market cap are small cap, mid cap, and large cap.

Large cap companies are big companies that tend to be more reliable and less volatile than their smaller counterparts.

Small cap companies are usually considered to be riskier investments as they tend to have more price swings.

However, small cap stocks can be a good way to take on some risk in the pursuit of big gains, or even just as a way to diversify your portfolio.

Here are some of the most promising stocks from our Small Cap Stocks list, courtesy of Yahoo!

• The Beauty Health Company (SKIN)
• Hostess Brands Inc. (TWNK)
• Eagle Bulk Shipping Inc. (EGLE)

Swing Trading

If you’ve decided that fundamental investing isn’t for you and you want to try your hand at some shorter-term trades, then swing trading might be a good option for you.

Swing trading isn’t quite as intense as day trading, but it’s still a short-term trading strategy that requires research, time, and attention. It involves holding a stock for at least a day up to a few weeks in order to make a profit off of price changes.

Here are some solid stocks to swing trade according to InvestorPlace:

• Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL)
• Unilever PLC (UL)
• Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS)

Where to Buy Beginner Stocks

If you're looking for a platform to use for buying your first stocks, we've got a few in mind that we'd be happy to share.

First up, we have Robinhood. Robinhood has played a special part in the investing world over the last few years and it's a great platform for beginners. Robinhood was one of the first major brokerages to offer commission-free trading, which opened up the opportunity to invest to beginners and people with smaller portfolios. Now, the platform has millions of users that log in every day to trade, use the cash management account, and research stocks. Plus, you can get a free stock from Robinhood when you sign up today!

If you're investing from outside the U.S., then you won't be able to use Robinhood. That's why we named Interactive Brokers as our #1 brokerage for international investors! Interactive Brokers has a phenomenal lineup of advanced screeners and trading tools that give you access to 135 markets in 33 different countries.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, the best beginner stock is the one that suits your preferences and your investing style the best.

You should know what your risk tolerance is and how you want to earn money through investing before you buy your first stock.

The post Stocks for Beginners appeared first on Wall Street Survivor.

If you’ve read our Seeking Alpha review, you know that Seeking Alpha is an investment research platform that has A LOT to offer.

The platform is powered by information and ideas crowdsourced from its users, meaning that anyone can contribute to the Seeking Alpha community.

But don’t worry, the Seeking Alpha team scrutinizes its authors carefully to make sure that they are credible and don’t have any conflicts of interest with the stocks they’re discussing.

The platform also offers professional stock ratings, which let you see how buy-worthy a stock is according to Seeking Alpha authors, according to Wall Street analysts, and according to Seeking Alpha’s very own quant (quantitative analysis) system.

You can become a basic user with Seeking Alpha for free, but they also offer a Premium subscription for users who want to make the most of the tools and graphics featured on the platform.

So, the question we’re here to answer today is…

…Is Seeking Alpha Premium worth the money?

Let’s find out!

What Is Seeking Alpha Premium?

Seeking Alpha Premium is essentially the “upgraded” version of the platform’s basic membership. 

You get access to lots of features you don’t get with a basic plan, plus extra capabilities on other features. 

Let’s go ahead and talk about some of the differences between the basic membership and the Premium Subscription.

Here are the features included with the basic plan:

• Follow authors and get new articles from them
• Receive up to 15 newsletters by email
• Read and post Blogs
• Read, post, and track comments
• See some Quant Ratings and underlying metrics
• Review 5 years of financial statements
• Compare 5 stocks at once
• Sync your stock broker portfolio
• Build and manage a portfolio of stocks or ETFs
• Receive stock news and analysis email alerts
• Receive earnings and transcripts email alerts
• Read personalized news and articles
• See the earnings calendar to know when your stocks report

The Basic plan is absolutely free. All you have to do is sign up for an account!

And if you sign up for a Premium subscription, you get access to the following:

• Everything included in the basic plan
• Access all Premium investing ideas
• Listen to earnings and conference call recordings
• Screen for Top Rated Stocks with ratings screener 
• Less ads
• Access all stock earnings transcripts
• View Seeking Alpha author stock ratings
• View Seeking Alpha author ratings history
• Track each investing idea’s performance
• View article sidebar: stock chart, key data, ratings
• See stock dividend and earnings forecasts
• Access Dividend Grades for each dividend stock
• Download or print financials
• Download earnings & company presentations
• See ALL Quant Ratings and underlying metrics
• Review 10 years of financial statements
• Compare 7 stocks at once
• Receive full access to news and analysis
• See the EPS Revisions Grade in the earnings calendar
• See 3 types of ratings for each stock in your portfolio
• Enhanced experience for reading news
• Get alerts on upgrades and downgrades on your portfolio

The Premium subscription is an absolute steal. At only $19.99 per month for a one-year plan, this plan is simply the best bang for your buck! Plus, you can get a two-week trial of Seeking Alpha Premium, absolutely free!

You can also get a three-year Premium subscription for $14.99 per month, or pay month-to-month for $29.99 per month.

Is Seeking Alpha Worth the Money?

Our answer is a resounding YES.

Seeking Alpha Premium is absolutely worth the money, given the amount of money you can earn using the Premium tools and features.

So in order to prove to you that Premium is a worthwhile investment, we're going to give you the top 5 reasons why we think you should go Premium.

#1: Top Rated Stocks Screener

The Top Rated Stocks screener is a special tool for Premium users that automatically finds you the most promising stocks by applying filters for the best quant ratings, Seeking Alpha author ratings, Wall Street analyst ratings, and several factor ratings.

When you use the Top Rated Stocks screener, you're getting evaluations of a stock from three different perspectives, all with different motives and methods.

Seeking Alpha authors are independent investors who spend hours searching through news and financial statements in order to get a good read on the fundamentals of a stock.

Wall Street analysts are financial professionals who have access to expensive tools and research that help them build thorough financial models such as discounted cash flow (DCF) models that can provide a good estimate on the valuation of a company.

The quant, or quantitative analysis, system is an objective, unemotional stock evaluation system that is executed entirely through  computer algorithms.

When you have a stock that is rated highly by all three of these sources, it will appear on the Top Rated Stocks screener, making it easy to know that you can be confident in the stocks on the list!

#2: Earnings Call Transcripts and Audio

With a Premium subscription to Seeking Alpha, you can read transcripts and listen to audio recordings of earnings and conference calls for stocks that aren’t covered anywhere else.

Earnings calls help us see if there were any surprises by comparing the last quarter's earnings to what they were expected to be.

We can also use information given in earnings forecasts to make educated guesses on whether a stock's price will rise or fall.

#3: Dividend Grades

Seeking Alpha has its own unique dividend grading system that helps you evaluate the strength, growth, and reliability of a stock’s dividend.

Dividend Grades give you a different score for a company’s dividend safety, growth, yield, and consistency.

If you’re looking to balance your portfolio out with a big-name, dividend producing company, or you want to pursue an income investing strategy, Seeking Alpha’s dividend grades can get you there.

#4: Quant Ratings and Metrics

Seeking Alpha’s quant system has a stellar history of beating the market, making it a valuable tool for deciding which stocks to invest in.

With a Premium subscription, you can see all quant ratings and underlying metrics that determine what quant rating stocks receive.

This level of depth is extremely useful if you have a specific investing strategy in mind and you want to get to the bottom of a stock’s quant rating.

#5: Stock Comparison

Let’s say you want to add an up-and-coming tech stock to your portfolio, but you’re stuck between a few different options.

Seeking Alpha will let you compare stocks side-by-side to help you decide which stock is the best by whatever standard is important to you.

With Seeking Alpha premium, you can compare 7 different stocks at the same time!

Final Thoughts

Those are just five of our MANY reasons to sign up for Seeking Alpha Premium. If you're looking for more, read our full Seeking Alpha review here!

The post Is Seeking Alpha Worth It? appeared first on Wall Street Survivor.

Today we will be reviewing the investment research platform Seeking Alpha. We signed up for a Premium subscription and explored the entire platform, and this is what we thought!

What Is Seeking Alpha?

Seeking Alpha is an investing research platform started by financial analyst David Jackson. It has over 20 million users and contains research and ideas crowdsourced from its users.

The goal of seeking Alpha is to help fundamental investors share and find new ideas while connecting with other investors.

So, What Is Crowdsourcing?

Simply put, crowdsourcing is a method of getting information or labor from a large, open pool of people, usually on the internet. Seeking Alpha obtains much of its research from individual users just like you, making it a place where truly anyone can be a part of the investing conversation.

Editorial Review

Don’t worry, though: Seeking Alpha puts articles submitted on its platform through a rigorous editorial review process before they can be published. 

Here are the main tenets of the editorial review process:

• Articles must interest Seeking Alpha’s readership.
• Articles must conform to Seeking Alpha’s standards of rigor and clarity
• Articles about a stock trading at less than $1 or with a market cap below $100 million will see extra scrutiny but are still eligible for publication.
• The author must agree in writing to Seeking Alpha’s disclosure standards.

Seeking Alpha also only accepts articles from credible authors and requires the authors to disclose if they have a position in the particular stock they’re writing about, so you can be assured that there aren’t any conflicts of interest!

You can see an author’s track record of predictions and analysis and use that to decide whether to follow them or not. You can also just look up the Top Authors and go from there!

Features

Apart from discovering new investing ideas and keeping up with your favorite Seeking Alpha authors, here are some of the other features offered on the platform.

Top Rated Stocks Screener

The Top Rated Stocks screener is a feature available to Premium subscribers that lets you screen for the stocks with the best Seeking Alpha author ratings, Wall Street ratings, and Quant ratings all in one place.

Along with analyst ratings are factor grades for valuation, growth, profitability, and momentum, as well as EPS revisions.

This is an easy way to get a list of some of the most promising stocks out there in just a couple of seconds!

Earnings Calls

When you want to analyze a stock’s earnings history or EPS revisions, it can be helpful to read the transcript of the company’s earnings call (or even listen to the audio!) as a supplement to your research.

With a Premium subscription to Seeking Alpha, you get access to over 1 million investing ideas and earnings call transcripts and audio on stocks that aren’t covered anywhere else.

Stock Ratings

When you want to evaluate whether or not a stock will be a good addition to your portfolio, you have access to three main types of ratings on Seeking Alpha:

Seeking Alpha Ratings

These ratings are an average rating from Seeking Alpha authors.

Wall Street Ratings

This is a collection of ratings from Wall Street financial analysts.

Quant Rating

This rating is obtained through quantitative analysis, which is a non-human analysis powered by algorithms and coding to find the best stocks to trade.

All of the above ratings range from “very bullish” to “very bearish” and are a good way to start your search for a new stock.

Dividend Grades

If you’re looking to implement an income investing strategy or you’re just looking for a company that has increased its dividend steadily over the last few years, you can use Seeking Alpha’s proprietary Dividend Grades feature. Dividend Grades gives you a different score for a company’s dividend safety, growth, yield, and consistency.

Data Visualizations

Seeking Alpha has plenty of data visualizations to help you see earnings forecasts, revisions, and surprises, as well as dividend forecasts and other important metrics.

Peer Comparisons

If you're trying to compare two different stocks to see which one is better or you just want to see how a certain stock compares to related securities, you can make this comparisons in a side-by-side view.

Downloadable Financial Statements

Are you the type of investor who really likes to dive deep into the fundamentals before making a decision? Well, Seeking Alpha will help you out by granting you access to 10 years of financial statements for you to download and analyze.

Plans

Here's an overview of the different membership plans offered by Seeking Alpha.

The Basic Plan:

• Follow authors and get new articles from them
• Receive up to 15 newsletters by email
• Read and post Blogs
• Read, post, and track comments
• See some Quant Ratings and underlying metrics
• Review 5 years of financial statements
• Compare 5 stocks at once
• Sync your stock broker portfolio
• Build and manage a portfolio of stocks or ETFs
• Receive stock news and analysis email alerts
• Receive earnings and transcripts email alerts
• Read personalized news and articles
• See the earnings calendar to know when your stocks report

The Basic plan is absolutely free. All you have to do is sign up for an account!

The Premium Subscription:

• Everything included in Basic
• Access all Premium investing ideas
• Listen to earnings and conference call recordings
• Screen for Top Rated Stocks with ratings screener 
• Less ads
• Access all stock earnings transcripts
• View Seeking Alpha author stock ratings
• View Seeking Alpha author ratings history
• Track each investing idea’s performance
• View article sidebar: stock chart, key data, ratings
• See stock dividend and earnings forecasts
• Access Dividend Grades for each dividend stock
• Download or print financials
• Download earnings & company presentations
• See ALL Quant Ratings and underlying metrics
• Review 10 years of financial statements
• Compare 7 stocks at once
• Receive full access to news and analysis
• See the EPS Revisions Grade in the earnings calendar
• See 3 types of ratings for each stock in your portfolio
• Enhanced experience for reading news
• Get alerts on upgrades and downgrades on your portfolio

The Premium subscription is an absolute steal. At only $19.99 per month, this plan is simply the best bang for your buck!

Plus, you can get a two-week trial of Seeking Alpha Premium, absolutely free!

The PRO Subscription:

• Everything included in Premium
• Receive exclusive newsletters and interviews
• Access Seeking Alpha’s Top Ideas
• All short ideas in one place
• VIP Editorial Concierge
• Screen for investing ideas with PRO screener
• No ads

The PRO subscription costs $199.99 per month if you buy a year-long subscription, or $299.99 per month if you pay month-to-month.

Is Seeking Alpha Right for You?

We truly believe that Seeking Alpha is a stock research platform that has something for everyone.

The Basic plan is right for you if…

You’re just starting out in the investing world, or you want to get a feel for how Seeking Alpha works. 

If you’re trying to learn about the basics of fundamental investing while seeing what a professional research platform has to offer, you can start out with the Basic plan. You’ll have the “lite” version of most of the basic tools you need, but you won’t have full access to the features that will help you manage a full portfolio.

The Premium plan is right for you if…

You’re an intermediate-level investor committed to saving up for retirement or other long-term goals.

The Premium plan is the ideal plan for real fundamental investors. The best part about the Premium plan is that you can do as much or as little research as you want. If you just want to know which stocks have the best ratings from Seeking Alpha, Wall Street analysts, and quantitative analysis, then you can see that in a matter of seconds. But if you want to drill down deep into the different evaluation factors that Seeking Alpha uses, then you’re able to do that type of in-depth research as well.

The PRO plan is right for you if…

You’re a professional investor who wants the VIP treatment.

The level of special treatment that Seeking Alpha PRO subscribers enjoy is suitable for professional investors who make regular trades (including shorts) and/or want to contribute to the Seeking Alpha community by sharing their investing opinions regularly.

Final Thoughts

One of our favorite things about Seeking Alpha is that they don’t try to sell a PRO subscription to every single user on their platform. They truly believe that investing knowledge should be democratized into an affordable platform that anyone can use, and that’s exactly what they’ve done. They don’t try to get everyone to buy PRO because they know that most people don’t need it. They give you the ability to try out their platform for free, and then they offer you all the tools that most fundamental investors need at a VERY affordable price!

The post Seeking Alpha Review 2021: The Facts appeared first on Wall Street Survivor.

You’re probably used to being bombarded with credit card advertisements every time you turn on the TV, check your mail, or even take a flight.

Many of these advertisements promise you inexpensive vacations, free flights, or hundreds of dollars in cash back as long as you apply for their credit card.

But are these claims true? Can a little plastic card really give you those kinds of perks?

The answer is…

Sometimes.

It really depends on which card you get and how you use the card.

At the end of the day, credit card companies are trying to make money.

They do this in several ways.

One is by charging you a ridiculous amount of interest on your credit card balance…

…But you won’t have to worry about that since you read our article on credit cards and know that you should always pay off your credit card in full every month.

Another big way that credit card companies make money is through annual fees.

Your annual fee might be $30, $100, or hundreds and hundreds of dollars…or you might not have an annual fee at all!

Before you decide which credit card you want to apply for, it’s important to find out whether the card has an annual fee or not.

And if it does have an annual fee, you need to decide if the benefits the card offers are worth the fee you’ll have to pay every year.

So today, we’re going to take a look at three real-life credit cards and talk about whether each card might be worth it to you.

One card uses a point-based reward system, one uses a cash back reward system, and one is a travel rewards card.

Let’s get started!

Points System Rewards

Citi Premier Mastercard

Annual Fee: $95

Benefits:

• Three points for every $1 spent at restaurants
• Three points for every $1 spent at supermarkets
• Three points for every $1 spent at gas stations
• Three points for every $1 spent on flights
• Three points for every $1 spent on hotels
• One point for every $1 spent on all other purchases
• $100 off a hotel stay worth $500 or more, once a year
• No foreign transaction fees
• Transfer points to airline loyalty programs, use them on Amazon or BestBuy.com, or redeem them for gift cards

More Information

The Citi Premier card lets you rack up points at a surprisingly high speed.

You get three points per dollar spent in pretty much every category, and one point per dollar spent on all other purchases.

You can then redeem these points you’ve earned to shop at Amazon or Best Buy, or redeem them for gift cards.

You can also transfer your points to an eligible airline loyalty program.

Keep in mind that with most credit cards, 100 points are worth around $1 in rewards.

So with the Citi Premier card, you would need to spend anywhere from around $3200 to $9500 per year to make up for the annual fee.

Of course, the $100 off a hotel stay worth at least $500 also makes up for the annual fee, if you choose to use this benefit.

Citi is currently running a signup promotion that gets you 80,000 points when you spend $4000 with the card in the first three months of opening your account.

Cash Back Rewards

Chase Freedom Unlimited Visa Card

Annual Fee: None

Benefits:

• 5% cash back on trips purchased through Ultimate Rewards
• 3% cash back on drugstore purchases
• 3% cash back on dining purchases
• 1.5% cash back on all other purchases
• Rental car collision damage coverage
• Trip cancellation insurance

More Information

With cash back cards, it’s typical to have no annual fees – which is great news for you!

The amount of cash back you receive from credit card purchases is automatically kept track of by your credit card company.

When you’re ready to redeem your cash back rewards, you can usually receive the cash in the form of a statement credit, which will reduce the amount of money you owe on your credit card statement.

Sometimes, you can also receive a check or a bank transfer instead.

Chase is also running a signup promotion that gives you $200 cash back when you spend $500 with the card in the first three months. You’ll also get 5% cash back on grocery store purchases (except for Walmart and Target) for the first year.

You can also get 0% APR for the first 15 months – but that shouldn’t matter, because you’re paying off your credit card balance in full every month!

One of the obvious benefits of the Chase Freedom Unlimited card is that there is no annual fee.

If you don’t think it’s worth it for you to pay for a credit card every year, then a cash back card like this one might be a good choice for you.

You won’t get all the special travel benefits you can get with a travel rewards card, and you won’t get to purchase items at a discount like you can with a card that uses a point rewards system, but hey – you get free money just for using the card!

Travel Rewards

Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select World Elite Mastercard

Annual Fee: $99

Benefits:

• One free checked bag on American Airlines flights (applies to you and up to four travel companions)
• Board American Airlines flights in an earlier group
• 25% off food and drinks on American Airlines flights
• Earn two miles for every dollar spent at restaurants and gas stations and on American Airlines flights
• Earn one mile for every dollar spent on other purchases
• No foreign transaction fees

More Information

This American Airlines credit card is a great example of a travel rewards card whose benefits apply to a specific company.

Instead of having a cash back rewards system, this card grants you “miles” that you can use to buy flights, cars, hotels, seat upgrades, and other perks.

While it might seem like you’re getting the short end of the stick with a card whose rewards you can only redeem with one company, that’s not necessarily the case.

Most credit cards give you extra rewards for purchases made at restaurants, gas stations, and/or grocery stores.

But with this particular card, you also get double miles when you buy an American Airlines flight or make purchases on one of their flights.

These rewards might not be for you if you don’t travel often or you don’t fly with American Airlines all the time.

But if American is your airline of choice, then you’re in luck.

For example, if you’re someone who lives in or near Charlotte (the Charlotte airport is American’s hub), or your flights are always connecting through Charlotte, then chances are you fly on American Airlines pretty often.

If you travel a lot and you’re using American most of the time, then a card like this one will give you miles that will really add up long-term.

Not to mention the benefit of having a free checked bag.

Checking a bag with American Airlines usually costs $30 per flight.

So if you take two round-trip flights on American with a checked bag, then you’ve already paid off the annual fee!

This might not apply to you if you tend to travel light, but it can be very useful if you need to check a bag because you packed a lot of luggage or you need to transport an item that’s prohibited from being stored in your carry-on bag.

The early boarding benefit might not be a huge deal, but it’s a non-monetary perk that adds to the charm of the card!

Additionally, this card almost always has a signup promotion going on.

Right now, you’ll get 50,000 miles if you sign up for the card and use the card for $2500 purchases in the first three months. AND the $99 annual fee is waived for the first year.

This could be a great promotion to take advantage of even if you don’t plan on using the card very much!

Before You Apply

One of the most important things to think about before applying for a credit card is your credit score.

Some cards require a good or excellent credit score for approval, while some are meant for individuals with fair credit scores.

We recommend using Credit Karma to help you find the right card for your credit score. Credit Karma will give you weekly updates on your credit score and recommend credit cards that you have a good chance of being approved for.

Final Thoughts

Whether or not a credit card is right for you depends entirely on how much you use the card and what purchases you make with it.

If you sign up for a travel rewards card but you never buy flights or stay in hotels, you might be wasting money on the annual fee.

If you sign up for a points rewards card but you don’t use the card often, then the points you do earn might not even be enough to cover the cost of the annual fee.

If you’re not planning on making a lot of purchases with your credit card, we recommend signing up for one with no annual fee so that you can accumulate some rewards without worrying about losing money!

The post Credit Cards: Benefits vs. Annual Fees appeared first on Wall Street Survivor.

M1 Finance Review 2021

I am personally very excited to bring you Wall Street Survivor's M1 Finance review.

I have my own Roth IRA on M1 Finance and would highly recommend it for many investors.

In this M1 Finance review, you will learn about:

• What M1 Finance is
• What features are offered on M1 Finance
• If M1 Finance is safe
• How much M1 Finance costs
• How to sign up for M1 Plus and get your FIRST YEAR FREE

What Is M1 Finance?

M1 Finance is a financial services company that offers investment accounts, a cash management program, and margin trading.

The platform uses a unique portfolio construction system centered around “pies” that gives you total control of how your portfolio looks.

Let's take a look at M1 Finance and see if it's the right investment platform for you.

What Account Types Are Offered on M1 Finance?

M1 offers several different account types that all serve different purposes.

Taxable Investment Accounts

M1 Finance offers both individual and joint investment accounts.

These are your typical, taxable brokerage accounts. You'll pay capital gains tax and you'll be making your contributions with after-tax dollars.

Retirement Accounts

M1 Finance offers Traditional, Roth, and SEP IRAs.

Traditional IRAs allow you to receive a deduction to your taxable income when you contribute.

Roth IRA contributions are made with after-tax dollars, but you don't have to pay any taxes when you withdraw your contributions and earnings in retirement.

Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) plans allow employers to contribute to their employees' traditional IRAs (even if you're self-employed).

You can also rollover your 401(k) from a previous employer to M1 Finance.

Trust Accounts

If you want to set up a trust or you're the beneficiary of a trust, M1 Finance supports trust accounts on its platform.

Custodial Accounts

You can use M1 Finance to set up a custodial account for your child or another minor, which you will transfer to them when they become an adult. Custodial accounts are only available to M1 Plus members.

So, What Are “Pies?”

A “pie” is M1 Finance's name for mini-portfolios you can create and add to your main portfolio.

You can create and name your own pies, or choose from M1 Finance's selection of Expert Pies.

The Expert Pies include everything from saving for retirement, to socially responsible investing (SRI), to mimicking a hedge fund's investments at a fraction of the cost.

For example, let's say I wanted to create a portfolio on M1 Finance that's made up of 50% tech stocks and 50% Berkshire Hathaway.

I would first create my own pie comprised of my favorite tech stocks, weighting them any way I like.

Then, I would select the Berkshire Hathaway pie from the Hedge Fund Followers section of the Expert Pies.

Then, I would add these two pies to my main portfolio and give them each a 50% weight, and boom! I have my desired portfolio.

Trading Windows

M1 Finance only lets you place trades during certain windows of time.

As a standard M1 user, you can place trades during the 9:30am window.

If you sign up for M1 Plus, you also get access to the 3:00pm window.

This feature is not ideal for day traders or investors who want to place short-term trades at specific times of the day.

But for buy-and-hold investors, it shouldn't be an issue, since you can just submit your trade ahead of time and know that it will go through during the next trading window.

M1 Borrow

M1 Borrow is M1 Finance’s margin program.

To be eligible to borrow money, your portfolio must be worth at least $5000.

You can borrow up to 35% of the value of your portfolio at a 2% interest rate.

If you’re a member of M1 Plus, your interest rate is 2%.

Keep in mind that while trading on margin can help you increase your overall return, it can also exacerbate your losses.

If you need a refresher on how margin works, check out our article on How to Use Debt to Your Advantage.

M1 Spend

Spend Checking

The M1 Spend Checking account is a cash management program that allows you to open a free checking account and link it to your M1 Spend and M1 Borrow accounts.

There is no minimum balance for the checking account, no monthly fee, and no foreign transaction fees.

You can set up direct deposit and automatic transfers, and you even get instant transfers between your M1 accounts so you can have quicker access to your money.

When you sign up for Spend Checking, you get a debit card you can use for everyday purchases.

While M1 does not have a dedicated ATM network, you can use your debit card at any ATM to withdraw money.

M1 will reimburse you for one ATM fee per month (four per month for M1 Plus members).

M1 Plus members will also receive interest at a 1% APY for the money deposited in their Spend Checking account and 1% cash back on purchases.

The M1 Spend Checking account deposits your money with Lincoln Savings Bank, M1 Finance’s partner bank.

The Owner’s Rewards Card

The Owner’s Rewards Card is a credit card from M1 that uses a unique cash back program: you earn cash back when you spend money at companies you invest in!

The card is named the Owner’s Rewards Card because holding stock in a company makes you a partial owner of the company.

The cash back program for the credit card has a tiered system that lets you earn more cash back depending on which company you’re buying products or services from.

There is a 2.5% cash back tier, a 5% cash back tier, and a 10% cash back tier.

Click here to see a list of the companies in each tier.

For purchases at companies not in those tiers, cardholders will earn 1.5% cash back everywhere else.

You can earn a maximum of $200 cash back per month.

There is an annual fee of $95 for the Owner’s Rewards Card, but that fee is waived for M1 Plus members.

At the moment, only M1 Plus members are invited to apply for the Owner’s Rewards Card, but M1 is expected to open applications to standard M1 users in the future.

M1 Plus

M1 Plus is M1 Finance’s premium subscription for users who want to get more out of the M1 experience. Here are the features you get with M1 Plus:

• Smart Transfers
• 2% interest for M1 Borrow (vs. 3% with standard membership)
• 1% APY for your M1 Spend Checking account balance
• Custodial accounts
• 1% cash back on purchases made with your M1 Spend debit card
• Four ATM fee reimbursements per month on M1 Spend Checking (vs. one with standard membership)
• Afternoon trading window (vs. only morning with standard membership)
• Checks for M1 Spend Checking
• Apply for the Owner’s Rewards Card

A subscription to M1 Plus costs $125 per year, but you can get your first year for free when you sign up now!

Is M1 Finance Safe?

Yes. M1 Finance has been in business since 2015 and has over half a million users who have invested more than $4.5 billion on their platform.

They are a member of both the SIPC and FINRA, meaning that they are regulated just as much as any other broker-dealer and your invested cash is insured (against M1 losing your money, not against the stocks in your portfolio going down in price).

M1’s partner banks are FDIC insured, so you won’t have to worry about the money in your M1 Spend Checking account being lost, either.

Is M1 Finance Free?

M1 Finance is absolutely free, if you want it to be.

There are no commissions on trades and no monthly fees on M1 Spend Checking.

As long as you keep at least $20 in your bank account and avoid terminating your accounts or doing wire transfers, your experience will be free.

Of course, if you decide to sign up for the Owner’s Rewards Card , you’ll have to pay the annual fee.

And if you want to subscribe to M1 Plus, you’ll pay the annual fee for that, too.

But you can get your first year of M1 Plus for free AND waive your Owner’s Rewards card annual fee if you sign up for M1 Plus now!

Who is M1 Finance For?

M1 Finance is for:

Experienced investors. M1 assumes that you know what you’re doing and gives you the freedom and control to build and manage your portfolio the way you want.

Investors with a long-term focus. 

M1 Finance is NOT for:

Beginners. If you’re looking for a beginner platform that will guide you through your trades and give you advice on your portfolio, you may want to look elsewhere. While M1 Finance does offer Expert Pies that are already created for you, you won’t get any tips on how to balance your portfolio or tools to help you plan for retirement.

Day Traders. The way M1 orchestrates your trading during designated trading windows means you can’t always buy or sell a stock at the exact second you want to do it. The platform is best for those investors who are planning on holding their investments for many years and don’t care about the time of day during which they’re making trades.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, M1 Finance is a spectacular investing platform, but that doesn't mean that it's right for everyone.

Experienced investors will find a great home for their investment accounts at M1 Finance due to the amount of control they have over their portfolios.

But beginner investors might want to get started with a beginner broker before stepping up to a hands-on platform like M1.

The post M1 Finance Review 2021 appeared first on Wall Street Survivor.

If you're new to investing, chances are you've learned a few lessons.

And maybe you learned some of those lessons the hard way…which is no fun.

But we're here today to talk about some of the biggest mistakes rookie traders make so that you can learn about them the easy way!

#1: Not Diversifying

It’s okay to take risks when you’re investing, especially if you’re far from retirement and don’t have a lot of financial responsibilities.

But a lack of diversification in your portfolio can lead to a lot of volatility and make for a very stressful time. 

Ideally, you should build a portfolio of more than 20 securities that are uncorrelated.

This way, the poor performance of one stock won’t bring down your entire portfolio. 

If you need help diversifying your portfolio without doing all the work yourself, check out a robo-advisor like Acorns. Acorns will give you a short questionnaire to assess your financial situation and risk tolerance and assign you a well-diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your investing profile. Acorns also uses its unique roundups system, which takes your everyday purchases, rounds them up to the nearest dollar, and invests the spare change for you.

#2: Trading Emotionally

The consequences of trading emotionally can be tough, and it’s a lesson that a lot of new investors learn the hard way. 

The stock market can be emotional and irrational. It’s important to keep your cool during periods of market volatility so that you don’t let yourself make a decision that loses you money unnecessarily.

If you’ve done your research on the stocks in your portfolio, you should know when it’s time to buy more, hold, or sell.

The swings of the market shouldn’t be making this decision for you, because you know what your stock is worth.

Unless there is a change in the fundamental qualities of your stock, you should have no reason to make a change.

Some of the most common emotional trading mistakes include:

• Panic-selling when your stock’s price is dropping or the market as a whole is taking a dip
• Selling a winning stock too early instead of letting it run
• Holding onto a losing stock, or even buying more in the hopes of “getting even,” or recovering your losses

#3: Not Using a Stock Picking List

If you don’t have several hours a day to spend researching the market and deciding what your next investing moves will be, you can always take advantage of a stock picker to help you decide what to buy and sell.

A good stock picking list will make daily updates to their recommendations and alert you immediately when a stock changes from a buy to a sell rating or vice versa. 

There are some stock pickers out there who make false claims about their abilities. They’ll say that they can make you rich, that they only pick winning stocks, or that they know how to time the market.

It’s important to be able to differentiate between these stock pickers that just want to take your money and real stock pickers who really know what they’re doing.

A reliable stock picker is honest about their abilities. They’ll recognize that they can’t time the market and that they won’t outperform the market every year. They’ll acknowledge that they don’t have some sort of secret that the rest of the investing world doesn’t have; they are simply offering to do the research for you so that you don’t have to spend the time doing it yourself. And most importantly, a good stock picker will have a solid performance history.

Here are some of our favorite stock pickers:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor is a list from the Motley Fool that aims to give its users long-term success through buy-and-hold investing. The Fool adds two new stocks to the list every month, and it has beaten the S&P 500 by over 500% since its inception in 2002.

Zacks #1 Strong Buy is a list from Zacks Investment Research that uses the Zacks Rank system. Zacks evaluates stocks and assigns them a rank between 5 (strong sell) and 1 (strong buy). You can use Zacks’ advanced research and screening tools to see what your favorite stocks are ranked, or you can just buy from the list of stocks that are ranked as #1 strong buy. The #1 Strong Buy list has beaten the market in 26 out of the last 31 years it has been used. 

#4: Not Using Tax-Advantaged Accounts

If you think the only way to get access to the stock market is to open a run-of-the-mill brokerage account with no income tax advantages and no shelter from capital gains tax, you would be incorrect.

Depending on your situation, there are plenty of options for investment accounts that will leave you with a lower tax burden compared to a regular brokerage account.

For example, the Roth IRA is a retirement account that lets you make your contributions with after-tax dollars and allows you to withdraw your money and gains tax-free in retirement.

The traditional IRA lets you deduct your contributions from your taxable income.

There is also a Roth variation of your typical 401(k), which is even better if your employer offers contribution matching!

There are also tax-advantaged investment accounts for self-employed individuals, those who want to invest in real estate, and children. The possibilities are endless!

#5: Not Using a Budgeting App

How are you supposed to be a successful investor if you don’t know how much money you have available to invest?

There are plenty of platforms out there that let you sync your bank accounts, credit and debit cards, and even your loans so that you have a snapshot of your financial life all in one place.

These platforms will keep track of your income, spending, saving, upcoming bills, and sometimes even your credit score. 

Our favorite budgeting tool comes from Personal Capital. Personal Capital is a holistic personal finance platform that offers cash management, portfolio analysis, retirement planning, and wealth management services. Their budgeting tool analyzes your purchases and automatically categorizes them, allowing you to manually edit categories, upload receipts, and download your transaction ledger as a .csv file. And the best part: it’s completely free!

#6: Investing in Securities They Don’t Understand

If you don’t understand something, you shouldn’t put money in it. Plain and simple.

Of course, it can be tempting jump on the train when you see people making millions of dollars off of options, cryptocurrency, and NFTs, but keep this in mind: for every story of someone making a ton of money off of some new investing craze, there are plenty of stories of people losing everything trying to invest in the same thing because they didn’t understand it.

We’re not saying that you shouldn’t keep up with the times and try out new types of investments, but just make sure you do your research and understand how it works before you dump a bunch of money into it.

#7: Not Learning

If you want to set yourself up to meet your financial goals through investing, you have to commit to being a lifelong learner.

As Charlie Munger once said, “those who keep learning will keep rising in life.”

The world of investing is constantly changing, as are the strategies used to navigate it.

New information comes out every day as companies make new decisions. The economy fluctuates with time and with policy.

If you want to make the most informed investing decisions possible, you have to stay up-to-date with the news and be dedicated to learning as much as possible.

If you’re not sure where to start learning or you need some help finding a large amount of stock research in one place, we have some recommendations for you.

Zacks Investment Research is a great platform to help you keep up with the news and find out if anything important about a stock has changed. They offer screening tools, professional stock analysis, and their own Zacks Rank system that makes stock evaluation easy.

Stock Rover simply has some of the most advanced research tools available. In addition to their charting and screening capabilities, they offer portfolio management and in-depth research reports with commentary from skilled analysts.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully these investing lessons have given you some ideas and put you in a position to avoid making some of these painful mistakes.

What are some of the investing lessons you've learned that weren't mentioned here? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Top 7 Mistakes Rookie Traders Make appeared first on Wall Street Survivor.

For many people, debt is a scary concept that should be avoided whenever possible.

But we at Wall Street Survivor are here to tell you that debt is nothing to be afraid of.

In fact, if you treat debt the right way, it's actually something you can use to your advantage in order to make money!

In this article, we're going to discuss a couple ways that you can use debt to your advantage, as well as what to avoid, so that you can alter your perspective on borrowing money and develop a healthy relationship with debt.

Margin Trading

Margin is when your brokerage lends you money to use for investing. You’re required to pay this money back to your brokerage plus any interest they may charge.

Ideally, you would use the money you’re borrowing to make a big return by investing in stocks, and then you’ll still get to keep most of your profits after paying the interest.

Many brokerages like Robinhood let you trade on margin for surprisingly low interest rates.

You can use margin to increase your total profit.

For example, let’s say you have $5000 in your brokerage account. You take out $5000 of margin, and you’ll be required to pay that money back plus 2% interest. You now have $10,000 to invest with. You’re a very good investor, so you make a 10% return, leaving you with $11,000. You pay back the $5100 you owe your brokerage ($5000 principal plus $100 interest), which now leaves you with $5900. That’s a profit of $900, or 18%.

If you had just invested your original money and not taken out any margin, your 10% profit would have amounted to $500.

But since your brokerage let you make a profit using their money, you were able to make a profit equal to 20% of your original cash, and you only had to pay back 2%!

Unfortunately, leveraging your portfolio through margin trading can also work against you.

For example, let’s say you had $5000 in your account and took out $5000 of margin, just like in the last example. But this time, the market doesn’t treat you quite as kindly. Instead of making a profit of 10%, you actually lose 10%. That means you’re left with $9000. Now, you still have to pay back your principal and interest. Even though you lost money, you owe your brokerage $5100. You’re left with $3900 for a loss of $1100 or 22%.

Without margin, your 10% loss would have been equal to $500, but in this case, trading on margin increased your losses substantially. 

There are rules set by both the government and your specific brokerage that determine how much money you’re allowed to borrow and how much equity you must maintain in your margin account without having to deposit more money.

The initial margin requirement established by the government is 50%, meaning that you can’t borrow more than the amount of your portfolio. (If you have $5000 of your own money in your margin account, you can’t borrow more than $5000 from your brokerage.)

The margin maintenance requirement set by the government is 25%.

This means that you’ll have to deposit more money into your margin account if your equity in the account drops below 25%.

While you initially had to have 50% equity to borrow the money, you might lose money if the stocks you buy go down in price, which would reduce your equity.

For example, if you originally had $5000 in your account and you borrowed $5000 from your brokerage, your initial equity was 50%. But let’s say you use that total $10,000 to buy a portfolio of stocks, and that portfolio tanks 37.5%. This means you lose $3750, and your portfolio is now worth $6250. Your brokerage still has $5000 that they put into your margin account so that doesn’t change; their cut is now worth 80%. The $3750 loss comes out of your part of the portfolio, so your equity is now worth 20%.

Since your equity fell below the 25% margin maintenance requirement, you will now be hit with a margin call.

The margin call is dreaded among investors; it’s when your brokerage tells you that you have to deposit more money into your account (which is already losing money) to get your equity share up to 25%.

If you don’t deposit money, your brokerage has the right to sell the holdings in your account to recoup their loan.

If you still can’t pay back your debt, you might be in legal trouble.

You would have to make a risky investment and have it go very badly to experience a margin call, but it’s still a real possibility that can lead to crippling losses.

Margin trading can be a great way to multiply your gains without having extra money to your name, but it can also get you into trouble if you’re not careful.

Mortgages

The word “mortgage” might send a chill down your spine.

It’s a huge piece of debt that you either have right now, or will most likely have at some point in your life.

While mortgages are big loans that usually take decades to pay back, there’s no need to be afraid of them.

In fact, if you plan your mortgage the right way, you can even get to a point where you’re actually making more money than you’re paying for your mortgage.

Here’s how.

Let’s say that you’re planning to buy a new house soon.

When you go to the bank to set up your mortgage, you’re given three different options: a 15-year term, a 20-year term, or a 30-year term.

You might immediately be turned off by the idea of a 30-year mortgage; debt looming over you for three decades? Why would anyone want to do that to themselves?

Well, because of the lower monthly payment.

30-year mortgages, which are the most common mortgages in the U.S., generally have higher interest rates and lower monthly payments.

For a lot of people, a 30-year mortgage is all (or even more than) they can afford. This is a tough situation because you’ll feel like your debt is on top of you and you might struggle to make payments.

But if you have the room in your budget to afford different mortgage terms, you might want to consider using a lower monthly payment to your advantage.

For example, let’s say that your current budget allows for $2000 in housing expenses per month. Your mortgage options are: a 15-year mortgage at 2.5% for $2000 per month, a 20-year mortgage at 2.75% for $1500 per month, or a 30-year mortgage at 3% for $1000 per month. Since you can afford the 15-year mortgage, you might be tempted to take that one. After all, you’d pay your debt off much quicker and the total amount you’ll pay at the end of the mortgage term is much less than it would be with a 30-year mortgage.

But let’s consider the options.

If you go with the 15-year mortgage, your monthly payment will be exactly what you can afford. With this option, you’ll get the lowest interest rate, you’ll pay your debt off faster, and the sum of all your payments at the end of the term will be lower.

If you choose the 30-year mortgage, your monthly payment will be a whole $1000 less than your limit. Your interest rate will be higher and the sum of all your payments will be a scarily large amount of money, often more than double the price of the house. But since you’re leaving open a whole $1000 a month, you can invest this money in an S&P 500 ETF and make a return of about 8% per year on average. The gains you make from your investments will likely add up to be more than you spent on the house in the first place!

Choosing the 20-year mortgage would land you somewhere in between these two options.

Of course, this approach requires a lot of discipline.

If you’re “saving” an extra $1000 per month by choosing a mortgage with a lower monthly payment, it can be hard to take that extra $1000 and invest it.

You might be tempted to just throw this $1000 into the personal section of your budget and spend it on yourself.

In order to truly use debt to your advantage, you have to be committed to taking the privileges that debt gives you and use them to make an extra return through investing.

Another way to use a mortgage to your advantage is to take out a mortgage to buy a rental property, and then use the rent you collect from your tenants to pay off the mortgage (and make a profit at the same time).

This approach comes with its own set of risks and is treated differently in terms of tax laws, but many investors have built sizable streams of passive income for themselves through owning rental properties. Click here to read our article on buying your first rental property.

Final Thoughts

It's absolutely true that not all debt is good debt.

But likewise, it's also true that not all debt is bad debt.

If you can take out a loan on an asset that will appreciate in value or provide you with a net positive value in the future, and you can use the instrument of debt to your advantage in order to secure some extra returns, you'll be on the right track to having a healthy relationship with debt.

The post How to Use Debt to Your Advantage appeared first on Wall Street Survivor.

What Is Passive Income?

Passive income is essentially money you earn while not actively working for it. Generally, a passive income stream requires a decent investment of time and/or money upfront, but once you have the stream set up, it could continue making money for you forever.

So, let’s talk about some of the best ways to earn passive income!

Invest in a Rental Property

Owning a property and renting it out to tenants is a great way to build a solid, reliable source of passive income. After all, people always need a place to live, right? Of course, this does depend on you finding a good property in a desirable location and making sure your tenants are properly vetted. If you think owning a rental property might be a good option for you, check out our article on How to Buy Your First Rental Property.

Start a Website

If you have a particular interest in a certain subject or field, starting a website could be a great way to share your knowledge with the world while bringing in some regular passive income. Your website could be a blog, a product review center, or a tool that helps users research things like travel destinations or real estate. When you have enough users visiting your site, you’ll be eligible for ads from search engines, or you can sell ad space on your site to individual advertisers!

Start a YouTube Channel

Similarly to starting a website, starting a YouTube channel is a way for you to share what you’re passionate about while creating the potential for advertising revenue. You’ll have to get a couple thousand views under your belt first, but once you’re there, YouTube will run ads before and/or during your video and pay you for it.

Affiliate Marketing

If you do manage to create a website or a YouTube channel that’s generating a good bit of traffic, you can pursue relationships with affiliate partners who will pay you to market their products. You might get a commission every time a user clicks on a link that your affiliate partner gives you or every time they buy a product after following the link.

Flip Products

Many people have built successful online stores by buying products wholesale and reselling them on Amazon or another ecommerce site. For example, if you see that there is a particular consumer interest in beauty products, you could buy such products in bulk and have them shipped to you. Since you’re buying in bulk, your per-unit cost will be fairly low. You can then become an Amazon seller and resell the products you bought for a normal retail price, securing a sizable profit margin for yourself. The downside to doing this middleman work is that you will have to shell out a lot of money up front in order to secure a wholesale price on the products you’re buying. Additionally, since you’re trying to sell so many products, it could take years for your inventory to clear out and leave you with a big profit.

Dividend Stocks

When a company turns a profit, they can choose to put that money back into the company or to give that money to its stockholders in the form of dividends, or any combination of these two options. There are several companies in the stock market that are known for regularly giving out dividends to their shareholders, and even growing the amount of their dividend every year. Some investors will pursue an “income” investing strategy that involves putting a lot of money into such companies and collecting the dividends those companies give out every quarter. If you have enough money to invest in these companies, the amount of your dividends could even be enough to replace a full-time salary!

Lend Money

Another good way to build passive income is to lend your money out to others. There are several ways to do this, each involving a different level of risk and reward. The safest way to lend money would be to lend to the U.S. government. You can do this by buying a U.S. Treasury bond. You can buy these bonds online, and you’ll receive bond payments plus interest until the term of the bond is over. If you buy a Treasury bond with a longer term, the interest rate will be higher (most of the time).

You can also lend money to your bank. A certificate of deposit, or CD, is an agreement in which you leave a predetermined sum of money with your bank, and at the end of the term, the bank gives you back your money plus interest. This is also a relatively safe way to lend money because CDs are backed by the FDIC.

If you want to take on more risk and have the opportunity to charge higher interest rates, you can participate in peer-to-peer, or P2P, lending. As the name suggests, P2P lending is a system that allows individuals to borrow money from other individuals, rather than from a bank. You can find P2P lending platforms online, and becoming a lender will allow you to earn interest on the money you lend.

Invest In a Business

If you have the money to invest in a business but don’t have time to actually work to build the business, you can invest in the business and become a silent partner. You’ll shell out money to buy yourself ownership in the business, but one of the other owners will do the work necessary to run it. Not every business owner is looking for an arrangement like this, so you’ll have to find an owner who is willing to grant you a stake in the company for contributing your money.

Create a Course on Udemy

Udemy is one of the best massive open online course (MOOC) platforms out there. You can log onto Udemy and find a full, educational course for just about anything. There are over 155,000 courses taught in more than 65 languages for users to enjoy. With Udemy, you can learn everything from playing an instrument to financial modeling.

If you have a good amount of knowledge about any topic, no matter how random or niche it might be, you can create a course on Udemy! 

Click here to read our review of Udemy.

Creative work (music, photography, art)

This one can be a rewarding way to monetize your talents without having to put in a bunch of money up front. If you’re skilled at playing an instrument or creating beats with a music creation software, taking professional photographs, or creating physical or digital art, you can turn your creations into cold, hard cash! You can sell the rights to your art to a distribution platform, then receive a commission every time someone buys your beat to use in a song or your photo to use on a website.

Final Thoughts

Many of the passive income ideas listed in this article require quite a bit of investment on the front end. If you don’t have thousands of dollars to put into starting a passive income stream, don’t worry. Start with something simple that makes you happy, and then the opportunity for monetization will come!

The post How to Earn Passive Income appeared first on Wall Street Survivor.

Wall Street Survivor has one more contest left for the year and we're so excited for you to join in on the holiday trading fun! The Holiday Trading Contest is a six-week competition that will wrap up halfway through December, just in time for you to grab some prize money and buy holiday gifts for your loved ones.

Make sure you sign up now before trading starts on November 1st!

Prizes

There are $2000 in prizes up for the taking in the Holiday Trading Contest! Here's the breakdown:

• Leader at the halfway point of the contest (November 19th): $500
• First place overall: $750
• Second place overall: $500
• Third place overall: $250

Leaders and winners are designated by largest overall portfolio returns.

Contest Calendar

• November 1st: Contest Begins – SIGN UP HERE!
• November 19th: Halfway Point
• November 22nd: Winner of Halfway Point Prize Announced
• December 10th: Contest Ends
• December 16th: Winner of Holiday Trading Contest Announced

If you’re looking for options to up your trading game in order to snag those cash prizes, check out some of our partner companies that produce our favorite investment research tools. The Motley Fool is one of the best stock pickers out there, and their Rule Breakers list is full of high-growth stocks that can take your Wall Street Survivor portfolio to the next level. Zacks is one of the most popular investment research platforms on the market, and their extensive research tools can give you the power to truly understand what you’re putting into your portfolio.

Contest Rules

• Each individual is allowed only one portfolio in any contest.
• Winners will be contacted by email to receive their prize. This must be the email address associated with your account. If you need to change your email address, contact support@wallstreetsurvivor.com.
• Every contest has a starting portfolio value of $100,000 USD, allows only US equities and ETFs.
• Day trading and short selling are permitted in all contests.
• 500 max trades per account.
• 25% position limit.
• Margin trading is allowed. 8% interest will be charged on loan balances.
• All winners will be audited, and disqualifications will take place at our team’s sole discretion.
• Winners must claim their prize within 30 days of the results being announced.
• We may ask winners to provide a photo ID upon claiming their prize as part of our auditing process.

We can't wait to see you go for the gold in the Holiday Trading Contest! SIGN UP NOW and compete for $2000 in prizes!

The post WSS Holiday Trading Contest appeared first on Wall Street Survivor.

Many investors choose to buy real estate as a way to diversify their portfolios and build a stream passive income. If you're looking to invest in your first rental property, this guide is for you!

The guide will be broken down into four major topics:

• The Location
• The Mortgage
• The Upkeep
• The Cash Flows

Let's do it!

The Location

Location is one of the most important factors to consider when choosing an investment property. Firstly, consider the property values of homes in different areas. For example, you’ll be looking at a much more expensive property when you consider buying a house in a more sought-after state like California or Hawaii. On the other hand, you’ll find some nice properties at much cheaper prices in places like Georgia or South Carolina. 

It’s also important to consider the quality of the neighborhood in which the property is located. Many real estate investors opt to find undervalued properties in up-and-coming neighborhoods that have a lot of potential. Years down the road, an investment like this can pay off big time if the neighborhood becomes much more desirable and the values of the homes in the neighborhood shoot up.

Besides the value of the home itself, keep in mind some of the other geographic factors that might make a certain property attractive to potential homebuyers. For example, if you’re investing in a single or multi-family home and planning on renting it out to families with children, you’ll want to make sure that the property is located in a good school district, close to parks and playgrounds, and within a reasonable distance of other entertainment such as movie theaters or amusement parks.

The Mortgage

Unless you have $200,000 in cash sitting in a money market account somewhere, you'll have to finance your rental property purchase through a mortgage. Mortgages can be a very scary but very useful form of debt to take on, so let's take a look at some of the details to help you make sure you find the right mortgage for you.

The Down Payment

Down payment requirements are generally higher for investment properties than they are for properties that the owner intends to live in. This is because these mortgages are seen as higher-risk loans; you might not take care of the property since you aren’t living in it, and you might fail to find a renter to cover the mortgage payments which could mean defaulting on the loan.

You may have heard of PMI, or private mortgage insurance. This is a type of insurance that protects the lender in case you default on your loan. Typically, lenders will let you pay a smaller down payment if you purchase PMI. When you combine PMI with special loans like FHA loans, you can get your down payment down to as little as about 3%. But since PMI and FHA loans are not available for investment properties, you're likely looking at a down payment of around 20% or higher.

The Interest Rate

Interest rates are also higher for investment property mortgages than for owner-occupied property mortgages. Of course, interest rates vary all the time, so you can wait until rates are in your favor before seeking out a mortgage, but just keep in mind that your interest rate for a rental property will likely be up to 100 basis points, or 1%, more than what it would be for a property you’re living in.

The Monthly Payment

Your monthly mortgage payment will depend largely on the term of your mortgage. If you choose to take out a 30-year mortgage, your payment will be lower since you have longer time to pay it off. Of course, this means that you’ll end up paying more in total at the end of the mortgage. If you choose a shorter term, like a 15-year mortgage, you’ll pay more every month but less in total.

The Upkeep

While being a landlord can be a great way to build passive income and set yourself up for the rest of your life, landlording is often a difficult and time consuming occupation. If you’ve ever lived in a house (especially an older house, like one built in the early 1900s), you know that things break all the time. Sometimes there’s a leak that’s causing damage to a floor or ceiling; sometimes there’s a toilet that needs to be unclogged; sometimes the air conditioning system breaks, leaving the house steaming hot and the tenants unhappy. In most situations, issues like these will be your responsibility as a landlord to resolve. 

So you’re left with a few different options when it comes time to solve a problem that’s occurred in your house.

Do It Yourself

Your first option is to fix the problem yourself. If you’re lucky enough to be skilled at home repair, then this option will save you quite a bit of money. The problem is that many people don’t have the skills or the time necessary to go over to their property and fix the problem by hand…

Which leads us to the second option.

Hire a Professional

You can choose to hire a specialist to come and fix the problem for you. If you’re unsure how to fix a leak or repair an AC unit, then calling in a repairman might be the best option for you. While this option still involves taking the time to find and coordinate with a good specialist, it will be much less time consuming than fixing the problem yourself. Unfortunately, this option will be quite a bit more expensive. You can expect to be charged several hundred dollars in labor for a typical repair, while parts can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars, depending on the severity of the break.

Hire a Property Manager

If you don’t have the time to coordinate an appointment with a professional or you want a completely hands-off landlording experience, there is a third option available.

By hiring a professional property management company, you can essentially hand off all of your landlording tasks to a third party. As you can probably imagine, this option comes with a price, which we will discuss in more detail later in this article.

The Cash Flows

If you're buying a property for the purpose of renting it out to tenants, chances are you're looking to make a profit on your investment so that you can have some passive income. While making a rental property a cash-flow positive investment is a very achievable goal, it's not as easy as it sounds. You're going to have a lot more expenses than just your mortgage payment, so your profit margin can become quite slim. Let's talk about what you need to keep in mind.

Inflows

Your cash inflows from owning a rental property will obviously come in the form of the rent paid to you by your tenants. This income is considered ordinary income for tax purposes. So if you make $50,000 a year from your full-time job and you earn $12,000 a year from rental income, your total taxable income (before deductions) will be $62,000.

The fact that rental income is taxed as ordinary income might sound like a let-down, but there are some big caveats to owning a rental property that can lead to some important tax deductions.

Firstly, your rental income is not subject to FICA taxes like the income you earn from your full-time job. That’s already 7.65% less than you have to pay on your other income!

Outflows

Now comes the not-so-fun part.

Mortgage Payments

Your mortgage payment will most likely be the biggest expense you have on your rental property. 

Insurance

There are several types of insurance that you either must or should buy to protect your home and yourself, including homeowners insurance and landlord insurance. You’ll have to pay premiums on these insurance policies every month.

Maintenance and Repairs

Whenever something breaks (and it will!), you’ll have to either fix it yourself – which may require purchasing tools or parts – or hire a professional to fix it for you.

Property Management

If you choose to have a property management company take care of the day-to-day landlording tasks associated with your rental property, you’ll have to pay them monthly as well. The typical property manager charges around 10% of the rent that the landlord charges their tenants. So, if you rent out your property for $2000 a month, you’ll have to pay the property manager $200 a month.

Property Taxes

Property taxes in the U.S. are ad valorem taxes, meaning the amount you pay is based on the assessed value of your home. As the owner of a rental property, you’ll be required to pay property taxes. Property taxes are usually paid monthly as part of your mortgage payment.

The Good News

Thankfully, many of the expenses you have to pay related to your rental property are tax deductible. For example, while your entire monthly mortgage payment may not be tax deductible, the interest on your mortgage is. Maintenance, insurance premiums, property management fees, and property taxes are also tax deductible! When you combine these deductions with other deductions such as depreciation, you might even decrease the taxable income from your rental property so much that you pay little to no taxes on it!

If you want to learn more about the cash flows associated with owning a rental property and how they're taxed, check out Millionacres, a real estate service offered by the Motley Fool. It has plenty of advice on real estate investing, financing, and taxes.

Speaking of the Motley Fool…

Did you know they are Wall Street Survivor's #1 rated Investment Newsletter for the last 5 years in a row? Since the service started, their stock picks have continually outperformed the S&P 500. Here are some facts about their recent performance:

• the 24 Motley Fool stock picks from 2016 are up an average of 368%
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• the 2019 picks are up 118% compared to S&P500 49%
• and quite impressively, their 24 current picks from 2020 are already up an average of 82% and the S&P500 is up an average of only 33% over the year.

If you want a full team of professional analysts helping you pick stocks, sent directly to your inbox twice a month, click here to get 50% off a full year of Motley Fool Stock Advisor stock picks! If you want to read our full review, click here.

Final Thoughts

The decision to invest in a rental property should not be taken lightly. It can be costly and risky, and does not come with many of the same tax and mortgage advantages that owner-occupied properties receive. Make sure to consult real estate and financial professionals before you choose to invest in an income-producing property. But if you do choose to make it happen and do it the right way, purchasing a rental property can be a great way to build a passive income stream to supplement or even replace your income!

The post How to Buy Your First Rental Property (The Smart Way!) appeared first on Wall Street Survivor.

Financial advisors are quite common in this day and age, as many people value the wisdom and hard work that a good advisor can provide.

But do you really need a financial advisor?

Let's find out.

What Do Financial Advisors Do?

“Financial advisor” is a broad term that can apply to many different people in many different professions. But when we think about financial advisors, we are talking specifically about financial professionals who help their clients save, invest, and plan for their financial future.

A financial advisor considers your specific situation and helps you develop a plan to reach your goals. The advisor will consider your age, net worth, income, risk tolerance, number of dependents, and desired retirement age, among other things. 

As far as investing, a financial advisor might give clients advice on what types of stocks, bonds, or funds they should be buying. For example, if you’re closer to retirement, your advisor will have you invest in bonds and large-cap equity funds so that you aren’t taking on too much risk right before you start taking withdrawals from your retirement savings. If you’re young and still have a lot of time left before retirement, your advisor will tell you to take on riskier investments such as small-cap or foreign stocks.

Some financial advisors might also be certified to invest on your behalf. With your consent, your advisor can buy and sell stocks for you.

Your advisor can also help you develop a budget so that you can save an appropriate amount of money for retirement while still being able to cover your own expenses. Your advisor’s company might have a special platform to help you develop a budget digitally, or you might have to keep track of the budget on your own.

How Much Do Financial Advisors Cost?

The amount of money you’ll end up paying your financial advisor depends on what services you’re receiving and your advisor’s fee structure. For financial advisors that actually manage your portfolio, it’s common to see fees charged in the form of a percentage of assets under management, or AUM. AUM is just a fancy way to refer to the amount of money you have invested. It’s not uncommon to see a fee of around 1% of AUM; so if you have $100,000 in a portfolio being managed by your advisor, you will pay around $1000 per year.

Some financial advisors charge a flat fee rather than basing it off of AUM. You might have to pay this fee monthly and, on average, it comes out to several thousand dollars a year. When you pay a flat fee, you’ll still get access to the services your advisor offers: you can call them for advice, ask them to help you make a budget or financial plan, and still have your investments managed (if your advisor does offer investment management). This fee structure is similar to having your advisor “on retainer.”

You might also see advisors that charge by the hour, especially if they offer specific “one-time” services. Rather than continually managing your investments or helping you carry out a financial plan, the advisor will simply help you create a budget or plan, which will then be your responsibility to carry out. You can expect to pay several hundred dollars per hour for an appointment with a financial advisor that charges hourly.

Are Financial Advisors Worth It?

After reading the Cost section, you might be thinking that hiring a financial advisor is completely out of the question for you. And we can’t blame you; that stuff is expensive! But before you write it off completely, let’s talk about it. 

The reality of the situation is that some people need a financial advisor and some do not. 

If your financial situation is very simple, you don’t have a lot of money to invest, or you have a decent amount of financial knowledge, you most likely do not need a financial advisor. For example, if you’re a 25-year-old, full-time employee with no children and $10,000 to invest, a financial advisor wouldn’t make much sense for you. You don’t have any complicated tax considerations to worry about, you’re working with a smaller amount of money, and you are young enough to take on a lot of risk with the money you have. Chances are, you’ll be better off throwing your money into an ETF or investing it in individual equities in hopes of making a better return. Unless you have a dire need for a professionally-designed budget and financial plan that’s tailored to your needs, the services offered by a financial advisor would simply not be worth it. If you do need someone to help you make a plan, however, you can always make a one-time appointment with an advisor that charges by the hour.

On the other hand, if you’re older and closer to retirement, you own your own business, you have a spouse and children to take care of, you own multiple properties and investment accounts, or you have hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to invest, then it might be worth it to look into hiring a financial advisor. Even if you’re skilled in finance, it can be a huge hassle to manage all of the different assets and accounts you have. There are tons of tax laws you have to make sure you’re following and mountains of paperwork you have to keep track of. This is why a financial advisor can be a great idea for some; a good advisor with a holistic approach can help you create and maintain a plan, make sure you’re obeying the law, and take care of your paperwork for you.

What Are the Alternatives?

If you don’t think you need a financial advisor (or you don’t have the hundreds of thousands of dollars that some advisors require you to have in your portfolio), then there are plenty of other options available to help you invest and plan for your financial future. Many of them are quite a bit cheaper, too!

Robo-Advisors

Robo-advisors are digital advising platforms that use algorithms to help you invest and create a financial plan for you. You’ll fill out a questionnaire with information like your income, net worth, and retirement goals and the platform will give you a portfolio of ETFs that matches your risk tolerance and your goals. Some robo-advisors offer budgeting and planning tools or even a cash management account to help you save for retirement.

Our favorite robo-advisor is Acorns, a platform that is famous for its unique feature called “round-ups.” Every time you make a purchase with a linked card, Acorns will automatically round the purchase up to the next dollar and invest the spare change in your portfolio. They offer budgeting and planning tools, as well as a cash management account that helps you earn rewards on your purchases.

Personal Finance Platforms

There are some platforms that act as holistic tools you can use to manage just about every aspect of your financial life. Personal Capital, for example, is a platform that has tools for everything from budgeting to portfolio analysis to retirement planning, all for free. They also offer a free cash management account and a paid wealth management program.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, hiring a financial advisor is not the right choice for everyone, as some people's financial situations are simple or small enough to be managed without a professional advisor. But if you have a more complicated financial situation or you truly feel that you will benefit from the services offered by a financial advisor, then it may be worth looking into!

The post Do You Really Need a Financial Advisor? appeared first on Wall Street Survivor.

If you've been in the investing game for awhile, chances are you've come across the term “stock screener” and are aware of how helpful stock screeners can be for your portfolio.

But in case you haven't…

Let's start with a definition.

What Is a Stock Screener?

A stock screener is an investing tool that helps you identify stocks you may want to buy based on certain criteria that you choose.

The criteria can be…

• Fundamental factors, such as the quality of the stock's balance sheet and its earnings per share.
• Technical indicators, such as previous stock price and trading volume.
• Social measurements, such as a numerical or categorical rating of the company's carbon footprint.

… And much more.

A stock screener contains a database that has all of the necessary information available on all of the stocks contained in the database. You select which criteria you want to screen for, and then the stock screener uses its search engine to filter out stocks that don't meet your criteria and presents you with a list of stocks that do meet the criteria.

This can be a very quick and efficient way to narrow down your search for your next stock to buy!

Figuring out which stock screener is right for you can be a daunting task. But that's why Wall Street Survivor is here! This list of the Best Stock Screeners in 2021 will help you decide which stock screener is a good fit for you depending on what type of investor you are and how much money you're willing to spend.

So, without further ado, let's get down to our list of the Best Stock Screeners!

Best Stock Screener for Fundamental Investors: Stock Rover

Read Our Review

Stock Rover lets you create your own custom screens with over 500 screening metrics. You can also choose from over 140 of Stock Rover’s own screeners and even screen ETFs to achieve some more diversification. 

We are huge fans of Stock Rover’s capabilities for fundamental investing, given that it has some of the best research on fundamentals out there.

If you use Stock Rover to help you choose which stocks to buy, you’ll never have to wonder whether you have all the information you need to make an informed investment decision.

When you combine the screening tools with the company’s extremely useful Research Reports, Comparison, and portfolio analysis tools, you have all of the necessary tools for buy-and-hold investing right in front of you.

While Stock Rover does offer charting tools that can be used for short-term trades, we think that the platform’s fundamental analysis is what really makes it shine. 

Stock Rover offers a free plan that will help you get your foot in the door with some limited screening capabilities. But if you want to take your screeners to the next level, you’ll need to sign up for one of the premium plans.

Best Stock Screener for Technical Traders: Trade Ideas

Read Our Review

Trade Ideas has made waves in the stock screening space due to its superior machine learning capabilities.

The company harnessed the power of artificial intelligence to bring the world Holly, an AI-powered stock screener. Holly was named after the Holy Grail, which is fitting because she is the holy grail of A.I.-powered stock screening!

There are currently three versions of Holly available: Holly Grail, Holly 2.0, and Holly Neo.

Holly Grail is Trade Ideas’ first iteration of the groundbreaking A.I.

Holly 2.0 was created using the same A.I. engine, but with a more aggressive trading approach.

Holly Neo is Trade Ideas’ newest A.I. product, and they’re currently testing and updating her with an entirely new trading approach.

Trade Ideas offers automated investing with Interactive Brokers, meaning you can use your specified screening preferences to execute trades automatically from your Interactive Brokers account!

A monthly subscription to Trade Ideas will cost you $118 per month for the Standard plan or $228 per month for the Premium plan. A yearly subscription costs $89 per month for the Standard plan or $189 per month for the Premium plan.

Best Stock Screener for Beginners: Finviz

Read Our Review

You might know Finviz from their stellar S&P 500 map, which shows you a graphic of the performance of all the companies in the S&P 500 organized by market cap.

But did you know that Finviz also has some awesome screening capabilities that are super easy to pick up as a beginner? 

Finviz, which is short for Financial Visualizations, is known for displaying data to its users in a way that’s aesthetically pleasing and easy to understand.

For example, you can simply hover over a stock’s ticker symbol on FinViz to see a candlestick chart of its performance over the last three months.

These visualizations combined with the easy-to-understand screening factors make Finviz a great screener for beginners.

You don’t have to be a professional trader or an investing genius to understand the different filters on Finviz. You can make your screen as simple as specifying the size of the company you want to invest in, its target price, and what sector it’s in. You can even export your screens for future use!

Finviz’s free version makes it a great option for buy-and-hold investors and some swing traders. While you won’t get stock price information updated in real time, you can use the free screens to make investment decisions in advance.

You don’t even have to register for an account to use the free version of Finviz – you can access it directly on the home page! (However, you’ll get a few more features if you sign up for a free account.)

Finviz Elite costs $39.50 per month for a monthly subscription, or $24.96 per month for a yearly subscription.

Best Free Stock Screener: TradingView

TradingView

TradingView simply has some of the most advanced screening and charting technology we’ve ever seen.

With a long list of both fundamental and technical factors you can use as screening criteria, you can use TradingView’s screener to find the perfect stocks for your particular taste. 

One of our favorite parts about TradingView is its ability to screen foreign stocks. While other screeners might only connect you to U.S. exchanges, TradingView can perform screens of stocks in over 50 exchanges worldwide. 

While TradingView does offer paid plans, we’ve ranked it as our Best Free Stock Screener due to the fact that you can get free access to some amazing screening tools even with the Basic plan.

Once you’re comfortable with the tools offered through the free membership and you want access to more charts with more metrics and more historical data, we recommend signing up for a premium plan, but you can still put together a phenomenal portfolio through TradingView without paying a dime!

If you do choose to upgrade to a paid subscription on TradingView, you get two months free when you sign up for the annual membership of any level.

Best Stock Screener for Hands-Off Investors: Zacks

Read Our Review

Zacks Investment Research has long been one of our favorite stock research platforms due to its high-performing #1 Strong Buy list.

Zacks uses the Zacks Rank system to evaluate stocks on plenty of different factors and assigns them a rank between 1 (Strong Buy) and 5 (Strong Sell). The stocks ranked as #1 Strong Buy have outperformed the market for 26 of the 31 years the list has been used!

But Zacks also has its own screening tools that you can use to evaluate stocks on your own and put together your own portfolio. 

Zacks is ranked as our Best Stock Screener for Hands-Off Investors because its screening system can do most of the work for you using the Zacks Rank system.

Instead of combing through hundreds of stocks using your own criteria, you can simply set up your screen to include stocks that are ranked #1 Strong Buy in Zacks Rank, highly ranked in Zacks Industry Rank, or have high Value, Growth, Momentum, or VGM scores.

If you don’t have the time or the interest in setting up elaborate screens using many different factors, then Zacks’ screening tools are a great fit for you!

You can get access to many of Zacks’ screening capabilities with the Free plan, but if you want to include Zacks Rank factors in your screens, you'll need a Premium subscription. The Premium plan costs $249 per year.

Final Thoughts

If you haven't signed up for a stock screening platform yet, we recommend that you at least take a look into a free trial. Stock screeners can be a great way to make your investing decisions quicker and more informed, and the screeners mentioned in this list are a great place to start!

The post Best Stock Screeners 2021 appeared first on Wall Street Survivor.

While we at Wall Street Survivor think we give some pretty stellar investing advice, we'd be lying if we said it all came from us.

We've spent plenty of time studying the investing greats, and we think you should too!

These are some of the top investing quotes that we believe every investor should know.

#10: It's Okay to Be Wrong

“It's not whether you're right or wrong, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong.”

George Soros

George Soros is known as one of the most influential activist investors in history.

He made a lot of money in the world of investing and has gone on to use that money to support causes that he cares about.

Here, Soros teaches us an important lesson about taking your losses and accepting that not every investment is going to be a winner.

Sometimes you’re going to make money and sometimes you’re going to lose money, but it’s important to have rules in place that dictate how much money you’re willing to lose.

For example, you might hold yourself to a rule that states that you’ll pull your investment if you lose more than 5%.

Whatever your own personal rule may be, it’s important to have limits set in advance.

#9: Be a Lifelong Learner

“Those who keep learning will keep rising in life.”

Charlie Munger

Charlie Munger is Warren Buffett’s right-hand man.

He is vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway as well as a real estate investor and guru.

Munger’s message here is a simple but important one: never stop learning.

Whether we're talking about investing, fishing, sewing, or anything else in life, you have to commit to being a lifelong learner if you want to see yourself improve.

There are plenty of resources out there that you can use to enhance your investing knowledge. Zacks is our favorite investment research platform, and they also provide a stock list (#1 Strong Buy) that has beaten the market bigtime over the past few decades. You can access a free report from Zacks when you sign up with your email address.

#8: Understand Compound Interest

“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn’t, pays it.” 

Albert Einstein

The speaker of this quote needs no introduction.

The famed German physicist may have made a name for himself as the developer of scientific theories, but he was clearly also smart enough to realize the importance of compound interest.

If you’re smart about your money, then you find ways to make it earn compound interest for you, such as investing in stocks. (And continually reinvesting your gains and dividends!)

If you don’t understand money, then you become a prisoner to compound interest actually working against you.

For example, you might get into some steep credit card debt that becomes very difficult to pay off as the interest constantly stacks up to increase the amount of money you owe.

Nobody wants to get caught in a cycle like that; so make sure you understand compound interest and make it work for you!

#7: Be Wealthy, Not Rich

“It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.”

Robert Kiyosaki

Robert Kiyosaki is a businessman and author who wrote the influential book Rich Dad Poor Dad.

He educates others on investing and personal finance and is famous for using debt to his advantage.

This quote from Kiyosaki outlines the difference between being rich and being wealthy.

Rich people make a lot of money. They spend it on unnecessary things and live lives of flashy indulgence.

But wealthy people save their money. They spend money on investments that will earn them compound interest and passive income, and they pass that wealth down through their families.

It’s important to understand that money doesn’t make you rich; many people have made a lot of money and gone on to lose it. Money is simply a tool that you can use to build wealth.

#6: Commit to Long-Term Investing

“The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator.” 

Benjamin Graham

Benjamin Graham was one of the most influential investors and writers of the 20th century.

He is known as “the father of value investing” and is the author of the legendary book The Intelligent Investor.

Here, Graham is telling us that the market is at least somewhat efficient, and fundamental analysis will get you much further than technical analysis. (Read more about financial analysis in our article about Stock Market Terminology.)

You have to be prepared to look at the fundamentals of a company, such as its balance sheet and management, in order to make a profit.

If you try to “get rich quick” by acting on short-term patterns in price and trading volume, you will get burned more often than not. 

#5: Know That the Market Is Irrational

“Every once in a while, the market does something so stupid it takes your breath away.” 

Jim Cramer

Jim Cramer has made a name for himself as an eccentric but intelligent television personality as the host of Mad Money on CNBC. He is also a co-founder of TheStreet.com.

Jim knows that the market can be wildly irrational and unpredictable at times, so much that it can stop you in your tracks.

But the important thing about investing is to know that just because the market is acting crazily, doesn’t mean that the values of your investments has changed.

You have to stop yourself from letting the irrational market make you invest irrationally, and only switch up your investments when there has been a change in their fundamental values.

#4: Take Control Through Budgeting

“A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went.”

Dave Ramsey

Dave Ramsey is known for helping people take control of their financial lives and pay down their debt using his Baby Steps plan.

He hosts the radio show The Ramsey Show where he gives advice on personal finance and takes calls from audience members that are struggling with debt and budgeting.

The above quote is textbook Dave Ramsey; you have to be in control of your money or it will control you.

If you don’t take the initiative necessary to make a budget so that you can reign in your spending habits, you will be left wondering why you don’t have any money and struggling to finance your own lifestyle.

If you want a platform to help you budget without all the extra work, check out Personal Capital. Personal Capital offers many free personal finance tools as well as a wealth management program, but the Budgeting tool is one of our favorite.

#3: Understand Risk vs. Reward

“Big companies have small moves, small companies have big moves.”

Peter Lynch

Peter Lynch is one of the most successful hedge fund managers of all time.

He managed Fidelity’s Magellan Fund for 13 years and more than doubled the S&P 500 on average.

This quote is a good example of the concept of risk vs. reward; bigger companies tend to be lower risk and their stock prices tend to make smaller moves, while smaller companies tend to be higher risk and their stock prices tend to make bigger moves.

#2: Diversify

“Don’t look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!”

John Bogle

You know how we at Wall Street Survivor like to talk about index funds all the time?

You can thank John Bogle for that.

Bogle was the founder of Vanguard and the creator of the first-ever index fund, which is now known as the Vanguard 500 (VFINX).

Here, Bogle gives us an important lesson in diversification: you don’t have to stake your life on finding that one-of-a-kind investment investment opportunity that will make you a millionaire.

Instead, you can diversify your portfolio (or, in other words, buy the haystack) and increase your chances of having one or several investments that exceed expectations in a big way.

Not coincidentally, one of the best ways to diversify your portfolio is by investing in an index fund! We personally recommend Robinhood for getting started with index funds, as their commission-free investing platform has paved the way for investors with any amount of money to get started.

If you live outside of the United States, we recommend International Brokers. International Brokers is our #1 recommended broker for non-U.S. citizens due to the fact that they give their investors access to 135 financial markets in 33 different countries.

#1: Understand Price vs. Value

“It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.”

Warren Buffett

Naturally, we had to save Warren Buffett for last.

The man, the myth, the legend himself.

Warren Buffett is a 91-year old investing legend as well as the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

He is famous for his strict, textbook approach to fundamental investing through extensive research and understanding your investments.

While Buffett’s advice usually comes in the form of telling investors to buy great companies at a discounted price, this particular quote focuses more on the importance of passing up on poor investments, even if you think their stock price might shoot up.

It’s not worth it to invest in a company with poor fundamentals in the hope of a price jump.

Rather, you should find good investments at a discounted price, and like Buffett says, it’s better to buy a good company at a fair price than a poor company at a discounted price.

Remember, price is not equivalent to value, and a lower price does not mean you’re buying a valuable company.

Final Thoughts

No matter what type of saver, investor, or spender you are, you can thank the investing legends that came before us for paving the way and setting the groundwork for our paths to financial success.

The post Top 10 Investing Quotes Every Investor Should Know appeared first on Wall Street Survivor.

Personal Capital is a nationally recognized platform that offers free tools for personal finance, budgeting, and portfolio analysis, as well as a cash management program and wealth management services.

In our Personal Capital review, we're going to be discussing:

• The banking analysis and budgeting tools offered on the platform
• The Personal Capital Cash program that allows you to earn interest on your uninvested cash
• The investment analysis features and allocation graphics that show you how your portfolio is performing
• The planning tools that help you save for retirement safely and build an emergency fund
• How you can get access to Personal Capital's free financial management tools
• The wealth management services that connect you to a dedicated advisor for investment management and advice

Overview

Let's start with a general overview of the pros and cons of Personal Capital. We'll dive into these points later in the review.

Pros

• Easily link all of your bank, investment, cash, and loan accounts as well as your home value for an all-in-one view.
• The Net Worth tool is a simple snapshot of your assets and liabilities that does the work for you.
• Customize your Budgeting tool to see how much you're spending and on what.
• See a simple graph of your portfolio versus a benchmark to know whether or not you're beating the market.
• Know exactly how much you need to save for retirement every year with the Planning tools.
• Know if you're dangerously undiversified with the Investment Checkup.
• Access your own, dedicated advisor and a customized ETF portfolio with the Personal Capital Advisor program.

Cons

• No way to link your subscriptions in the Bills section.
• Only electronic transfers to and from the Personal Capital Cash account – no cash transactions or debit card.
• Minimum of $100,000 invested for the Advisor program.
• Higher-than-average management fees for Advisor, Personal Capital's wealth management program.

Okay, now let's dive into the details!

Dashboard

The Dashboard view from Personal Capital is your snapshot of your financial life.

On this page, you can see your net worth, budget, cash flow, portfolio balance, retirement savings, and emergency fund. You can see your linked financial accounts on the left-hand side along with their individual balances so you know how much you have saved, how much you have invested, and how much you owe.

There are also special, customized cards that pop up on your dashboard to give you financial advice and direct you to other parts of the platform that can analyze different aspects of your finances.

From the Dashboard, you can link to pretty much every tool and report that Personal Capital has to offer.

Let’s talk about the different sections you can access from the dashboard.

Net Worth

The Net Worth section gives you a timeline view of your net worth over time.

If you recall from our article on the Top 1% at Every Age, net worth is calculated by subtracting your liabilities from your assets. Personal Capital does this work for you by adding up what you have in your checking accounts, savings accounts, brokerage accounts, and equity in other assets, and subtracting out your credit card debt, mortgage, and other loans.

You can customize your Net Worth view by specifying a date range and choosing which accounts, assets, and loans you want to see.

Transactions

The Transactions section acts as your own, personal general ledger.

You can use this view to see a list of transactions you’ve made from your credit cards, debit cards, direct deposits, and just about everything else. You can also filter this view by date range and account type.

Banking

Personal Capital offers analysis on your cash flows, budget, and bills, as well as a dedicated cash management program.

Cash Flow

The Cash Flow page gives you a month-over-month view of your cash flows.

This page is similar to the Transactions section, except non-cash transactions are filtered out. For example, if you transferred an investment account from one brokerage to another or rolled an IRA over, Personal Capital will exclude these transfers since you didn’t actually make or spend any money.

You can break down the Cash Flow view by “Income” and “Expense”, which allows you to see your positive and negative cash flows separately. 

Budgeting

Personal Capital’s budgeting tool is slept on.

While the platform is known for its stellar cash management and wealth management services (which we’ll get to later), the free budgeting tool is also top-notch.

The tool analyzes every transaction you make from your linked accounts and gives you a bar chart of your expenses broken down by day. You can break the view down by spending category so you can pinpoint which types of expenses you need to focus on. You can also manually edit any transaction to change its name or category, as well as add tags and pictures of receipts.

If you want to do your own budget analysis, Personal Capital lets you export a list of your transactions as a .csv file (which you can then read into Excel)!

Bills

The Bills section gives you a quick overview of the bills you have coming up.

If you have unpaid bills, Personal Capital will conveniently link you to your financial institution's website where you can take care of the payment.

Note: Personal Capital will only show you bills from linked financial accounts that are specifically recognized as debts, such as credit cards and mortgages. If you have bills to pay for subscriptions like music services and shopping platforms, you won’t find them in the Bills section. 

Personal Capital Cash

Personal Capital Cash is Personal Capital’s own banking program.

Like other cash management accounts from other brokerages, Personal Capital’s cash management program takes your cash and deposits it in partner banks, which are FDIC insured.

The program does not require a minimum balance and does not charge any fees. You can make unlimited transactions to and from the account and even open joint accounts. Personal Capital offers a 0.05% APY for the Cash program, or 0.1% for Advisory clients.

The downside to the Cash program is that you can only perform electronic transfers. You cannot deposit or withdraw cash, nor do you receive a debit card to use for everyday transactions.

Investing

Personal Capital offers some simple but very effective tools to help you evaluate the quality of your portfolio in the Investing section.

Holdings

The Holdings tab of the Investing section shows you a line graph of the You Index versus one of several possible benchmarks (the default is the S&P 500).

The You Index is a special index from Personal Capital that shows the portfolio of all your current holdings (stocks, bonds, ETFs, mutual funds, etc.) extrapolated backwards in time.

Below the line graph, you see a list of all of your individual holdings. You can select a holding and add it to the graph, allowing you to compare it to the You Index and your chosen benchmark. This is a great way to see if your portfolio or one of your specific investments is beating the market!

Balances

The Balances tab is a quick way to see the total value of all of your different investment accounts over time.

You can filter out specific accounts, view only taxable or tax-advantaged accounts, and specify a date range.

Performance

Unlike the Holdings tab, the Performance tab tracks your actual portfolio’s performance against a benchmark instead of the retroactive performance of your current holdings. 

Allocation

The Allocation tab shows you a cool view of your current asset allocation.

You can click on any asset class to see a breakdown of its subclasses, and then click on a subclass to see your specific holdings in that subclass. For example, you might click on “U.S. Stocks”, then “Large Cap Growth” to see what investments you have in domestic large-cap growth stocks.

US Sectors

The US Sectors tab is yet another way that Personal Capital breaks down your portfolio so you can view it a certain way.

This tab gives you a bar graph of each sector you’re invested in. When you click on a sector, you’ll see a graphic similar to the one from the Allocation tab that shows you which specific investments you have in each sector.

Planning

If you're looking to plan for retirement, build an emergency fund, or make sure that your portfolio has the right level of risk for your situation, Personal Capital has some great tools for you.

Retirement Planner

The Retirement Planner tool gives you a personalized projection of your retirement portfolio and estimates its degree of success in supporting you through retirement.

You provide Personal Capital with inputs such as your income, how much you’re putting aside for retirement, and how much you want to spend in retirement. The tool uses estimated factors such as management fees and inflation to give you an approximate view of how much your portfolio will be worth at the time of retirement and for how long it will support you.

You can use the Retirement Planner tool to create different scenarios and compare them in order to plan for your perfect retirement.

Savings Planner

The Savings Planner tool tells you exactly how much money you should be saving every year to achieve your goals.

You can see how much you should be saving in order to have a good chance at achieving your desired retirement, how much you should be putting into your emergency fund, and how much you should be putting towards your loan payments.

Retirement Fee Analyzer

Personal Capital offers a great tool for getting a realistic idea of how much your 401(k) will be worth at the time of your retirement, known as the Retirement Fee Analyzer.

You can input your annual contributions, how much your employer matches, and how much you expect to earn on your investments. The Retirement Fee Analyzer tool then estimates how much of your retirement fund you’ll lose overtime to management fees.

Investment Checkup

The Investment Checkup is an extremely useful tool that shows you how your portfolio looks versus how it should look.

Personal Capital uses the information you’ve provided to make a “profile” for you and recommend a specific asset allocation. For example, if you are 22 years old with no debt and an estimated retirement age of 65, Personal Capital will recommend an aggressive asset allocation for you. If you’re closer to retirement and are supporting your family members, personal capital will recommend a more conservative asset allocation. 

The Investment Checkup compares your current allocation to your target allocation and suggests how much money you should take out of certain asset classes and put into others in order to reach your target asset allocation. Personal Capital will also give you a warning if you are dangerously overweight in a certain sector or stock.

Wealth Management

If you're looking to take your investing game to the next level, Personal Capital has a special wealth management program as well as research and a blog.

Advisor

Advisor is Personal Capital’s paid wealth management program.

When you sign up for an Advisor account, you get access to an Advisory team that will create and manage a portfolio of ETFs for you and give you investing advice for your other investment accounts. Your dedicated advisor will also help with retirement planning and help you reign in your spending. 

Unfortunately, you can only join the Personal Capital Advisor program if you have at least $100,000 to invest.

If you invest between $100,000 and $1 million, the management fee is 0.89%. The management fee for the higher tiers ranges from 0.79% to 0.49%.

Many U.S. investors won't be able to access the Personal Capital Advisor program due to the high minimum investment requirement. If you do qualify for the program, you should be aware that the fees are higher than those of other investment platforms.

Many robo-advisors with no minimum investment requirement charge fees of less than 0.40%. Personal Capital's high management fee, though, can be justified by the fact that it is a more holistic wealth management platform that can handle almost any aspect of your financial life.

Research

The Wealth Management section of the platform gives you access to some of Personal Capital’s market research and insights as well as the Daily Capital Blog.

Final Thoughts

While Personal Capital‘s wealth management program might not be a realistic choice for every investor, the platform's free budgeting, investing, and planning tools are simply some of the best in the business. Who doesn't want an easy way to track their spending and evaluate the quality of their portfolio, especially when it's free?

The post Personal Capital Review 2021: The Pros and Cons appeared first on Wall Street Survivor.