Ally Invest Review 2020 (2024)

Ally Invest is the best low-cost stock broker available, and it's especially good for active traders.

Only a few online brokers can compete with Ally Invest's $0 trading fees. While none of their more than 8,000 mutual funds are brokerage fee-free, Ally Invest's $9.95 commission for no-load funds (No transaction fee when selling) is one of the lowest among brokers.

Ally Invest: the Pros and Cons

Here are some of the pros and cons of investing with Ally Invest:

Pros:

• Low commissions
• No accounts minimums
• Decent web-based platform
• Useful research tools

Cons:

• No transacation-free mutual funds
• No physical branches

Our Ally Invest Review

Ally Invest's $0 account minimums, $0 trading fees made it our firm choice for the best low-cost stockbroker.

It also offers 500 fee-free ETFs and offers over 8,000 no-load mutual funds for $9.95 per trade.

Ally Invest not only competes with other brokers on cost—but they also have many other useful features.

They offer automated portfolio management, forex trading, and many free charting and other technical tools.

Who is Ally Invest Best For?

Ally Invest is best suited towards:

• Active traders
• Options traders
• Forex traders

What Ally Invest Does Well

Commissions: It cannot be overstated how important it is that Ally Invest has one of the lowest brokerage charges of any online broker.

Ally Invest has $0 trading fees for all stock, options, and ETF trades. The price for options trades also dropped from $0.65 to $0.50 per contract.

And instead of charging commissions for forex traders, transaction costs are based on spread markups. And accounts that have at least one trade within the past 90 days get access to free data.

Account minimum: Ally Invest’s $0 account balance minimum makes it easy to get started. That's a bonus for investors who want to start investing for retirement, but don't want to jump straight into the deep end.

Trading platform: Ally Invest's browser-based platform offers real-time quotes and data, quick trading capabilities, access to all of the broker's tools, and a customizable dashboard.

Investors who like to access their portfolio from various locations like their home, work, for example, will appreciate the easy-to-use browser-based platform. You don't even have to download it, everything can be accessed online.

Ally Invest also offers an app called Ally Mobile that allows you to access all your data wherever you are. And you always have the option to use the browser-based platform if you like.

Investing research tools: Ally Invest offers a variety of investing tools that will help you make investment decisions.

Its options trading tools include an options pricing calculator to compare current bid/ask prices to forecasted values. It also includes a strategy scanner that identifies and executes option strategies based on criteria that you have chosen earlier.

Also, standard stock quotes are free to all Ally Invest users, but real-time streaming data is only available to investors who trade more than 10 times per month,

What Ally Invest Does Not Do Well

The Takeaway

If you're an active trader that is concerned with brokerage fees, then Ally Invest would make a great choice. Even if you're not, Ally Invest would likely make a great fit.

With competitive commissions fees, useful researching tools, and an easy-to-navigate browser-based platform (or mobile if you prefer), Ally Invest makes a great all-round online stockbroker. And with no account minimums, it's easy to get started.

However, if you're looking to buy no-load mutual funds and ETFs you'd probably be better off looking elsewhere. If this doesn't sound like you, you might as well give Ally Invest a try!