If Robinhood had to close shop, who's a good broker to transfer holdings over to?
Vanguard pioneered the low cost index fund and Schwab was one of the original "discount brokers". Their innovations were adopted by every other broker, driving down costs for the small trader. They remain allies of small investors.
Schwab/TD Ameritrade on the other hand, has kinda bad ETFs but have really good customer service. Besides, you can buy Vanguard ETFs / Mutual Funds in your Schwab account.
Go for customer service. There's some minor benefits in terms of how quickly you can enter / exit Vanguard positions if you get a Vanguard account, but overall its a better idea IMO to get a brokerage account with humans on the telephone whenever issues come up.
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I'm also in E-Trade and they've worked out so far for me.
The one I'm most interested in is probably Fidelity? Good overall reviews, apparently pretty good customer service, and the ETFs / Mutual Funds / Bonds they offer seem pretty good too.
So I phoned in, spent a half-hour with a human being. He was audibly cursing as he tried to get me set up. At one point, after I had given him my name and other PII, he addressed by a different first name then quickly corrected himself.
At the end, he said, "Ok, now you'll get an email to finish setting up your account." Email arrived and it was addressed to someone with a different name. I recognized the first name as the same name the agent had mistakenly used with me.
Suffice to say, I did not finish setting up my account and decided to stick with Fidelity.
Plus, I have my own story about Robinhood - they couldn't or wouldn't change my email address. I think they expect users to upload pictures of ID and such.
That's crazy and completely disqualifies them for anything serious, for me.
If something is really important, then you do it in person, with a local representative or notary or something.
If it's not that important, then they don't need ID theft material in digital format. They already leaked the info they have!
It is not a feature to have the ability to make critical changes without friction from anywhere in the world over the internet, with the right bitstream. It's completely unacceptable.
My entire relationship with Robinhood involves a trivial amount of crypto that I don't trade, on the assumption they are the (one of the) most government compliant or least shady ways to hold that. That is based on my outlook being the complete opposite of the cliché "not your keys, not your coins".
Other than my "free stock" I don't own any non-crypto and never will.
Confirming my negative attitude was their recent data breach, which we will never know for sure the scope of, but I suddenly started getting investment scam spam from known scofflaws at the email address Robinhood has and probably leaked.
The SEC has a "catch and release" program for even small-timers; it sure is a disincentive to report criminal activity when you see in the public record someone already was caught and paid a fine and kept right on keeping on.
TWS (their desktop app) has many options and target pros. However, I haven't used their web/phone apps.
> If Robinhood had to close shop
I doubt that will happen. Citadel will jump in and inject money, just like they did with Plotkin's Melvin Capital.
Edit: It's already here.
To add some numbers: they're burning $175/quarter, which includes severance payouts from their recent layoff, on $6954 of assets, which includes a $6187 pile of cash. So that's 8.8 years of runway if they didn't cut costs or grow revenue further.
And their product also has a ton of room to improve -- once it gets IRAs, that would remove the main reason its more boring customers find other brokers.
I just pile leftover savings into Small-Cap Value funds though, so my needs are rather minimal.
Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, TD Ameritrade (while they are still separate-ish) all have different pros and cons.
What do you need?
But I shouldn’t be trading so look at Fidelity.
Fidelity has been good to me.