Best Investment Apps For Beginners in 2024

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investment apps for beginners

Are you a beginner in the investment world? Do you want to start investing but are unsure where to start? Are you looking for an investment app to invest in this year? Do you want to know which is best for you to invest in? You don’t have to worry anymore, as this article is tailored to answer all your hidden questions and clear your doubts about the best investment apps for beginners.

Before delving into the main matter, you need to know what an investment app is because you can not use what you do not know. Knowledge gives you the extra edge that you need to make things right and take full advantage of things.

What Is an Investment App?

An investment app, in layman’s terms, is an app that helps you to be able to trade your money online. A strong investment app can handle daily financial tasks, shuffle money into investing accounts, track spending, and more. That leaves you free to do more of the things you love to do.

The best investment apps for beginners tend to offer low fees and access to the types of investment products and accounts you care about a lot. The app you choose should suit your investment style and offer the tools you need to achieve your financial goals. This is why you must be careful and read this guide accurately before choosing one of the apps that stand out.

Reasons For Picking These Apps

I must tell you my reasons for picking these best investment apps for beginners. Choosing an investment app that combines low costs with the features you care about most is important for people just starting out. Whether you are looking to build a passive portfolio of funds, an active portfolio of stocks or any other investment strategy, a brokerage and investment app is designed to meet your needs.

With these selections, we focused on fees and costs, types of accounts available, app features, investment products available, and features that will help beginners. These are some of the best investment apps for beginners. Most of these apps are not from the traditional big stock brokers. This list includes apps from fintech disruptors that will help you get into the investing game as soon as possible. These apps are great for beginners because they make it easy for those starting out. You’ll see that investing is not too hard. In this article, I will outline 10 of the best investment platforms and apps you can invest in and be glad you did.

Below are the best investment apps for beginners

Stash

Stash is the first app on this list. It aims to make selecting investments, specifically stocks and exchange-traded funds, quick and easy for starters. It costs $1 per month for a brokerage account. You also get access to Stash’s online bank account and debit card, which includes a rewards program. The minimum balance is $0, and because Stash offers fractional investing, you can buy portions of a company’s stock or a fund share for pennies.

Stash offers other account options, too. For $3 a month, you get the brokerage and bank accounts, plus a retirement account, either a Roth or traditional IRA. Stash offers all of the above, plus two custodial accounts for minors, a metal debit card, a turbocharged rewards program, and a monthly investment research report for only $9 a month.

Furthermore, Stash’s goal is to help beginners learn how to invest, and that’s what it does best. Stash asks new account holders a couple of questions to determine goals and risk tolerance. It provides a list of suggested ETFs, narrowing the options to those that make sense for the investor’s financial situation

Stash is best for the following:

• Investors who want guidance in selecting investments.
• New investors.
• Thematic or impact investors

Also, Stash is very reliable and trustworthy; various people from different walks of life use their account. As a beginner, what they offer should make a lot of sense as they allow you to start according to your pocket.

Learn more about Stash

Ally Invest

Another investment app that a beginner can use is Ally Invest; beginners often do well with simple and straightforward investment platforms. Ally Invest offers that through their mobile app. Ally Invest appeals to new investors and experienced stock traders. They offer $0 trading costs on eligible U.S. securities, a $0 account minimum, low-cost options trading, and a large selection of no-transaction-fee mutual funds.

Ally also offers bells and whistles like forex trading, an automated portfolio management option, and free tools for technical investors. Ally Invest is known for its Browser-based platform with free screening tools, customizable charting, research and real-time data, and access to holdings, trading, order status, research, an ETF screener, watch list, transfers, and activity.

Also, their customer support services run daily from 7 am -10 pm, and they give promotions to their customers. When users complete a first-time account transfer for $2,500 or more, Ally Invest will receive cash bonuses ranging from $50 to $3,500.

Ally Invest has competitive pricing, helpful trading tools, and an easy-to-use trading platform. It’s easy to start with no account minimum and thousands of no-transaction-fee mutual funds to choose from. Active investors will love Ally’s commission-free trades on eligible U.S. securities.

Learn more about Ally Invest

M1 Finance

This new type of investment app allows you to automate your investment 100% for free. They are known as a hybrid between a Robo-advisor and a brokerage. You can invest in various ETFs and stocks on the M1 platform. Once you create your portfolio and deposit some money, you can relax and allow your portfolio to be automatically rebalanced by the M1 Finance platform. The only thing you have to do is to keep making contributions. You can put your stock market portfolio on autopilot!

M1 Finance works by creating a portfolio called a pie. You can choose the specific stocks and ETFs that make up your pie. That’s pretty cool. It is also important to know that you can have unlimited pies on the M1 Finance platform and the option to put 100 holdings within one pie. For example, you could have two different income pies on M1 Finance.

This is also the only platform offering this service on a free investing app. With M1 Finance, you can invest for your retirement, follow specific industries and sectors, and follow your favorite hedge fund managers.

Acorns

Next up on the list of best investment apps for beginners is Acorns. Acorns is an investment app for people who want to invest but can’t find time to manage it themselves. At $1 per month, Acorns will take care of everything. That includes automated transfers, automatically investing spare change through transaction round-ups, and a fully automated investment plan.

Acorns is very easy to use. The big downside is that there’s a fee no matter what. While $1 per month doesn’t sound like much, that’s a big percentage when you have a relatively low account balance. If you have a $100 balance, $1 per month is more than 10% per year. For additional features and accounts, such as including retirement accounts, you’ll have to pay $3 or $5 per month, which isn’t too bad.

Furthermore, Acorns is one of the older of the new breed of investment apps, but it remains one of the most popular because of how easy it is to use. You don’t have to pay much attention once you’ve set up the app. When you link a credit or debit card to your account, Acorns will round up the total amount on purchases to the next dollar and then invest that difference into one of a few ETF portfolios.

One of the reasons why Acorns stands out is because Acorns chooses your portfolio based on the targeted time until your retirement (calculated as age 59 ½), becoming more conservative as you near that age. This tier offers an FDIC-protected checking account as well, with no additional fees. You also get fee-free access to thousands of ATMs.

Learn more about Acorns

Robinhood

Robinhood is the investment app to have if you like avoiding trading commissions. Robinhood allows you to trade stocks, options, ETFs, and cryptocurrency, all for free. You can do it in a nice mobile interface that makes it very easy. The app is simple to navigate, and after a while, you’ll go from screen to screen like a pro as you trade the market.

Robinhood is one of the pioneers in the no-commission brokerage model. It remains a solid choice for beginners, as they can invest in stocks, ETFs, and options with zero commissions. Most stock and ETF investors can use Robinhood at no cost.  Premium accounts are available with more features for a monthly fee starting at $5.

You can view a stock’s page from the search bar at the top of the screen and pull up charts, vital statistics, and more. Also useful is a feed that aggregates stories from news and investing sites so that you keep on top of what’s going on. Once you’ve decided what you want to trade, you enter the number of shares to buy or sell, swipe up, and the order is on its way. It’s that simple.

Another great feature of Robinhood is the instant delivery of the first $1,000 of any funds you deposit to the account. That way, you can start trading immediately. If you’re a member of Robinhood Gold, a premium tier, you’ll have instant deposits on higher amounts, up to $50,000.

Learn more about Robinhood

Webull

Webull is another investment app that lets investors trade stocks for free before it suddenly becomes cool, but it also offers commission-free trades on options and ETFs. Webull offers no-fee trades on cryptocurrencies, including Litecoin, Bitcoin, and Ethereum at all hours of the day and night. Investors can enjoy full extended-hours trading both in the morning and evening. Webull still passes on regulatory and exchange fees, which are small compared to other companies.

Unlike some of the other best investment apps for beginners, you’ll be able to set up a taxable account and an IRA account (traditional, Roth, or rollover). That will give you the flexibility to have more of your financial life at this broker. If you like trading from your desktop, you can download the Webull platform, make a custom watchlist,  manage your investments, and check out stock charts.

Learn more about Webull

Gatsby Options

Gatsby is an investment platform that gives you more control and insight over your investment than simply buying a stock in a company you probably know nothing about.

Gatsby is working to change that paradigm to make trading options easier and more incentivized. Its simple design makes options trading clear and easy. You can open an account within a few minutes. Also, you can make trades for as low as $10 with no commissions or contract fees. Gatsby simplifies the options trading process by breaking trades down to simply “for” or “against” individual companies and ETFs. It’s similar to buying a stock and hoping it goes up, except you predict the direction it goes.

Bitcoin IRA

Next up on the best investment apps for beginners list is Bitcoin IRA. It is a platform for trading cryptocurrencies from your IRA. The company is a full-service, self-directed IRA provider. That is different from the many companies offering similar services. Bitcoin IRA provides its customers with the following: Transfer of an existing IRA to Bitcoin IRA, 24/7 cryptocurrency trading, Custody, and Reporting performance and financial statements.

Eligible IRA accounts include Roth, SEP, and Traditional. A 401(k) can be used if it is current. This next sentence is important. To use a 401(k), you must be over 59.5 years of age or have left the employer sponsoring the 401(k) so that it can be rolled over into an IRA. Pensions and annuities can also be used.

$3000 is the minimum to open a standard account. Coins that can be traded on Bitcoin IRA’s platform include:
• Bitcoin
• Ethereum
• Ripple
• Litecoin
• Bitcoin Cash
• Ethereum Classic

Learn more about Bitcoin IRA

Rocket Dollar

Rocket Dollar is a newcomer to the world of investment platforms, which started in 2018. It is a low-cost and easy-to-use platform for self-directed investors. Opening an account through Rocket Dollar is pretty easy. You sign up online and sign a few papers. Then you fund your investments. Once you fund your investments, you can cut a check and start buying any legal investment.

Learn more about Rocket Dollar

Fidelity

Fidelity is one of the larger brokers in the US. It is designed to serve the vast majority of individual investors. Fidelity’s platform offers a large selection of tools, research, and resources for the average buy-and-hold investor. Fidelity offers Active Trader Pro, a downloadable program with streaming real-time data and a customizable trading interface for more active investors and full-on traders. Despite covering these two broad bases quite thoroughly, it is important to note that Fidelity does not currently offer commodities or futures options.

Learn more about Fidelity

Interactive Brokers

Interactive Brokers is another excellent platform for new investors for several reasons. They offer a low-cost fee structure and offer a wealth of educational resources to help investors better understand the market and make informed investment decisions. Additionally, their platform is user-friendly and provides a wide range of tools and features to help investors manage their portfolios effectively. Furthermore, their platform is accessible to a broad range of investors worldwide. For example, you can use Interactive Brokers in Canada, the USA, and many other countries.

In conclusion, having read through the list, you can choose one of these investment apps for beginners to start investing and saving for the future.

One can consider reading vantage fx reviews to start investing in stock markets.

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Jason Butler is the owner of My Money Chronicles, a website where he discusses personal finance, side hustles, travel, and more. Jason is from Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated from Savannah State University with his BA in Marketing. Jason has been featured in Forbes, Discover, and Investopedia.