5 Best Stock App for Beginners
There are many investing apps out there, but they are all different from each other. Some are user-friendly, while others are heavy data-driven. Here are the top investing apps that are best for new investors that want to start investing and build wealth.
Best Stock App for Beginners:
Table of Contents
1.) Robinhood
Robinhood is a popular investing app and highly rated. It’s known for being the first brokerage to offer commission-free trading, then as people continue to favor Robinhood, and offer commission-free trading.
The app doesn’t require an account minimal to make investment purchases.
The main focus of the app is for investors to buy individual stocks from companies. As Robinhood is growing, it continues to add other forms of investments.
Currently, you can invest in Exchange Traded Funds (ETF), Options, and Cryptocurrencies. They offer fractional shares to investors who are unable to purchase one full share.
For example, one Amazon stock (AMZN) costs roughly $3200.00 (August 17, 2020), and you can invest any amount less than $3200.00 to receive a fractional share that’s equivalent to the amount invested.
The user interface is friendly to new investors. It’s easy to navigate the Robinhood as there are 5 tabs to browse.
Tabs:
- View of your overall investments
- Promotion of Robinhood products
- Search for businesses to invest and your news feed
- Messages and updates on your investments
- Profile of your confidential information and account settings
There’s no educational resource to explain how to invest in the app. It’s best to take the time to learn how to invest in Robinhood and different financial terminology used on the app. You don’t want to make any regrettable investments.
Robinhood promotes the Robinhood Gold feature for $5.00 per month. The feature allows you to have research tools, more trading tools, and more money to borrow for margin accounts.
People claim Robinhood is a scam, but it’s not. It’s a legal business with financial documents and disclosures for the public to review.
The money you invest with Robinhood is protected by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) up to $500,000 for securities and $250,000 for cash.
Robinhood is regulated by the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for financial compliance. Your money is safe and monitored by credible third-party regulators.
Robinhood is regulated by the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for financial compliance. Your money is safe and monitored by credible third-party regulators.
Pros:
- Free Trading (No Commissions & No Account Minimal)
- Easy to Navigate
Cons:
- No Guide on How to Invest (Varies by One’s Investing Experience)
- Limited Forms of Investments
2.) Acorns
Acorns is an automatic micro-investing app that invests in board funds. The funds are pre-made based on your level of risk tolerance and are structured similarly to top investment management companies such as Vanguard and Fidelity.
You set up your account and answer some investment questions within 5 minutes. Acorns give you recommendations on the type of funds to invest in based on your answers. It’s helpful for new investors who don’t know how to start investing.
Acorns have a notable feature called Round-Up. When you make purchases, the Acorns app rounds up your purchase to the next dollar and invest that amount.
You can choose to link your checking accounts, debit cards, or credit cards for your amount to transfer.
For example, if a coffee costs $3.75, Acorns will automatically round up $0.25 and invest it into your investment portfolio.
Doing this with all your purchases can potentially add up and build up your investments quickly without you realizing it.
The app provides financial educational resources for new investors. Acorns offer financial articles and FAQs on personal finance and investing.
Although, the app isn’t free and costs $1.00 per month for the minimum subscription plan. There are no account minimums for any of the subscription plans.
Subscription Plans:
- Lite Plan ($1.00 per Month): Investment Account, Round-Up Feature, Financial Educational Resources
- Personal Plan ($3.00 per Month): Lite Plan Features, Retirement Account, Checking Account
- Family Plan ($5.00 per Month): Personal Plan Features, Add Multiple Kids to Their Own Investment Account, Family Financial Advice, Flexibility with Funds
Pros:
- Automatic Investing Without You Realizing
- Easy to Set Up to Start Investing Without Any Financial Knowledge
Cons:
- Paying $1.00 per Month at Minimum to Use the App
- No Other Type of Investments (Stocks, Bonds, Options, etc)
- May Need to Invest More Than the Round-Up Feature to See Higher Returns
3.) Fidelity
Fidelity Investments is a well-established investment management company with multiple forms of investments. They offer individual stocks, mutual funds, options, retirement accounts, and much more.
Also, Fidelity is known for its high level of customer service and a large selection of investments. The Fidelity app is more user friendly than the other two established investment management company Vanguard and Charles Schwab.
There are no commissions and no account minimums when investing with Fidelity. However, some funds or investments may require you to pay a fee, but overall most of their investments don’t charge you a commission.
What Fidelity did well to help new investors is by offering very detailed research data and charts of each type of investment. Multiple third-party providers do investment research for Fidelity to provide accurate data.
Fidelity offers financial educational resource for everyone. They provide financial information using articles, videos, courses, and much more to customers. Along with filtering the type of education based on experience, category, and content.
Pros:
- Excellent Customer Service
- No Commission and No Fees for Most Investments
- Large Selection of Investments
Cons:
- You Must Make Your Own Investment Decisions
- Some Investments May Require You to Pay Fees
4.) M1 Finance
M1 Finance is a new investment app that is a mix of robo advisor and a traditional investment brokerage.
The focus of the app is showing your investments through a detailed pie chart to visualize your portfolio performance. You can build draft pie charts to add what type of investments into them before making purchases.
A pie chart slice represents one investment, and you can have multiple slices to form a pie chart. M1 Finance can automate invests for you to bring pie chart slices to their target percentage, or you can manually choose how much you want to invest.
You have the option to customize your pie chart or choose a pre-built pie chart designed by financial experts known as Expert Pies.
The Expert Pies are created based on one’s goals, risk tolerance, and industry. There’s an explanation of what kind of investor; should invest in a particular Expert Pie.
The goal of M1 Finance is to encourage customers to build their wealth through long-term investing. M1 Finance discourage the use of day-trading or speculating trading.
The user interface is similar to Robinhood and easy to navigate. M1 Finance provides multiple investment accounts from your personal account, joint account, trust account, checking account, and margin account.
There are no commissions when trading, but M1 Finance requires a minimum of $100.00 in an investment account before you can begin investing. The minimum of $100.00 is only a one time thing.
You can upgrade to the M1 Plus for $125.00 per year for these features: Trade before and after while trading hours are closed, 1% cashback and APY 1% for checking account, Borrow rate lowered to 2% instead of 3.5%
Pros:
- No Commissions and No Account Minimal
- Multiple Type of Investment Accounts
- Friendly User-Interface
- Choose to Follow Financial Expert Recommendation or Customize Your Own Plan
Cons:
- Minimum of $100.00 Deposit to Start Investing (No More Account Minimal Afterwards)
- No Day-Trading
5.) Stash
Stash is a simplified investment app that is ideal for new investors without financial education. The overall theme of the app is to make investing easy to understand and invest with little hassle.
When creating an account, you will answer some questions; then be given a list of recommended investments.
Stash makes it easier to search up investments by choosing themed investments. So, if you were interested in investing in social media, you can search for companies that fall into this category. You can manually type in a particular company to invest in too.
The app offers fractional shares as a big drive for new investors. You can invest in companies with a high stock price such as Amazon and receive a percentage of a stock based on the amount invested less than the current stock price.
The layout of the app is user friendly, easy to understand, and adds fun theme into the mix.
Stash offers free financial educational material to help you improve your understanding of personal finance and make informed investment decisions to help you build wealth.
The app requires you to subscribe to the minimum subscription plan of $1.00 per month to begin investing.
Subscription:
- Beginner Plan ($1.00 per Month): Personal Investment Account, Bank Account, Financial Education Resources
- Growth Plan ($5.00 per Month): Beginner Plan Features, Retirement Account
- Stash+ Plan ($9.00 per Month): Growth Plan Features, Investment Accounts For 2 Kids, Metal Banking Card with Bonuses, Monthly Market Insights
Pros:
- Easy For New Investors To Start Investing
- Investing Guidance and Financial Education
Cons:
- Monthly Subscription Cost of $1.00 Minimal
- High ETF Expense Ratios
Closing Thoughts
There are many investing apps out there, but they are all different from each other. Some are user-friendly, while others are heavy data-driven. Here are the top investing apps that are best for new investors that want to start investing and build wealth.
