You can add or remove vetted ETFs to and from your portfolio as you wish. You can also choose from categories like technology ETFs, healthcare ETFs, cannabis ETFs, and more. Based on your goals and risk profile, Ally will create the best portfolio for you.

Luckily, Ally Invest offers products for you no matter how experienced you are with investing or not. The self-directed trading and Cash-Enhanced Managed Portfolios accounts will appeal to hands-on investors and investors who would prefer to be less involved in their investments, respectively. If you think you’d like to work with an in-person financial expert, SmartAsset can help you find the right advisor. To start, you’ll answer a few questions to help us figure out what you want and need from a financial advisor.

Schwab, on the other hand, is compatible with individual and joint accounts, trusts, custodial accounts, and IRAs (Schwab accepts traditional, Roth, SEP, SIMPLE, and rollover IRAs). Ally Invest Robo Portfolios and Charles Schwab's most basic automated account, Charles Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, both offer competitive automated investing services. ally invest review Schwab Intelligent Portfolios has a higher minimum ($5,000), but like Ally's account, you can also avoid annual fees. You'll need at least $100 to use Ally Invest, but you won't need to worry about advisory fees unless you open a margin-focused portfolio. Ally Invest Robo Portfolios doesn't offer individual stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or options.

As mentioned, the mobile app and Ally Invest Live are streaming and have a more modern and robust design. However, neither of these platforms had all of the functionality features in the primary website. Only the ETF screener is available on the Live platform, and none of the screeners are on the mobile app. Likewise, options trading and analysis tools for probabilities, profitability graphing, and pricing, as well as legacy tools from the TradeKing platform, are not available on Live or the mobile app. The charting is also better on the Live platform than on the website or mobile platforms. A brokerage account is simply a basic account used to buy and sell securities like stocks, bonds, ETFs, etc.

Investment Focus

The market-focused portfolio option invests about 98% of your account's value, and it charges a 0.30% annualized advisory fee. This isn't the lowest fee in the industry, but it's certainly competitive with many of the best robo-advisors. This option is better for more aggressive investors who want to give their money the best chance at growth and are willing to pay the accompanying fee.

Ally offers a wide variety of investments to make your portfolio diverse and secure. You can choose from stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, options and more. If Ally's robo-advisor manages your portfolio, it will tailor your investment mix to you and your savings goals. As some sectors out- or under-perform, the robo-advisor will rebalance your investments. Firstrade is a solid brokerage offering that may particularly appeal to options traders because of its commission-free options trades. You’ll also get access to quality research and its mobile app, but mutual fund investors may be disappointed by the small number of no-transaction fee funds available.

• Ally Invest Robo Portfolios doesn't charge trading fees, advisory fees, annual fees, or rebalancing.
• You'll select one of these four options when you set up your account, and you can adjust to customize your allocations to get the mix of risk versus reward that's right for you.
• The best brokerage account to trade stocks depends on whether you’re going to be a frequent trader or, like most investors, want the option to occasionally buy and sell stocks via mobile app.

When selling, there is a dropdown list available in the symbol field showing current holdings. All or none was an option for orders on the website, but this wasn’t an option for Ally Invest Live or the app. The best brokerage account to trade stocks depends on whether you’re going to be a frequent trader or, like most investors, want the option to occasionally buy and sell stocks via mobile app.

Portfolio Management

Overall, the low costs and straightforward platform make Ally an attractive option. Depending on which kind of account you choose to open, Ally Invest works slightly differently. For its managed portfolios accounts, it starts by analyzing your investing and savings goals. It takes into account your age, what you’re saving for and your investing strategy, including how much risk you’re willing to take on.

The rate drops to $0.50 per contract for premiums between $0.05 and $0.10 and $0.25 per contract for premiums less than $0.05. Interactive Brokers offers more investment options than almost any other U.S. stock broker open to individual investors. Customers can trade on more than 135 international markets in more than 30 countries. However, it offers tax loss harvesting and a bigger variety of portfolio options, which could give them the edge over Ally. This is how Ally earns money and can provide Robo Portfolio free of advisory fees.

Where Ally Invest Robo Portfolios falls short

Ally Invest also has other options analysis tools to further assist option traders, including a probability calculator, profit/loss calculators, and graphing. The ETF and mutual fund screeners both have criteria for profile, performance, risk analysis, and portfolio. The risk analysis, which is not available on the stock screener, includes both beta and R-squared vs. the S&P 500, standard deviation, and the Sharpe Ratio.

Ally Invest Robo Portfolios Community Reviews

You’ve likely heard of Robinhood, and the mobile-friendly stock trading app is a solid choice. Robinhood is supremely easy to use, rich with beginner-friendly features, and requires just $1 to get started investing. Betterment charges $4 per month for balances under $20,000 so you would have to pay to use the service. For higher balances, you'll be charged 0.25% annual fee for balances of $20,000 or more, or if you set up recurring monthly deposits totaling $250 or more. Ally Robo Portfolio's software then monitors your investments and rebalances them as things change.

Compare to Other Advisors

You can also create your own watchlists to keep an eye on groups of securities. Ally Invest offers a number of other tools and educational materials to help you make the best decisions when it comes to your portfolio. However, if you don’t quite have the experience or time to manage your own portfolio, you can open a Cash-Enhanced Managed Portfolios account. That way you can put your investments and savings into the hands of experts. You also have access to a ton of educational material, if you want to learn more about investing.

Ally Invest offers commission-free trading and four different types of managed portfolios.

There are no commissions for stocks/ETFs and options, at $0.50 per contract, are at the low end of the commission range. Webull offers a lot that investors will like such as commission-free trading, fractional shares and a slick mobile app that allows you to trade on the go or keep tabs on your favorite stocks. But only a few account types are offered and you won’t find the level of research that is available through other brokers.