Ally Invest — nice cash bonus offer

[Sojourner]

I just noticed that Ally is offering pretty large cash bonuses to anyone signing up for a new Ally Invest account. For example, if you open a new account and transfer $1MM in assets from another brokerage, Ally gives you $2,500.

I've been with Scottrade (now TD Ameritrade) for many years and have been fairly satisfied with their service and fees. But $2,500 seems like a pretty nice incentive to switch to Ally Invest. I've been using Ally for high-yield savings and checking for a while and have been quite pleased, so I imagine their brokerage service would be pretty decent, too. And if it's not, I could always switch back to TD after 90 days, which is the minimum time required in order to keep the sign-up bonus.

Anyone else tempted by this? $2,500 could pay for a nice little two-week trip to Europe. Very tempting to think about getting such a trip for free.

Here's the link to the full offer details: https://go.ally.com/invest/current-offers/

 

[Sunset]

Others offer the same bonus.
Merrill edge has the same thing, plus free trades for an account that large.

 

[dvalley]

Quick- someone let me borrow $1MM so I can get the bonus

 

[kgtest]

I just noticed that Ally is offering pretty large cash bonuses to anyone signing up for a new Ally Invest account. For example, if you open a new account and transfer $1MM in assets from another brokerage, Ally gives you $2,500.

I've been with Scottrade (now TD Ameritrade) for many years and have been fairly satisfied with their service and fees. But $2,500 seems like a pretty nice incentive to switch to Ally Invest. I've been using Ally for high-yield savings and checking for a while and have been quite pleased, so I imagine their brokerage service would be pretty decent, too. And if it's not, I could always switch back to TD after 90 days, which is the minimum time required in order to keep the sign-up bonus.

Anyone else tempted by this? $2,500 could pay for a nice little two-week trip to Europe. Very tempting to think about getting such a trip for free.

Here's the link to the full offer details: https://go.ally.com/invest/current-offers/

Time out of the market on +$1million might actually cost you $2500 making the switch... no?

 

[MooreBonds]

Time out of the market on +$1million might actually cost you $2500 making the switch... no?

You should be able to do an in-kind transfer of assets. The only issue would be if the receiving brokerage doesn't offer the same mutual funds that are held at your current broker. So you'd just have to transfer "only" a million to the new broker to keep the special mutual funds at the old broker.

 

[Sojourner]

Time out of the market on +$1million might actually cost you $2500 making the switch... no?

The way I understand it, the $1MM can be any combination of cash and securities. So just transferring everything from my current brokerage firm to Ally Invest wouldn't result in anything being out of the market. The most I could see actually losing in the switch would be a day or two of interest on the small amount of cash I'd be transferring, certainly no more than a dollar or two.

 

[Sojourner]

Others offer the same bonus.
Merrill edge has the same thing, plus free trades for an account that large.

I checked around and couldn't find anything online about a comparably large sign-up bonus for Merrill Edge. Currently it seems they're offering up to $600 for new accounts. That's a far cry from $2,500.

 

[Dash man]

It’s still a tax headache moving accounts. I know it wouldn’t cost anything, but I’m trying to avoid new hassles in retirement.

 

[mickeyd]

There is a lot of "bait" being tossed out there these days. I get a couple of pieces of chum-mail weekly. They all look good, but so does 1.91% SEC yield that PMMF is yielding today.

 

[ScottS]

$2500 on a million dollar account is only 0.25%. Pleasant, but given the numbers usually thrown around on this site nothing special.

 

[Sunset]

I checked around and couldn't find anything online about a comparably large sign-up bonus for Merrill Edge. Currently it seems they're offering up to $600 for new accounts. That's a far cry from $2,500.

You have to phone them....

 

[njhowie]

$2500 on a million dollar account is only 0.25%. Pleasant, but given the numbers usually thrown around on this site nothing special.

Yes, today it is "only" 0.25% and nothing special. However, it wasn't very long ago when 0.25% was what CDs and treasuries were paying for a full year. Over the past six years, I took advantage of this twice...first moving my account from Fidelity to Etrade for $2500, then from Etrade back to Fidelity two or three years later for another $2500. Both times there were also a few hundred commission free trades that came along with the cash for use over a year or two.

Today, with interest rates being so much higher, less folks are likely to take advantage of the offers, unless they were looking to make a switch and just waiting for a good time.

https://rewards.fidelity.com/offers/cashdepositbonus

 

[Badger]

TD Ameritrade has the same offer. But you are already there and it is only for new money. Bummer.


Cheers!

 

[audreyh1]

Can’t be bothered. That’s a lot of work for a small % bonus.

I did the Chase $15,000 savings account deposit plus an external transfer to checking for a total $500 bonus last year.

 

[gauss]

$2,500 on $1M is 0.25% if I am not mistaken.

Not nearly enough (percentage wise) to motivate behavior on my part.

Besides, I moved the majority of my after-tax accounts into Roth accounts via the mega-back door strategy beginning in 2010 when the Roth rules changed.


-gauss

 

[Islandtraveler]

FYI, I was in the same situation. I was with Scottrade and transferred to TD Ameritrade as a result of the merger. I did not like TD for a variety of reasons. E trade offers $4,000 for account transfers over 1M. They offered me $4.50 stock trades and a 4% margin account. Their Website is excellent and service has been top notch. I think this offer is good through July. The account transferred in kind and was seamless.

 

[audreyh1]

Ally doesn’t have any track record as a brokerage.

I never heard of TradeKing

2017
After acquiring TradeKing Group, Inc., Ally launched Ally Invest℠ — a wealth management and brokerage platform

I’m very careful who my broker is.

 

[mrfeh]

I checked around and couldn't find anything online about a comparably large sign-up bonus for Merrill Edge. Currently it seems they're offering up to $600 for new accounts. That's a far cry from $2,500.

As of a few years ago, Fidelity offered $2500 if you deposited 7 figures. Don't know if they have that offer today.

IMO, these offers are worth investigating if you are changing brokers anyway, as I was 5 years ago. Not something I would do just for the bonus, however.

 

[njhowie]

As of a few years ago, Fidelity offered $2500 if you deposited 7 figures. Don't know if they have that offer today.

Post #12

 

[Ronnieboy]

Ally doesn’t have any track record as a brokerage.

I never heard of TradeKing


I’m very careful who my broker is.

Zecco free trading was the original brokerage sometime around 2006 or earlier. If you kept $X,XXX amount of money in your brokerage account you had free trades.
After a few years they found they couldn't support the free trading platform and said if you kept $X,XXX in the brokerage you could have 20 free trades a month.
After a few years they said no more free trades and became TradeKing and trades were $4.95.
Then in 2017 Ally purchased TradeKing and everything was moved to Ally.

I have been and was using both Ally for high(er) yield saving/checking account and Zecco from when it was free trades with my fun money brokerage account.

Now they are all merged into one, I have been happy with them and the merger/buyouts were all handled seamlessly.

I have noticed a lot of merger and buyouts of brokerage accounts I guess it is not uncommon?

OptionsHouse ---> ETrade
Loyal3 ---> FolioFirst
Capital One Investing --->Etrade
ScottTrade -----> TDAmeritrade

Now I just wonder how long RobinHood free trading will be around?

 

[Sunset]

Ally doesn’t have any track record as a brokerage.

I never heard of TradeKing


I’m very careful who my broker is.

I had tradeking a few years ago, they were a pain to log into if you didn't go to the website every couple of weeks as they would make me use an online keyboard to "type" in my super secure random password which was really long.
Copy and paste was not allowed.

After a couple of years I moved the money and closed the account because of the difficulty logging in.

 

[gauss]

I would also be wary of how the cost basis tracking requirements on the broker will change when you transfer securities.

For covered securities, I know the original broker is required to track your cost basis and report it when you actually sell.

If the securities are transferred, is the receiving broker allowed to report "basis unknown"?

I have seen many individuals need to report $0 basis when they had no idea what their original cost basis was when securities are sold if the broker doesn't report it.

-gauss

 

[Sojourner]

Can’t be bothered. That’s a lot of work for a small % bonus.

$2,500 on $1M is 0.25% if I am not mistaken.

Not nearly enough (percentage wise) to motivate behavior on my part.

Hmm... have to admit I'm kind of puzzled by these comments. Maybe I'm missing something here, so I'll try to explain my thinking a bit further.

Yes, it's only 0.25% when looked at as a percentage of total assets required, but the vast majority of those assets (in my case) consists of various stocks and mutual funds. Only a tiny portion is cash. I'm earning 0% on the stocks and MFs—aside from the dividends and cap gains distributions that I receive regardless of which brokerage I'm using—so I don't understand why 0.25% of $1 million is "too little". Too little compared to the zero I'm currently getting? Or too little relative to some other way to earn money on those assets? I'm not aware of any other basically risk-free way to quickly and painlessly earn $2,500 by passively leveraging the holdings in my brokerage account.

And with regard to the "a lot of work for too little gain" comment, I can't imagine a transfer-in-kind from my TD account to a new Ally Invest account would involve more than an hour or two of total time on my part, filling out a few forms and maybe chatting with someone from Ally for a short while. Is that really too much work for $2,500? Even if it were to take 3 hours, that's still over $800/hour! That's roughly 10 times what I recently charged a friend of a friend to do some I.T. consulting work.

One thing I'm not sure of in all this, though, is if there is any sort of fee that I'd be charged by TD or by Ally to execute a transfer-in-kind of assets to another brokerage. I believe Ally will compensate me for whatever TD charges, if anything, but I'd need to get all the details from both brokerages.

 

[Sojourner]

I would also be wary of how the cost basis tracking requirements on the broker will change when you transfer securities.

For covered securities, I know the original broker is required to track your cost basis and report it when you actually sell.

If the securities are transferred, is the receiving broker allowed to report "basis unknown"?

I have seen many individuals need to report $0 basis when they had no idea what their original cost basis was when securities are sold if the broker doesn't report it.

-gauss

That is indeed a good point and something I would need to look into before doing the transfer. Thanks.

 

[njhowie]

I would also be wary of how the cost basis tracking requirements on the broker will change when you transfer securities.

For covered securities, I know the original broker is required to track your cost basis and report it when you actually sell.

If the securities are transferred, is the receiving broker allowed to report "basis unknown"?

I have seen many individuals need to report $0 basis when they had no idea what their original cost basis was when securities are sold if the broker doesn't report it.

-gauss

The brokers use ACATS for doing account transfers and the cost basis goes along with the securities.

Automated Customer Account Transfer Service (ACATS) | DTCC