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Published: Saturday, 04 December 2021 05:14
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Global stocks:

There are millions of businesses around the world. Most of them are private, meaning it's owned by an individual like us, and the profit/loss is kept  by the individual owner of the business. Such business or companies are called "private". On the other hand, we have some business whose owners decide to take the company public, meaning they allow other people to become part owners of their company. The business owner issues shares of the company, and depending on what % of shares an individual has, that decides the ownership of the company for that person. Such companies are called "public" companies. The term "public" is misleading, since public companies usually implies government companies (i.e public service meaning services provided by government). But here "public" companies mean companies those are listed on stock exchanges.

Stock Exchanges:

There are stock exchanges where buying/selling of stocks happen. A company can list their stock on any exchange, meaning they allow buying/selling of their stocks on that trading exchange. A company can list their stocks on multiple exchanges also, so that there can be more trading. Usually big companies list their stocks in big stock exchanges, so that they can get better price or more visibility/liquidity in their stock. Also, it's considered a prestige symbol for a company to be listed in a big renowned stock exchange.

These are biggest stock exchanges of the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_exchanges

Stock Market index:

These exchanges also develop an index to track the performance of the companies trading on their exchange. There are lot of stock market index (not only the ones created by the exchanges, but also ones that are created by other companies or individuals). A stock market index is a index of a group of companies, weighted according to preference of that index creator.

For ex, if I wanted to make a index called "hot index", I can include maybe 5 hottest stocks as Tesla, Paypal, Netflix, Nvidia and Apple in the index. Now I assign may be 30% weightage to Apple, 20% each to Tesla and Nvidia and 15% each to Paypal and Netflix. If the price of each of these stocks is $100, then the resulting price of the index for 1 "unit" of index can be chosen to be anything, but that will contain stocks in that proportion. Let's say 1 "unit" of this index is chosen to be $100, then there will $30 worth of apple stock, $20 worth of Tesla, $20 worth of Nvidia, $15 worth of paypal and $15 worth of netflix.

Just because there is a index someone created, doesn't mean that index is traded. Someone will need to create a fund or a security which mimics that index. Then he will need to go to an exchange and ask them to list his "security" over there. Then he can start selling it to people on the stock exchange. If there is enough interest in that index, then people may start buying that security, which mimics that index. For providing this service, the person who is providing this fund, may charge an "expense ratio" which is a percentage of  fees that he/she charges every year from that "fund" itself. So, if a fund charges 1% expense ratio, that means $1 will be automatically deducted from that fund every year (assuming fund's avg market value is $100 for that year), w/o anyone doing anything. This expense ratio is separate from the "transaction fees" that you incur on selling/buying this fund. Transaction fees are levied by the brokerage firm who are providing you the service of buying/selling. Expense ratio is levied by the fund itself.

Usually indexes have weight assigned according to the market cap of the company (i.e a bigger company has a higher weight in index than a smaller company). This works well in practice, since larger companies are not only less volatile, but also more likely to survive in distressed scenarios. If we give every company a equal weight, then the index may become very volatile, and also it doesn't seem fair to give a very small company with $100M revenue the same weight age as a company with $100B in revenue. If the smaller company grows by 10X, then total revenue of 2 companies will only go up by 1%. It makes sense that index should go up by 1% or so, not by 50%, when the total sales of both the companies combined has gone up by only 1%. That's why most indices of world weigh individual companies in the index based on market cap.

Is there an Ideal Index?

What we are doing with all these index funds is trying to find a subset of stocks that will beat the market (i.e basket containing all stocks such as Wilshire 5000 is the market). It's a difficult problem to find an index that will always beat the market in future. People keep on looking at past data and come up with list of companies that have generated the best return, and form an index based on that. But there is no guarantee that such an index will also generate the best return in future. In fact, chances are higher that such an index will generate lower returns in future, since the stocks in such indices have already run their course, and are more likely to under perform the market. So, unless an index can time the market of dropping companies and adding companies at the precise time, they will always just perform at market in long runs. They may over perform the market for some period of time, but then they will underperform for a while, resulting in an avg performance, which is same as that of market.

One other thing that seems intuitive in making an ideal index is to just make an index of 50 largest companies in country, let's say USA. As we'll see later, these 50 largest companies comprise about half of total market cap of USA. So, it's diversified enough. Also, any small cap company that starts growing and become big enough to be in top 50, will be picked up by this index, and will start reaping the benefits of extra returns that these new companies provide. One risk here is that by limiting ourselves to top 50 companies, we miss out on big run up of small companies. Let's say a small company like Tesla which goes public at $1B valuation won't get included in this index until it gets to $100B valuation. So, we miss out on the 100X return that this stock provided (going from $1B to $100B). After Tesla gets included in index when it gets to $100B, we may not get 100X return on this stock anymore. So, a better approach might be to expand the number of companies allowed in our ideal index to have may be 100-200 companies. That way we'll pick up these small companies in our index when they get to may be $50B or more. Or may be we might want to have 400-500 companies so that we pick up these companies when they get to $10B valuation. That way, we'll be able to get most of the return of these small companies. This is precisely what S&P500 is. So, our ideal index started turning into S&P500 index, and we keep on expanding it further, it becomes W5000. If we make our index comprise too many small companies, then the risk is that we may lower our return since majority of these small companies will go bankrupt. But again, since their contribution is so small, it may not affect our index negatively in any big way, but may help our index in big positive way (especially if even 1 of these companies goes 100X in valuation). So, there's an ideal number where you can stop to maximize your index return (Look at historical data for last 20 years, and solve it as a Machine learning line fit problem). But truth be told, you can NEVER beat the market return in any statistically significant way over a long period of time by picking stocks !!

So, the answer, there's no Ideal Index for a long period of time :(

Market Cap by countries:

All the stocks trade on one of the above stock exchanges. There are about 50,000 public companies listed on one or multiple of these stock exchanges. This link shows how global market cap changed over the last 50 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_stock_market_capitalization

What is the global market cap of all companies in the world?

Global market cap was $1T in 1975 with only 15K companies. It went to $30T in 2000, and was $125T as of 2021 with about 50K companies. From 25% of world GDP in 1975 (GDP=$5T, Market cap=$1.2T) the total stock market cap went to over 135% of GDP in 2021 (GDP=$96T, Market cap=$125T). Below we'll see the market cap of companies from each country, as well as market cap of companies listed on the stock exchanges of these countries. From above link, we do see that the total market cap of all listed companies in just the top 20 countries is about $100T (as of 2020). So, pretty reasonable to guess that total market cap would be about $110T in 2020 (assuming 90% of market cap is captured by top 20 countries). For 2021, stock markets went up by further 15%-20%, so total market cap for all companies worldwide would be at least $125T at the end of 2021.

NOTE: There is lot of disparity online on what is the market cap of all companies worldwide. We can't figure out market cap, by just adding market cap of all listed securities on all the exchanges of the world, as many exchanges allow foreign companies to be listed too, which may result in double counting of these companies when adding up the global market cap. The wikipedia link above seems to be most authentic as it only shows domestic companies listed for each country. However, looking at wiki link above, the total market cap of all companies from top table is way over $100T, while bottom table lists total market cap as $96T for 2020. $96T is definitely incorrect, and should be somewhere around $110T (I haven't added it up yet).

Major Stock exchanges and their index:

Below are the largest stock exchanges for each country as per the market cap of all the companies trading on that stock exchange, as well as some of the popular index created by those exchanges. Market cap includes not only equities, but also bonds, commodities, foreign exchange, or any other things that are traded on that stock exchange (many times there are dedicated stock exchanges for trading commodities, futures, etc. i.e London Metal Exchange for trading options on metals). We will have to subtract out other market caps from below market cap to get "equity" only market cap, but that's hard to do. So, we'll just live with below market cap reported, assuming 70%-80% of that is due to "equity" market cap. USA has the largest equity market cap at $40T-$50T, with China and Europe coming in at $15T each.

USA: Total Market cap of domestic companies = $40T (as of Dec 2023)

Stocks listed on US exchanges have total market cap of $40T as of 2020, implying 40% of the world's market cap is due to US domestic companies. USA has 2 stock exchanges, NYSE and Nasdaq. These are also the 2 biggest stock exchange of world, where you can almost find any well capitalized stock to trade. It's considered a symbol of pride for a company to be listed on any of these 2 stock exchanges. There are about 5000 domestic public companies in USA (as of mid 2022). Most of them trade on one of these 2 US stock exchanges (but not both). US stock exchange also allow trading of many international stocks, which are public companies in some other countries (1500 such foreign companies are listed on these 2 stock exchanges). Likewise, US stocks trade on other stock exchanges of the world too.

  • NYSE: NYSE or New York Stock Exchange is the oldest exchange (formed in 1792, but got it's NYSE name in 1817), and has stringent requirements for listing. It has about 2500 companies listed with market cap of $23T ( as of Jan, 2018). About 2000 of these are domestic companies, while remaining 500 are foreign companies from 45 different countries (as of mid 2022).
  • NASDAQ: Nasdaq exchange on the other hand is a much newer exchange formed in 1971. It's an electronic exchange, and listing requirements are not as stringent as NYSE, so most small growing companies list on Nasdaq. It has about 4000 listings with total market cap of over $11T (as of Jan 2018). About 3000 of these are domestic companies, while remaining 1000 are foreign companies (as of mid 2022).
    • NOTE: Nasdaq inc is the company that owns Nasdaq exchange, that is itself listed on Nasdaq exchange. It's ticker symbol is NDAQ and it makes money from listing all these companies on it's stock exchange. It's essential to differentiate b/w Nasdaq Inc and Nasdaq exchange, they are not the same.

This is a chart from 2022 showing market cap/number of companies for both exchanges: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1277216/nyse-nasdaq-comparison-number-listed-companies/

As of Nov, 2021, NYSE had total market cap of $28T, while Nasdaq was $24T due to rapid rise in stock price of Tech companies.Tech stocks have since then cratered, but the total valuation of these companies is still mind boggling at $40T as of the end of 2022. To get US market cap, we have to subtract these foreign companies, which Wilshire 5000 index does (It lists only domestic companies,find link FIXME??)

Major indices in USA: (we'll look at these US indices in detail in other section)

  • S&P500 (Standard and Poor's 500): This is the most widely used index which has top 500 companies from both NYSE and Nasdaq. It incorporates all sectors of market, and gives a weighted sum to the companies based on their market cap. The S&P 500 represents about 80% of the total value of US stock markets.
  • DOW (Dow Jones Industrial Average): This has top 30 blue chip (mega cap) companies, and the index aims to be representative of America’s economy. As a result, industries tend to be represented proportionally. However, the biggest drawback is that it's constituents are weighted based on stock price and not based on market cap. This can really distort the real picture, as stock price has nothing to do with total market value of the company (i.e a company with lower stock price may have much higher market cap than another company with much higher stock price). So, even smaller companies may have big influence on the index.
  • Nasdaq 100: This has 100 of the largest technology companies listed on the Nasdaq exchange. The weights of the constituents in the index is based on the companies market capitalizations, but it's largely tech stocks here. It's very volatile by nature, but has delivered the best return since it's inception.

China:

Stocks listed on Chinese exchanges have total market cap of $14T as of 2020, which makes them the second largest, though well behind USA. Reason on why the market cap of all companies listed on chinese exchanges is much lower than those of US exchanges, is primarily due to the fact that chinese exchanges mostly allow domestic companies to be listed on their exchange. They also have a concept of A-shares and B-shares. A-shares are securities issued by domestic companies of China, that trade in local currency yuan Renminbi aka RMB. B-shares are shares issued by Foreign companies that want to list on Chinese exchanges, and they trade in USD. A-shares are for domestic investor, while B-shares are for foreign investors. Any investor can buy both A and B shares, however, it's easier for domestic investors to buy A shares, while it's easier for foreigners to buy B shares. A-shares account for 2/3 of Chinese market cap, while B-shares account for remaining 1/3. So, 2/3 of $14T = $9T, which is close to the market cap of all domestic Chinese companies. Mainland China has 3 stock exchanges: Shanghai Stock exchange, Shenzhen stock exchange and Beijing Stock exchange.

  • SSE: Shanghai stock exchange is the biggest stock exchange of china with market cap of $8T of all listed companies (3rd largest in the world behind NYSE and Nasdaq),
  • SZSE: Shenzhen stock exchange is the seventh largest in the world with market cap of $6T (as of 2021 end).
  • BSE: Beijing stock exchange is the newest exchange which was established in 2021. NEEQ exchange was reformed and transformed into BSE. Primary purpose was to serve small and medium sized enterpries (SME).

 Major indices in China:

  • SSE Composite index: This is the most widely used index used to track performance of Chinese equities. It tracks all 2000 or companies listed on SSE. It's base day is Dec, 1990 and base value is 100. As can be seen, in first 10 years, the index went from 100 to 2000 implying a 20X growth in just 10 years. It reached an all time high of 6000 in 2007, but since then has remained below 4000.
  • CSI 300 (Chinese Securities index 300): This replicates the performance of the top 300 stocks traded on SSE and SZSE. It has two sub-indexes: the CSI 100 and the CSI 200 Index. Over the years, it has been deemed the Chinese counterpart of the S&P500 index and a better gauge of the Chinese stock market than the more traditional SSE Composite index. It's base day is Dec, 2004 and base value is 1000. As can be seen, this index has mostly gone up and given better return than SSE Composite index. Reason are: first it's more diversified, and secondly it's base value is taken at a time, when the market was pretty low.

Europe:

Total market cap of all companies in Europe is about €15T (in currency Euro which is at par with US dollar, i.e 1 USD = 1 Euro) as of Nov, 2021 (no credible source, just an estimation). While every European country has its own stock exchange, there are five major ones that have a combined market capital of over $1 trillion. Two of these are included in the top 10 global stock exchanges - Euronext and London Stock exchange.

  • Euronext N.V: Euronext, also known as European New Exchange Technology (Euronext N.V.), was founded by the merger of European Union (EU) stock exchanges at the turn of the 21st century, following the introduction of the common currency known as Euro. Euronext had a total market cap of $7T as of 2021, and is the 4th largest stock exchange as measured by market cap.
  • LSE: London Stock Exchange has 2 main markets on which companies trade - main market and alternative market. The main market is home to over 1,300 large companies from 60 countries. LSE has a total market cap of about ~$3.5T and is the 10th largest stock exchange.

Major indices in Europe:

  • FTSE-100 (The Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index): Also called the “Footsie” or UK-100, it tracks the 100 largest companies listed on LSE, in terms of market capitalization. Top companies in the index are Royal Dutch Shell, Unilever, HSBC, BP, etc. It includes foreign companies too that are based outside of UK.
  • DAX 30 (Deutscher Aktien Index): This index includes 30 of Germany's largest stocks listed on Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FSE). The DAX represents about 80 percent of the total market value of shares traded on German Stock Exchange. It's price weighted rather than market cap weighted. Major companies are BMW, Volkswagen, Lufthansa, Adidas, Siemens, Merck, etc.
  • STOXX: STOXX is a swiss index provider formed in 1997. It came up with several indices starting in 1998 which became very popular. It's most popular indices are as follows:
    • EURO STOXX 50: This index is made up of fifty of the largest and most liquid stocks in EuroZone countries only (not All of Europe). The index was introduced in 1998. It was retroactively plotted back starting from year 1986, with base value of 1000 assigned to the index for Dec 31, 1991 closing. As of 2021, it's value is ~4000, implying 4X appreciation in 30 years ( => 5% return per year). The total market cap was about €3.6T as of April 2021. This index has 60% market cap of all of Eurozone stock market.
    • STOXX EUROPE 50: Since EURO STOXX 50 was limited to EuroZone countries only, STOXX EUROPE 50 index was designed to capture 50 largest stocks in all of European countries (which includes 18 countries). It's very similar to EURO STOXX 50 and performance is also similar.
    • STOXX EUROPE 600 (STOXX 600 or SXXP): This index contains 600 large, mid and small companies among 17 European countries, covering approximately 90% of the market capitalization of the European stock market (not limited to the EuroZone). The top countries that make up about 70% of the index are UK (composing around 22.3% of the index), France (composing around 16.6% of the index), Switzerland (composing around 14.9% of the index) and Germany (composing around 14.1% of the index). It's base value was taken as 100 as of Dec 1991. It reached an all time high of ~500 in Nov, 2021. The total market cap was about €12T as of April 2021. If we go with STOXX600 capturing 90% of the market, then total Europe Stock market cap would be around $13T, which closely matches with $15T of European Stock market cap.

Japan:

Japan has Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) owned and operated by Japan Exchange group as of 2011. Japan Exchange group also owns 2 other stock exchanges in Japan, and is the only exchange of Japan. Japan Exchange group has market cap of ~$7T and is fifth largest stock exchange.

Major indices in Japan:

  • Nikkei 225: This index is the most popular index outside of US indices. It measures the performance of 225 large, publicly owned companies in Japan from a wide array of industry sectors. It started to be calculated a long time back since 1950. I believe the base value was 100. It was retroactively calculated since 1914 when the value was 20. The index went from 20 in 1915 to 40 in 1945 (annual return of 2%-3%). After the end of world war 2, index went to 100 by 1950 and then to 1000 by 1960 (implying 20% yearly return). By 1975, it reached 4000, and by 1989 it reached 40,000 which was the peak. From then it crashed, and remained close to 10,000 until 2012. By 2021, it manged to get back to 30,000 level.
  • Topix: Topix index tracks all 1700 domestic companies listed on TSE. It's market cap was ¥200T as of 2011 (100 yen = 1 USD, so market cap was ~$2T).

Hong Kong:

Hong Kong Stock Exchange is the 6th largest stock exchange, with a market cap of about $6T (as of 2021).

India:

2 largest stock exchange in India are Bombay stock exchange (BSE) and National Stock exchange (NSE). They have market cap of around $4T each as of 2021. BSE is the oldest exchange which was started in 1875, while NSE is the newer one started in 1992. About 4000 companies trade on the stock exchanges at BSE and NSE. A company can list it's shares on both NSE and BSE and you can buy/sell interchangeably. As of 2020, about 5K firms are listed on BSE and 2K on NSE. Apart from these there are 20 regional Exchanges connected via the Inter-Connected Stock Exchange (ICSE).

Major indices in India:

  • Sensex: This comprises of 30 largest companies traded on BSE. It was created in 1986 by S&P. It comprises of about 45% of BSE market cap. In Dec 2023, Sensex market cap was about $1.7T, while BSE market cap was $4T.
  • Nifty: It's known as Nifty 50 or CNX Nifty. It comprises of 50 largest companies traded on NSE. It was created in 1996. 

Canada:

Toronto:

Australia:

Korea:

Russia:

Brazil:

Latin America: Brazil and Mexico are the only 2 countries relevant here, as they have GDP > $1T and have large population over 100M. Brazil's stock exchange is B3, while Mexico's stock exchange is is

Major indices:

World:

There are couple of world indices that try to mimick

 

 

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Published: Wednesday, 24 November 2021 16:41
Hits: 1431

This section includes all things related to Sports and Outdoor activities. Few stores to consider for these kind of things:

  1. Walmart: Walmart is the first place to look for such things. Many times you can find such stuff on clearance, which is usually cheaper than trying to buy during big sale events
  2. Academy Sports: This is another place to look for your sports needs. They are exclusive Sports shop, so they are little more expensive than Walmart. However, they have good return ploicy (90 days, same as walmart). They price match competitors, so that may be worth something. You can get 20% off Academy Gift cards at local grocery store chain, multiple times a year. So, if you are looking for something to buy, use their discounted GC. They also give you a pop up of 10% off online orders ($20 max) when you browse their website. Or you can just signup for their promotions by providing your email addr and/or your phone number. They will send you a 10% coupon after 24 hrs, only after you make an account (used to be lot easier and simpler until 2024, not any more). Combine all of these with their BF sale, and you can score items for cheap.
  3. Misc Department stores: Like JCP, Kohls , Macys also have bunch of outdoor stuff as backpack, etc that can be scored on cheap when on clearance.

 

Deals:

 

 

2025:

 

 

 

04/27/2025: Macys - High Sierra Backpack for $28:

https://slickdeals.net/f/18274129-high-sierra-swoop-sg-backpack-various-colors-27-99-free-shipping?src=frontpage

This is good priced backpack with lifetime warranty. Pink one (Swoop SG) is even cheaper at $22. Rated highly on SD. TCB has 12% cashback for today only (04/27/25), so that's extra $2 savings.

UPDATE May, 2025: The backpack does look cheap. I wouldn't pay more than $10 for it. The BestBuy backpacks that keep coming on clearance for $12 are lot better (see in

 

 

 

2022:

 

 

 

09/15/2022: Walmart - 21 speed Mountain Bike for $98:

https://slickdeals.net/f/16039282-decathlon-rockrider-st100-21-speed-mountain-bike-27-5-unisex-red-medium-98?src=frontpage

This is good priced adult mountain bike. You don't get adult mountain bikes for much less than $100. Slickdeals comments seem solid about this bike. This is the best deal on bike so far for 2022.

Kids bike too on sale for $87, though not that highly rated, and doesn't have a kick stand:

https://slickdeals.net/f/16039489-decathlon-rockrider-st100-kids-mountain-bike-24-4-5-to-4-11-unisex-black-87?src=frontpage

 

 

05/25/2022: Walmart - Electric Bike for $148:

https://slickdeals.net/f/15806317-20-kent-torpedo-electric-bicycle-multiple-colors-148-free-shipping

Bike is on sale for $150 compared to regular price of $500. Regular bikes go for $100 as of 2022, so electric assisted bike for extra $50 is not bad. Keeps on going in/out of stock, so check back regularly if you get OOS message. 30 day return policy at walmart.

 

 

2021:

 

 

12/04/2021: Walmart - Bikes for $100 (valid from 11/21/2021 to 11/27/2021)

This is decent priced adult cruiser bike. See in "Black Friday 2021" walmart section.

 

 

11/22/2021: Bikes for upto 50% off - Adult bike for $179 (valid from 11/21/2021 to 11/27/2021)

This is one of the lowest priced adult mountain bike. See in "Black Friday 2021" Sports Academy section.

 

 

2020:

 

 

11/22/2020: Bikes for upto 50% off - Adult bike for $125 (valid until 28th Nov, 2020)

https://slickdeals.net/e/14529047-academy-sports-outdoors-black-friday-ozone-500-elevate-bikes-for-the-family-for-124-99

The ozone 500 elevate mountain bike is on sale for $125, which is pretty good price, considering the shortage, since mountain bikes usually start at $100 or so.

 

 

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Published: Friday, 19 November 2021 01:22
Hits: 1750

Black Friday 2021

This is an exclusive list of all BF 2021 deals. Even though I say "Black Friday deals", it refers to all the deals that go live during the holiday season, which is mostly from start of November to December end. This year BF deals are even worse than last year deals, which was already a pretty lame BF.

Black Friday 2020 (last year) link is under shopping section here: Black Friday 2020

Anyway I'll list BF deals below. You still have extended return window for the holidays (mots retailers like Walmart, Target, BestBuy allow you to return items until Jan 2021), so it's relatively low risk. You can always return the item if you find it at a lower price later in Dec or Jan.

Best place to find all BF ads is from below links (too much advertisement makes it hard to navigate yell)

 

Deals:

 Some good deals summarized (more details in bottom part of page along with deals)

  • Toys: Hot wheels cars for 50 cents each => at Dollar General. Happens every year.
  • Bikes: Mountain Bike for $179 => at Academy Sports + Outdoor.  This sold for $125 on BF 2020. So, 40% price hike !! Many other kids bikes for < $100. Kids bikes used to sell for < $50 every BF at Walmart.
  • TV: No TV sale this year. Last year 65 inch sold for $229, this year cheapest 65 inch is $300. Closest deal to last year is 70 inch TV for $398 and 75 inch TV for $550. Last year 70 inch was $300, and 75 inch was $500. So, nothing worth buying this year on BF.
  • Laptop: No good deals for laptop. Laptops that sold for $250 last year, going for $400 this year. Might be prudent to buy laptops during clearance after Christmas. Still few deals at target, walmart and dell.com
  • GiftCards: A lot of deals pop up every year during BF, where you get 20% discount on brand name GC as Apple, Home Depot, Lowes, Fast food chain, etc

 

 

Walgreens: Gift card deal: Free $10 Walgreens GC with purchase of 2 $25 Apple GC.

Look in gift card section for details of the offer: gift cards

 

 

Dollar General - Hot wheels cars for 50cents/each => valid 11/18/2021 - 11/20/2021

Look in "Shopping" section for details of the offer: Toys

 

 

Academy Sports: Bikes for upto 50% off - Adult bike for $149 (expires 12/12/2021) for $179 (valid from 11/21/2021 to 11/27/2021) 

https://weeklyads.weekly-ads.us/academy-sports-ads/flyer-269260-0

The BF ad is at above link. Adult Ozone 500 Elevate bike sold for $249 (regular price) in 2020, and was 50% off on BF. This year, they raised the price to $299 and reduced the discount to 40%, resulting in same bike costing $55 (40%) more than last year's BF (see deal belwo for 2020). Yikes to inflation of 40% !! However, you can get a 10% coupon (as explained in shopping section), as well as use discounted GC to bring your price down.

These Elevate bikes are complicated with separate front and back gear, and if the gears are not in sync, it locks up, or makes sound. Anything more than $100 for any regular bike is just outrageous.

UPDATE 12/09/2021: Adult Ozone Elevate bikes are on sale for $149 until 12th Dec, 2021 (all at 50% off). This is $30 lower than BF price. This is just $10 more than last year BF. Link below.

https://www.academy.com/shop/browse/search?searchTerm=bike%20elevate

 screenshot of ad:

 

Kohls:

https://www.theblackfriday.com/kohls-blackfriday.shtml

Kohls as always have some decent deals. There's $15 Kohls cash (KC) for every $50 spent. You also 5% in Kohls rewards. So you make about $35 in Kohls currency every $100 of puchase. There's 15% off coupon which applies to everything except branded electronics stuff or branded shoes. KC may be redeemed from 27th Nov to 8th Dec. Of course, during period of KC redemptions, there are no good deals. The only bright side is that you save money on sales tax, as KC works like a coupon, reducing the price of the item.

Few deals:

 

 

J.C.Penney:

https://blackfriday.com/ads/black-friday/jcpenney

JCP as always have some decent deals. There's $15 in JCP rewards for every $50 spent. for JCP reward members.

Few deals:

  • Multiple items have mail in rebate (MIR). Nothing is free though.
    • Lots of small appliances, i.e: Toaster, Mini chopper, mini blender, mini waffle maker, coffee maker, etc. They are lot cheaper after MIR. Not sure about the quality.
    • Misc clothing and bed/bath items on sale.

 

 

Walmart:

 

 

Target:

Target has still managed to have some decent deals.

  • 65 inch Element TV for $300, 70 inch RCA TV for $430, 75 inch Element TV for $550
  • Kids scooter for $20 (Jetson Jupiter with LED lights)
  • Kids 16 inch bikes for $50. It's no name "Pacific brand".
  • 12/04/21-12/05/21 => yearly deal for 10% off on $500 Target GC. Use discover credit card to get extra 5% in Casback b buying from target.com (NOT in store, only online)
  • Lots of good laptops in stores and online for , $400. One was at $180 (chrome laptop), other at $250 (real laptop) with good specs

 

 

Amazon:

Amazon had lots of GC deals (max 15% discount) which was pretty lame. It had few lightning deals here and there too.

 

 

Dell:

Every year, dell has pretty good deals on their laptops compared to all these brick and mortar stores.

 

 

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Published: Friday, 19 November 2021 01:15
Hits: 1549

Kids stuff/activities:

Here I'll list kids specific stuff to buy or activities to participate in. I will list toys, video games, arts and craft and other kid's game equipment.

 

 

Skating:

I believe Skating is a fun thing, and kids just learn it themselves without any training. Wish it was true for adults too.

A few skating places participate in "Kids skate free" pgm for kids < 12 years of age. Here's the link: https://kidsskatefree.com/

A lot of places used to be on this list before the pandemic, but now I see just a handful of them. If you find one near you, sign up on the website. You should buy your own skates from ebay, amazon, etc so that you don't have to pay for renting them. It's really cheap to buy them.

 

 

Bowling:

Similar to Skating, there's free bowling too. Bowling is a fun thing too, though not physically exerting.

Quite a few skating places participate in "Kids bowl free" pgm for kids < 12 years of age. Here's the link: https://www.kidsbowlfree.com/

A lot more places participate in free bowling compared to free skating. During summer, you can find even more on this list. If you find one near you, sign up on the website. You should buy your own bowling shoes from ebay, amazon, etc so that you don't have to pay for renting them. It costs around $20-$30 to buy them.

 

 

Toys

I believe Toys are one of the most junk things that modern humans have come with. In old times, everything was a toy for kids. Anything around a kid that aroused his curiosity was a toy. Now we have specialty made items that are shipped from factory, that have no other use than to entertain a kid. Of course if mankind could invent such a thing that would entertain a kid forever, then we would be done with just one master toy. But kids are curious, and their curiosity gets them bored with one thing, and they move on to other things. And so goes on the business of toys. A toy is not bought for kids entertainment, but for parents satisfaction that they got something for their kid by spending their hard money money, and that shows their love for their kids. Somehow marketing for toys is so strong, that everyone is sucked into buying thousands of dollars worth of toys a year, which can probably feed a family for a year. For 2021, Toys revenues worldwide were $100B, something to ponder over.

I'm a sucker of toy ecosystem too, where I trade toys during Birthday events. Just not possible to escape it if you are happily married with kids (i.e not married to kids, but having kids from the marriage)

Popular toys

Some of the top inexpensive toys are:

  • Hot wheels cars: If you go to any grocery store, you will find these "hot wheels" branded small cars which sell for slightly under a dollar. With tax, it's usually a dollar for each car. If you have a kid who is into toys, and he needs to get a toy, everytime he's with you in a grocery store, there is nothing more economical than buying him/her these cars. They last for ever, and cost just a dollar. Every Thanksgiving, some of the Dollar store chains have sales on these cars "Buy one get one free". Buy it using such events to save even more. Matchbox cars
  • Matchbox cars: This is another brank cars, which are very similar to Hot wheels. However the quality is not that good, and they charge thesame as Hot wheels. So, no pint in getting Matchbox cars.

 

 

Lowes/HomeDepot Free Workshop for Kids once a month => on 1st and 3rd Saturday of each month from 9am to 12pm

Lowes and HomeDepot used to have Kids DIY workshop once a month on Saturday before the pandemic. They stopped doing this during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. However, they allowed you to pick the free Kit starting 2022. You had to go to the Customer Service and ask them about the workshop and the free Kit. Both the stores had enough supply where if you went within a week or so of the workshop, you would still get the free kit. These kits sell for $7-$10 in store, so it's good to get them for free. It asks you to register on the website for each workshop. I've never regeistered for any of these workshops. I just show up there, and they give free kits and the tools for the kids to start working. You don't have to do the work there. Your kids can just bring the kits home, and do it at their leisure. However, my advice is to make your kids build the thing over there, as after coming home, they will never do it.

Here are the links to register:

Lowes Kids workshop: https://www.lowes.com/diy-projects-and-ideas/workshops => Scroll to the section that shows "Kids" towards the bottom of page to regsiter. It's on 3rd Saturday of each month from 9am to 12pm.

Some past events:

 

Home Depot Kids Workshop: https://www.homedepot.com/workshops => Scroll to the bottom of page to register for Kids workshop. It's on 1st Saturday of each month from 9am to 12pm.

Some past events:

 

 

 

Deals:

 

 

2024:

 

 

 

08/16/2024: Six Flags - Yearly pass valid for 2024 and 2025 for $60-$100 => expires Labor Day

Link from 2024 => https://slickdeals.net/f/17692587-six-flags-in-jackson-nj-2024-2025-3-park-unlimited-access-gold-pass-75-valid-thru-2025

Link from 2023 => https://slickdeals.net/f/16880801-six-flags-2024-platinum-pass-includes-remainder-of-2023-from-49-more

This sale comes every year in August and ends on labor day (1st week of September). These are the lowest prices of the year (You have other sale during Thanksgiving, but hose sale prices are slightly higher than these). Though the link above is only for specific location, the sale is for all locations. Prices are same as for 2023, so beat the inflation. Food is very expensive, so plan accordingly.

Direct Link => https://www.sixflags.com/fiestatexas/store/tickets (change your location in this link. This link is for Fiesta Texas location, which has 2025 Gold pass for $65)

 

 

04/11/2024: Walmart - Water Bead Blaster for $12

https://slickdeals.net/f/17401746-lightning-blaster-pro-led-red-full-semi-automatic-water-bead-blaster-kit-11-60-free-s-h-w-walmart-or-35

This was originally $80. It came down to $20 during Thanksgiving 2023, and then came to $12 on clearance. Very good reviews on slickdeals, and easily $10 worth of material. You can always return it within 90 days if you don't like it. Good to buy few for having kids party in your yard. Once gone, they won't come back at this price.

 

 

 

2022:

 

 

 

09/11/2022: Walmart - 7 feet diameter trampoline for $67

https://slickdeals.net/f/15995431-7-bounce-pro-my-first-trampoline-hexagon-blue-green-67-free-shipping

Very good price for trampoline with good reviews. You can always return it within 90 days if you don't like it. Good to buy one for having kids party in your yard.

 

 

2021:

 

 

11/16/2021: Dollar General - Hot wheels cars for 50cents/each => valid 11/18/2021 - 11/20/2021

https://slickdeals.net/f/15406018-bogo-free-hot-wheels-and-matchbox-cars-dollar-general-11-18-11-20

This is a yearly ritual at DG. They have BOGO offer at thanksgiving. Make sure to buy an even number of cars.bond

 

 

Details
Published: Friday, 12 November 2021 22:47
Hits: 1282

Buying and selling stocks in USA is relatively simple. You need to open a brokerage account with any of the brokerage firms, and you are good to go.You can't trade stocks with a bank account. Usually large banks have a brokerage arm too, and they will allow you to link everything from same banking site, so that it's easier for the customer.

Brokerage firms:

Good news. Almost all big brokerage firms in USA do not charge any fees for buying or selling stocks/etf/mutual fund etc. They also do not change any annual fee or inactivity fee. On top of that, brokerage firms may give you bonus on opening an account. However, in my experience, smaller fintech firm (financial firms with a dot com mania in it) usually pay a lot of bonus since they have VC's money, and they are looking to cash out big by going public.You should expect to get atleast $500 for opening any new brokerage account. My target is to get $500+ bonus for $50K-$100K, $1000+ bonus for $250K. Once you get to $1M+, they start offering you bonus of $3K or more, but those limits are harder to meet for 99% of the people. I'll post the best deals below.

Interest rate: Brokerage firms offer you some interest on your cash in the account, but it's close to 0% as of 2021. So, no point leaving cash in there, except to get these bonuses. So, when you are moving cash to get a bonus, close that account fast after getting the bonus, as the bonus works out to < 1% interest rate.

NOTE: Most of the brokerage don't charge you anything for moving money (cash) in and out of your account. However, most brokerage firms charge you money for moving securities to another brokerage firm. so, you will have to be careful of such firms, especially if you plan to eventually close your account. This is called ACAT fees, and it's usually charged by the firm from which you are transferring out. Therr is partial transfer fee and full account transfer fee. This usually ranges from $25 to $100. The bonus you earn from transferring accounts may get wiped out by the transfer fees. It's all done electronically, and you don't have to sell any stocks. You can always sell stocks and then transfer the cash to avoid paying this fees. But then you will incur a tax bill (which is a big NO). If you read thru my other sections, you know that the best time to sell your stocks is "NEVER". If you buy stocks, you never sell it, unless the company goes bankrupt.

These are few Brokerage firms to consider. They offer bonuses for opening an account, but bonus varies through out the year. For transferring brokerage accounts or assets for one brokerage to other brokerage firm, never go for any bonus < $500, as it's decent amount of work involved, and trnasfer fees (i.e ACAT fees) may eat up some of this.

1. charles schwab: It's a big brokerage firm. Never had any issues. Trades are all commission free. However, they give you only $100 bonus for opening an account, which is lot lower than what you can get elsewhere. However, if you open an account through a referral, then you (NOT your referrer) can get up to $1000. This is the link:

https://www.schwab.com/referral

As of 2021, depositing $100K gets you $500, which is doable (since it can be in securities or cash). Depositing $500K+ gets you $1K, which is hard to do, also lot inferior to what others offer.  You need to deposit the amount in cash or securities within 45 days. There is no reason to open an account without a referral code, since it's free money that you get. Referrer has no incentive in referring you, so most of the times it's family members referring each other. You will be asked to provide the Schwab client's referral code during the account open process. Use that code or you won't get the bonus money. If you are married, you can open your spouse account using yourself as a referrer.

If you can't find referral code, use this link for referral: https://www.schwab.com/client-referral?refrid=REFERQFF39K8B

Also, make sure to enter the promo code: REFERQFF39K8B when asked for the promo code. Take screenshots as proof. You will get the entire bonus (I get nothing, nor do I know any details about you). If for some reason, schwab denies your bonus using the above code, email me, and I can investigate that. Hope it works out for you.

UPDATE (Jan, 2023, Dec 2024): Schwab's $101 offer for new accounts opening with "Schwab starter kit" is still ongoing (see below in deals) and can be stacked with this referral offer. Open your account using the ""Schwab starter kit" link below and then add the Referral promo code when asked for it. It's still active as of Dec 2024.

UPDATE (Jan, 2022): T.D. Ameritrade, another brokerage firm, has been bought by Charles Schwab, so any bonus offers that are there with Ameritrade will go away pretty soon. so, take advantage of those offers.

2. Merrill Lynch from bank  of America: Their brokerage service is as good as their banking service (inferior than Chase). Trades are all commission free. I haven't tried them yet, so not sure how good the service is, but they do offer up to $1000 for opening the account. Their offer varies through out the year. Their usual offer is $600 for depositing $250K+ (used to be $200K+ as of Apr 2021, but increased as of June 2021), so don't fall for that. You need to deposit $250K or more to get that $1000 bonus, when the $1000 bonus comes along. If you transfer brokerage account from other firm to Merrill,  they will reimburse you for ACAT fees that the other firm charges you (just chat or call Merrill cust service)

https://www.hustlermoneyblog.com/merrill-edge-promotions/

3. J.P. Morgan Chase Wealth Management: Chase bank has a brokerage arm too. You can expect top notch customer service as with other chase products. They have bunch of options, but Chase Self Directing investing accounts seem the one to go for. Trades are all commission free. Their usual offer is $625 bonus for $250K+ in new money (securities or cash).

https://account.chase.com/consumer/investing/KC37942

However from time to time, they offer higher bonus. Last one was at $725 for transferring $250K+ that expired Nov, 2020,

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/chase-you-invest-bonus-200-625-bonus-with-25000-250000-investment-account/

4. Etrade: etrade is one of the biggest players in brokerage business. They also have decent offers to lure you into bringing your money to them.

UPDATE 2023: As of 2023, etrade has terminated all promo offers/bonus for bringing in new clients. Time to take your assets out of etrade and park it somewhere else.

5. Fidelity: Fidelity is the biggest name in brokerage and is best known for retirement brokerage accounts. It is a fine brokerage firm, similar to other firm, but may charge you fees, etc for maintaining an account, so always watch out for that. It has few offers from time to time, but pretty weak offers (i.e $500 Apple GC for $150K+ or similar offers), so best to look at other brokerages.

There was a recent offer for $100 in bonus to both existing and new customers:

https://slickdeals.net/f/15607393-fidelity-get-100-when-you-open-an-account-and-deposit-with-50-or-more

6. Vanguard: Vanguard has long been known for its wide range of in-house index funds and ETFs, which have very low expense ratio. All other brokerage firms offer Vanguard's ETF and Mutual funds to buy/sell, so having an account an Vanguard is not essential. It does offers wide brokerage services to buy/sell stocks, options, bonds, etc. However, I don't know of any bonuses they provide, so best to avoid them.

7. Misc: Other brokerage forms as Robinhood, Webull, M1 Finance and thousand of other small brokerage firms (known as Fintech firms) pay out $100 or more. Anything < $500 is not worth the time and effort involved in opening a brokerage account. I go for these accounts when I get $1K or more. These fintech have lots of VC money to urn before they go public, so sometimes you find insane offers. Wait for such offers to move your assets in them.

  • WeBull => Big name in Fintech. Lots of offers as of 2023. Also get free stocks around $50 or so. Referral bonus is also ongoing, where both referrer and referee get these $50 worth of free stocks. Many special referral offers going on at all times. You need to be in the app to see the referral offer. Many times, you can get $100+ worth of stocks by referring someone.
  • Robinhood => Since going public in 2021, Robinhood had a lot of on and off offers. They offer unlimited 1% bonus on brokerage account transfers from other firms. See below for offers.
  • M1 Finance => Big name in Fintech. Lots of offers as of 2023. 
  • TradeStation => Many offers year round.
  • TastyTrade (previously known as TastyWorks) => Many offers. However, their language for new customers specifically mention "Tax Id is used to determine new customer". So, unlikely you can churn this.

 

 

SIPC Protection at Brokerage firms:

SIPC (Securities Investor Protection Corporation) was formed in 1970. It's a government entity just like FDIC. It's purpose is to protect assets of people's in a brokerage account (whereas FDIC protects assets in event of bank failure). SIPC limits are $500K in securities protection (of which only $250K in cash is covered) per account. This means that if your brokerage firm goes insolvent, and it had used your money or securities in some way, SIPC will make you whole upto the limit. As you can see that the limit is very low at only $500K. Most of the top 1% have assets exceeding $10M, and it might be risky to put all of that in one brokerage firm. To safeguard against that, big brokerage firms take extra insurance which protects for assets up to $100M or so. It's rare for a big firm to offer only upto $500K of protection. However inquire with your brokerage firm. TD Ameritrade, Schwab, Etrade, etc all have proivate insurance of > $100M per account. Also, it's rare for a brokerage firm to lose your money, as they are not allowed to touch your account for any purpose. Your securities and cash is only under your control. Mostly in an event of fraud is where you may lose cash/securities in your brokerage firm. Banks carry real risk of losing your money as they lend that money to other people who may not pay back.

You can read more here: https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/buying-stocks/articles/brokerage-account-insurance-is-your-account-safe/

 

Accounts at brokerage firms:

The account that you open at a brokerage firm is called a brokerage account or security account. It can be individual brokerage account, 401K account, IRA brokerage account, etc. 401K account can't be opened by you at a brokerage firm, they are usually opened by your employer at their choice of brokerage firm. However you can open a IRA brokerage account at any brokerage of your choice, if you meet income thresholds.

 

Margin account:

Margin accounts allow you to borrow money to leverage. All Brokerage allow you to have a margin account. Your personal brokerage account can be converted to a margin account and vice versa at any time by signing a piece of paper. Once you have a margin account, you could borrow an amount of money slightly less than the amount of equity (stocks + cash) you have in your account. This would be called as "100% leverage", which is the max allowed. Some firms allow you 100% leverage( more common), while others may allow only 50% leverage. They charge you nominal interest rate on this leveraged money loaned to you to buy stocks (some such as "M1 Finance" charge as low as 2% as of Dec, 2021). These brokerage firms make money on interest without taking any risk. All risk is yours. They have stop gaps in place, where if the value of your holdings fall below a certain percentage, they will issue you a margin call, implying either you put in more cash in the account or sell your shares. So, a margin account is very risky, as you may be forced to sell stocks even though you may not want to. So, why would anyone want to have a margin account, when you already have leveraged ETF (look in stock investment section) to achieve the same result, without worrying about margin calls?

Margin Borrowing: Well, the real advantage of margin account is to borrow money on interest rates close to mortgage rates. Margin withdrawal is very common, when you need money right now, and there's no other source of debt. It may be tempting to take money out of margin a/c, and pay for your down payment or to pay for repairs, etc. You should not take out more than 50% of the asset value you have in your brokerage. In such a case, market has to fall by >30%-35% before you get a margin call. That seems rarer each passing year, with increasing FED support for the market. 

Margin calls come at the worst time when stock markets fall 20% or more. At those times, you are already lean on cash, and depending on how much your stocks have fallen, you may be asked to put large amount of cash in your margin account. This may make things very difficult, and the brokerage firm may liquidate your holdings at the bottom of the market. Playing with margin is playing with fire. Yet government with it's stock market ponzi scheme of insane positive returns lures millions of people into margin game. When S&P500 has fallen by more than 40%, that may be the only time to even think about margin. And even then, I won't do it. You never know where the bottom is !!

 

Personal Loans:

One of the biggest perks of having a brokerage account and "investing in stocks" is the personal loan feature. You can take out a personal loan for any reason from your brokerage firms. The only restriction to that money is that you can't use it to buy stocks (as margin account is already there which allows you to leverage or take out cash).

The max amount of this personal loan is usually somewhere between 30% to 50% of your portfolio with that brokerage firm. The best part is that this loan doesn't get reported anywhere, not even to credit bureau agencies. It's just you and your brokerage firm that knows about it. So, you can use this money to buy a house, buy a car or make down payment on your new house (although bank lenders will look at your bank statement, and as soon as they see this large cash in your account coming from brokerage firm, they may not accept it as form of down payment). In such cases where you know you are going to be buying a home 6 months down the line, get a loan from brokerage firm at least 6 months in advance and keep it for 6 months. Mortgage lenders usually check only last 3 month's statement docs, so this may be ok. This personal loan can be a life saver in many circumstances where either you are not able to get a loan, or you are getting a loan, but at very high interest rates. The interest rate on these loans thru brokerage firms is also among the lowest (it's better than unsecured loans but higher than what you get on a 30 year mortgage). However the rates on these personal loans are worse than the ones on margin accounts. Other caveat is that the rate changes daily based on short term interest rates of SOFR (Secured overnight finance rate), plus there's a margin added on top of index rate, which may be as high as 5% for small credit lines.

The loan is basically a line of credit, and you can withdraw money from that credit line for whatever term you want. you don't have to lock in any period. You just get charged the interest monthly?? for however long you have money withdrawn from that credit line. Line of credit is established within a couple of days, and depending on the value of securties in your account, the credit line will keep getting adjusted??

I'll put specific links below as to how this process works at different brokerage firms:

  • Charles schwab: It's called Pledged asset line. As of Apr 2025, rate for $500K credit line is 7.75% which is 1% higher compared to 30 yr mortgage rates of 6.75%. Link => https://www.schwab.com/pledged-asset-line
  • etrade: It's called "Line of Credit" against your securities. As of 2024, rate for $500K credit line is 8% which is in line with others. Link => https://us.etrade.com/bank/line-of-credit
  • Misc: Many firms don't even have these "Personal loans", as they have "margin loans" to loan out money.

Conclusion: Personal loans are usually at a higher rate than margin loans, so margin loan might be a better option to go for. Consider both the options.

 

Stock Lending Program:

Whenever you sign up for a new a/c with any of these newer fintech brokerage firms (as RH, webull, etc), they will always want to sign up for their stock lending program. It's a big NO and you should never sign up for it. Few reasons:

  • Low interest: They claim that you'll get paid up to 1.5% extra interest on your idle stocks, but in reality you will few cents or dollars a month. You will get bunch of tax forms and you will spend more time filing tax return for this extra income that will cost you more in time.
  • No Dividends: Even bigger reason not to do this is because your dividends that you get paid while the stocks are lent to someone else, are paid as cash in your a/c and they lose their "qualified" status. Qualified dividends get taxed at 15%, while the cash you get will get taxed at your regular tax rate. Just this difference will get you into a loss.
  • Ethics: Third and slightly ethical reason is that why lend your stock to someone to drive your own stock down? It's like you are shorting your own Co. Counter argument is that if you don't lend, someone else will. So, it doesn't matter whether you lend or not.

Bottom line, NEVER ever sign up for this. Read on reddit threads if you are not yet convinced.

 

Transferring money:

When transferring money to brokerage firms from your bank a/c, there's a loophole that allows you to earn interest on the same money at both your bank and your brokerage firm, while your money is in transit. Let's say you want $10K to be transferred from your bank to brokerage firm. You initiate an ACH at your brokerage firms to pull funds from your external bank into brokerage firm. The money is available immediately at your brokerage firm, which you can use to buy SGOV ETF which pays you interest on a daily basis (the price of SGOV goes up every day, which is the equivalent of interest). You initiate the transaction on a friday, so that even if the funds land on Monday, you are guaranteed 3 days of interest on $10K at both places. At 5% interst on $10K transfe, that amounts to $5 in double interest over a 3 day weekend. So, free $5, not too bad !! More details here:

DoC => https://www.doctorofcredit.com/optimizing-interest-yields-on-fund-transfers-to-robinhood-other-brokerages/

 

Transferring Brokerage Funds/accounts:

When transferring funds from one brokerage a/c to another, there's usually ACAT fees that outgong firms charge. You can request the incoming firm to reimburse you for that money, once you show the statement with the ACAT fees. Most of the incoming firms will reimburse you. But sometimes they will refuse. One trick that works for a lot of outgoing brokerages is that they don't charge for partial transfers, only for full transfers (i.e when you are closing the account). People usually leave $1-$100 in cash or so to avoid this fees. If you really want to close then just transfer this cash to your bank a/c via ACH, and then close the a/c. Then you won't get charged by the outgoing firm, as there's no ACAT happening at time of closing.

Below are various brokerage frms which do free partial/full xfer.

  • Schwab => Free for partial xfer
  • Merill Edge (by BofA) => Free for partial xfer. Min needed in a/c is $1 for taxable a/c and $50 for IRA a/c.
  • Fidelity => Free for both full and partial

 

 

 

Brokerage Deals (from 2025 onwards):

 

These are all the brokerage account deals. I used to have these deals in separate section before 2025, but will now have it in this section. For deals before 2025, see in section "Deals until 2024" later below. These deals seem to come and go, or the bonus amounts keeps changing. So, keep checking as I may not have updated the details.

Ongoing: For people with $250K in IRA a/c, they can do Wells Fargo (for $2500) and Merill Edge (for $1000) once every year and get $3500 every year just by transferring your IRA a/c. I wouldn't suggest doing every year, may be once every 2 years to avoid any red flags. These are the steps for doing it:

 

Deals:

  • 06/01/2025 => MooMoo: They have been offering bonus for new and existing customers for some time, though their bonus offers are limited to $1K-$4K. Don't expect large bonus, but then the holding period is also < 1 yr. Offers keep getting extended. Valid until July, 2025.
  • 06/04/2025 => Tradeup: Continuation of offer from 09/28/24. They added IRA offer too though it's only $2K in bonus with 5 yr holding period (worthless). Valid until Aug 31. 
  • 05/20/2025 => Webull: On expiration of previous offer, they put a new offer for different tiers. Good part is that this offer applies to both ACATS xfer as well as ACH xfer. So, get money from bank and invest in SGOV ETF. 2 Sweet spots are $2K bonus on $100K+ deposit (2% CB) and $10K bonus on $1M+ deposit. Add $1 to both of the deposits to take you to the higher tier. Valid for both new and existing customers. Valid from 20 May to June 30. 
  • 04/19/2025 => Webull: Offered by Webull in past too, it's an ongoing offer, where they give you ~0.5%-1.5% bonus on transferring new funds via ACATS. The 2 sweet spots are $25K for $750 (3%/yr) and $250K for $3750 (1.5%/yr). You get paid in 12 equal installments. They had 3% offer in the past too, with 2 yr holding period (limited to $60K in bonus with $2M in xfer). This is inferior to that as you can do only smaller amounts here. Good part with such webull offers is that these are new promotions every time they offer, so you can take existing funds out, and then redeposit it after a few days to get the bonus again when the new offer is active. So, same money can keep on making money every year. This offer needs to be targeted to you in your app or on desktop site in your a/c in order for you to be eligible. Offer valid from Apr 9 - May 9 (extended to May 19).
  • 03/18/2025 => SoFi: Offered by SoFi Invest. It's different from their last offer, where they offered bonus only on 401K conversions. Now the bonus is for regular brokerage as well as IRA a/c, with 1% unlimited bonus. Also, the holding period is 9 months only (holding required only until 1/31/2025). This offer is valid for existing a/c holders too. Too bad if you locked your brokerage assets elsewhere, as this is the best offer so far.
  • 03/17/2025 => Etrade: Offered by etrade. It offers $250-$40K for IRA xfer only. Transferring $200K-$2M is a sweet spot, as it gives you ~0.5% in bonus for keeping the money for a year. This is inline with what other brokerage firms will pay you. Holding period is 1 year.
  • 01/26/2025 => FirstTrade: Offered by FirstTrade. It offers 2% boost (i.e match) for IRA a/c transfer with max bonus of $20K (implying max assets of $1M to get the max bonus). Holding period is 5 years. No match for regular brokerage. This is inferior to 3.5% match offered by Robinhood and Webull, but 2% seems to be new industry standard. It's an OK offer if you don't have any other bonuses going on for your IRA a/c. But holding for 5 yrs for mere 2% is risky.
  • 01/03/2025 => Citi: Offered by Citi Wealth Management. Offer as been continuing and has now been extended to 03/31/2025. Multiple bonus tiers with highest bonus of $5K for $2M+ in cash/securities. Knowing Citi and my experience with them in the last decade, it's not 100% guaranteed :(
  • 01/01/2025 => M1 Finance: Offered by M1 Finance. 0.5% bonus with max bonus capped to $25K (for $5M+). You need to hold funds until 01/31/2026 (at least 1 year hold). Not too shabby as 1% and 2% bonuses from other firms required 2+ yr hold time. Retirement a/c (IRA, 401K, etc) are not eligible. Expires 01/31/2025.

 

 

 

 

Deals until 2024:

 

2024:

 

 

 

10/10/2024: Robinhood (RH) Brokerage Offer of 1% (or 2%) bonus on total assets transferred  (3% bonus on IRA transfers) - Valid from 10/16/24 to 10/27/24

This is the same offer as from 2023 and 2024 that kept getting extended. It comes and goes. 3% IRA transfer offer is back. For regular Brokerage you can get additional 1% (for a total of 2%) by having a settled margin balance that is $10,000 or more). Basically they want you to open a margin account. Not a big deal, as you can close the margin account later. It's worth getting that extra 1%.

Link => https://www.doctorofcredit.com/robinhood-hood-week-10-16-10-27-2-brokerage-bonus-3-ira-match/

UPDATE Jan, 2025: IRA transfers are back to 2% bonus (instead of 3%). Link => https://www.doctorofcredit.com/robinhood-gold-3-ira-transfer-bonus-unlimited-cash-bonus/

UPDATE Mar, 2025: Regular transfers are back to 2% bonus, but now they have a 5 year holding period and requires a RH Gold membership for 1st year (costs $50). So, basically 0.4% bonus per year, though bonus is paid in full as soon as requirements are met. Worth doing it as $1M+ a/c will net you $4K per year (hard to get that kind of bonus every year with other brokerages). Link => https://www.doctorofcredit.com/robinhood-gold-brokerage-transfer-2-unlimited-bonus/

Look in earlier post for more details.

 

 

09/28/2024: TradeUp Brokerage Bonus Offer => $2K bonus for $100K+ in brokerage account transfer => expires 31st Dec, 2024 31st Mar, 2025 31st Aug, 2025 

$2K on transferring $100K+ (~1.2%/yr return). You need to have funds parked for a year and half. Best to have SGOV or some similar ETF transferred, so that you can liquidate at time of closing (to avoid $50 ACAT out fees)

 https://www.doctorofcredit.com/tradeup-brokerage-1000-2000-bonus-with-50k-100k-transfer/

 FREE STOCKS: If you transfer in $50k you’ll also get around $40/$80 in free stock. If you transfer in $100k you’ll get around $50/$100 in free stocks.

 

 

08/01/2024: Sofi Brokerage Bonus Offer => 1% bonus for conversion and transfer from 401K rollover account to IRA account => expires 15th Sept, 2024

Link => https://www.doctorofcredit.com/sofi-401k-1-rollover-match/

This is a trap offer, as Sofi wants to convert your Rollover 401K account to IRA a/c. There are a lot of tax implications, and it's not in your interest to do the conversion. If you were already planning to do this, then this offer is for you.

 

 

07/18/2024: WeBull Brokerage Bonus Offer => up to 3.5% match for IRA transfer and 2% for regular Brokerage account transfer (ymmv extra 3% APY on cash)=> various expiry dates

UPDATE 10/10/2024 => All 3 offers still active. They come and go, so check often if you have missed it.

This is THE highest offer for an IRA transfer. It's better than the previous one, as this time, they specifically say that the bonus will be deposited in the IRA account, so no taxes. Looks like bonus i capped at $100K, so no more than $5M transfer please !! Terms same as last time. Various promo ongoing.

NOTE: With Webull, you have to claim the rewards in Webull app, whenever you get the reward. You have 30 days to claim it in the app, or the reward is forfeited. Also, you have to call/email them about the reward, else they may claim that they already gave the reward, but you never claimed it. So, keep reminders on your calendar, and be on top of it, when it's reward payment time. Even though my reward was forfeited as I forgot to claim it in 30 days, they reissued the reward promptly on asking. So, looks to be honest with rewards :)

  • IRA transfer: 3.5% paid over 5 years. Most links online still refer to old promo. New promo distributes bonus money in IRA brokerage account. They advertise in emails sent that there's NO tax to pay. Runs from July 17 - Aug 15.
    • Link => https://www.webull.com/offers-promotions/ira-transfer-promo
    • TERM: An Eligible Customer who satisfies the Offer Requirements is eligible to receive a “Deposit Bonus” consisting of a payment to their IRA Account of an amount equal to 3.5% of the Eligible Customer’s Net Qualifying Deposit Amount as of the First Deposit Bonus Payment Date.
  • Regular transfer (2%, used to be 3% in March/April of 2024. This is the best we have now, unless the promo of 3% returns. This Promo runs from July 5 thru July 31.
  • Boosted Cash APY of 5% + 3% (extra) for 180 days => Targeted 8% APY (extra 3% APY on cash) to selected accounts Looks to be NOT a public offer. Transfer by Aug 9th. Extra interest starts from Aug 9. NOTE: they may reduce their base rate from 5% to some lower number, but extra 3% should still keep it higher than everyone else.

 

 

07/03/2024: Charles Schwab Brokerage Bonus Offer of upto $6K for new/existing accounts => expiry unknown

This offer for bonus has been around for a year, but they have higher tiers now. $1M of new assets gets you $2500, while $5M+ gets you $6K. Not sure if you become ineligible for new offers within  some time frame, if you bite on this bonus.

Link: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/schwab-brokerage-bonus-up-to-2500-valid-for-existing-customers-public-offer/

 

 

05/31/2024: Etrade Brokerage Bonus Offer => $5K bonus for regular brokerage account transfer => expires 31st July, 2024 31st Jan, 2025

Link => https://www.doctorofcredit.com/etrade-up-to-3500-brokerage-referral-bonus-25000-1000000-required/

$5K on transferring $1.5M+ (~0.33%/yr return). Other smaller tiers too. $600 bonus on $100K (~0.6%/yr) is next best tier. You need to have funds parked for a year.

UPDATE 10/02/2024: Now $2M gets $6K in bonus. Higher offers for Morgan Stanley clients (with $12.5K for $10M+). See link in the Doc Post

 

 

05/25/2024: WeBull Brokerage Bonus Offer => 1.25% bonus for regular brokerage account transfer => expires 30th June, 2024

Link => https://www.webull.com/offers-promotions/transfer-promo

This is THE highest offer for a regular brokerage transfer, better than 1% from Robinhood. However they are provided in 2 installments, 50% at 1 yr anniversary, and other 50% at 2nd year anniversary. So, riskier comapred to Robinhood, where you are paid 100% of bonus upfront within a couple of days. Account needs to be open for at least 2 years.

 

 

02/27/2024: WeBull Brokerage Bonus Offer => up to 4.5% match for IRA transfer => expires 30th Apr, 2024

This is THE highest offer for an IRA transfer. However, you must have received a push notification from webull in order for you to be eligible for the offer, else you won't qualify for the bonus. You get 3.5% for all IRA transfers and contributions. You have to hold the transferred assets at Webull for 5 years. You get paid 1/5th at the end of every year. Robinhood is giving only 3% IRA match, but they pay you upfront, so you can invest it right away and make extra 25% return in the next 5 years, netting you 3.75%. So, RH looks better. However, Webull also gives an extra 1% match when you complete a referral or receive a referral. Now this part is NOT clear =>

  • If you are referred by someone, do they need to have an IRA account too? Also, who gets paid = is it the referred person, or is the person who referred you?  Looks like both get paid on their transfers.
  • If you refer someone to open an IRA account, then do you get paid on what they transferred in their IRA a/c, or do you get 1% match on your own transferred assets? => Looks like both get paid
  • In both cases, a unique referral link is needed from an existing Webull Brokerage account holder. May need to be an IRA a/c holder, not sure?
  • In both cases, when does this extra 1% get paid?

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/webull-up-to-3-5-ira-match-4-5-with-referral/

 

 

 

2023:

 

 

 

11/21/2023: WeBull Brokerage Bonus Offer of up to $18K for IRA transfer => expires 19th Dec, 2023

This was THE highest offer for an IRA transfer, until Robinhood and then Webull came with matches of > 3% for IRA Transfers. It offers 3X the regular bonus during the promotion period, however you need a referral code from an existing Webull IRA account holder. You need to hold the funds for a year. With $1M transfer, you get $18K in bonus, while with $500K+, it is $9K in bonus. It amounts to 1.8% extra return, which is unheard of. Anything < $500K in transfer is not worth it, as it pays max of $1.8K, which you can get elsewhere. Most difficult part is finding someone with referral code.

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/webull-up-to-18000-ira-bonus/

 

 

11/01/2023: Fidelity Starter Pack + Fidelity Bloom Offer of $230  - expires Dec 11, 2023

2 offers with Fidelity $100 each:

  1. Open Starter Pack and get $100 if you deposit $50 or more:
  2. Open Fidelity Bloom Save and Spend Account. It holds your uninvested cash paying you 5% APY on it. It's an app, so you need to download it. Open this once you have opened the above starter pack. You get $100 bonus for depositing $50 or more in this. You also get 10% match annually on up to $300 in deposit (easy $30).
    • Direct Fidelity Link: https://www.fidelity.com/mobile/bloom
    • On bottom of page, under "Cash rewards", it says "Get a 10% annual savings match from Fidelity® on up to $300 of deposits to your Save account."

Easy $230. It's a below avg offer, since we look for at least $500 for any such account. However, this doesn't have any DD req or any other hoops to jump thru, so easy money.

 

 

10/28/2023: Robinhood (RH) Brokerage Offer of 1% bonus on total assets transferred  (3% bonus on IRA transfers) - expires Dec 8, 2023 expires Apr 30, 2024 (1% bonus offer extended to June 28, 2024)

This is the best offer seen so far from any brokerage. In addition, sign up for new account at RH using Rakuten cashback website (see in cashback section on how to get cashback) to get $50 extra. They have an outgoing ACATS fee of $100 (which you can most likely get reimbursed by the brokerage you transfer RH account to).

There are 2 offers, and are valid for both new and existing members:

  1. IRA (non taxable accounts) brokerage transfer offer: This is an earlier offer, which has been extended. Here you get 1% bonus (Now 3% bonus as of Jan 2024) on total assets transferred (no cap). However, assets need to remain at RH for 5 years. So, this is basically 0.2% per year, which you can get elsewhere depending on the amount of assets transferred. This is not that lucrative. There is no expiry date mentioned.
    1. Link => https://www.doctorofcredit.com/robinhood-launches-robinhood-retirement-ira-with-1-match/
    2. UPDATE 2024: Now the offer is for 3% IRA match instead of 1%. This is insane offer, as $1M transferred will net $30K in retirement account. This will be non taxable as it goes to retirement account as contribution. You need a gold subscription though, which will cost $7*12=$84 for 1st year, and cancelled after that.
      1. Link => https://www.doctorofcredit.com/robinhood-gold-3-ira-transfer-bonus-unlimited-cash-bonus/
    3. There is a separate 3% contribution match for IRA accounts (for Robinhood Gold members). This is if you contribute money to your IRA account while at Robinhood, they will match your contributions as = 3% for Gold members and 1% for everyone else. Since, you pay $84 for yearly subscription, and you are limited to $7K in contribution into your IRA account (for year 2024), you can make free $210-$84=$126 for Gold members and free $70 for everyone else.
  2. Non IRA (taxable accounts) brokerage transfer offer: Transfer your brokerage account to RH, from October 23 through December 8, 2023, and get 1% on total assets transferred. There is no max cap on bonus. Assets need to remain at RH for 2 years from date of transfer. So, this works out to 0.5% per year, which is one of the highest payout bonuses.
    1. Link => https://www.doctorofcredit.com/robinhood-1-brokerage-transfer-bonus-unlimited-cash-bonus/

This is one of the highest bonus for transferring non IRA accounts to RH, especially if you have > $1M+ in assets.

UPDATE 09/10/2024: The offer keeps on getting extended. It has been extended several times, and is still valid in 2024. It has ben extended to Oct 01, 2024.

UPDATE 05/15/2024: 1% bonus offer for regular brokerage account transfer extended to June 28, 2024. 3% bonus on IRA transfers is dead. More info on their help center – https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/account-transfer-bonus-faq-may-2024/

 

 

10/20/2023: TastyTrade (previously known as TastyWorks) Brokerage Bonus Offer of $2K for $100K+  - expires Mar 31, 2024. Ongoing as of July, 2024 May, 2025

DoC Link => https://www.doctorofcredit.com/tastyworks-brokerage-bonus-fund-with-2000-earn-200-bonus/

Direct Link => https://support.tastyworks.com/support/solutions/articles/43000678965-tiered-opening-promotion-2023-2024

This is only for new customers who transfer their assets via ACAT. One of the best offers for $2K bonus on $100K+ transfer from other brokerage (about 2% return). For $5M+, bonus is $25K which is unheard of for such a large amount (0.5% return). Need to leave it there for at least 12 months. In order to be eligible for this Promotion, the Referral Code of “MYNEWBONUS” is required to be entered in the REFERRAL CODE FIELD when applying for an eligible account. This account does not look to be churnable as TAX ID is used to determine new customer). However, not sure if people who had previous account with tastyworks (NOT tasttrade) will qualify or not. Need to clarify => possibly not.

UPDATE (May, 2025): Same offer just keeps getting extended. You can get better returns with Webull for existing customers with their ongoing promos.

UPDATE (July, 2024): Max bonus at $5K for transferring $1M+.

UPDATE (Nov, 2023): Looks like the highest tier of $5M+ is gone, so max bonus is $5K. If you have > $300K+ to transfer, then Robinhood offer listed above is a better offer as that gives you 1% bonus with no cap.

 

10/15/2023: WeBull Brokerage Bonus Offer of $2400 - $8000 for depositing $100K+ in securities and/or cash => expires 30th Oct, 2023

This is one of the most generous offers. The best offer you can get anywhere is 1% on your assets (i.e Public Brokerage offer from 2022 offered $10K on $1M). This gets pretty close to that. It would be unwise not to take advantage of this.

There are 3 separate offers, and you combine all of them to get the best value:

  1. Free Stock offer: Open a WeBull Brokerage account and get 6-12 free fractional shares. No code needed. Deposit any amount in the brokerage account via ACH, ACAT, etc. Most likely you will get 6 shares of about $5 each (fractional share,) of mediocore  companies. Sell them and pocket around $30-$50. This offer expires on 31st Oct, 2023.
  2. Brokerage account transfer offer: Once opened, you can get Securities or cash transferred from your other brokerage account. Depending on the value transferred, you can get bonus from $100-$5K Useful ones are $1200 bonus for transferring $100K, or $3K for transferring $500K. This offer expires on 30th Oct, 2023.
    • Link: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/new-webull-brokerage-customers-can-get-bonus-of-up-to-5000/
    • Total amount of securities/cash is determined based on total amount of deposits MINUS total amount of wthdrawals as of Jan 29th, 2024.
    • VERY IMP: Offer rewards + ACAT transfer fee reimbursement will be posted in rewards section of webull app on Jan 30, 2024, and have to be manually claimed on that date, or they will expire. NOT sure as this seems such an insane requirement.
    • VERY IMP: Do NOT open a margin account, as lots of people have run into issues where they don't qualify for the CM bonus (see below) anymore. Just open a regular "cash account".
  3. Enrollment in Cash Management (CM) feature: On top of opening the account, and transferring stocks/cash, you can enroll in CM feature of the brokerage account. This is where your uninvested cash sits. They pay you 5% on this. Depending on cash that you have in this, you can get bonus of $100-$3K. Useful one is $100K of cash which gets you $1200 in bonus. This offer expires on 30th Oct, 2023.
    • Link: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/webull-cash-management-account-5-apy-cash-bonus-of-up-to-3000/
    • Total amount of cash for bonus purposes is determined based on total cash deposited by Oct 30, 2023 MINUS total amount of cash withdrawn by May 7, 2024. Looks like once the cash is in, you can just invest in stocks or buy an ETF (like SGOV which pays you 5.5% interest). As long as you don't withdraw the cash out of your account, you should be good to get this bonus.
    • Margin accounts don't have CM feature, so they don't qualify for CM bonus. So, just open a regular "cash account" in step 2 above.
    • This reward will be paid automatically on May 8th, 2024. Nothing to manually do for this one.

All in all, if you transfer $100K of cash into the brokerage account(via ACATS), you will get $1200+$1200 = $2400 in bonus. Some readers have suggested that same cash can be used for satisfying both offers: #2 and #3. This has been confirmed via chat by multiple readers. I also confirmed via email. This is the response from Webull:  "In addition, the transfer of $100k via ACAT will qualify you for both bonuses of $100k, you will be able to use the funds to trade.  Venessa, WeBull Rep".

Best offer is to deposit $100K in cash via ACATS and then buy SGOV ETF with it. You will get $2400 as bonus (2,4% extra return). Other best offer is to transfer 500K in cash via ACATS, which will net you $3K+$5K=$8K in bonus (1.6% extra return).

 

 

10/01/2023: M1 Finance Brokerage Bonus Offer of $250-$15000 for transferring stocks - expires Nov 15, 2023

https://m1.com/transfer/promo-15k-aug23/

This offer is same as what was offered in Dec 2022, but now it's open for both new and existing customers. Any new funds that they transfer will get a bonus depending on the amount. We look for 1% bonus, but here the max is 0.4% across any tier, The only tier that looks doable is $250K which gives $1K in bonus (only 0.4% bonus). Also, for incoming transfers not sure if they reimburse the ACAT charged by the other firm. If they don't, then this offer may not be worth doing. They do charge $100 or so for transferring securities out, in case you want to close your M1 account in future. So, be aware of that future loss.

 

 

01/05/2023: Public Brokerage Bonus Offer of $600 for depositing $100K+ => continuation from 2022 => still active as of Oct, 2023 => again active as of Dec 18, 2024

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/public-brokerage-up-to-10000-bonus/

This is a much reduced offer from last year where they offered $2K for depositing $100K. Highest tier was $10K for $1M, now it's $10K for $5M. This offer is available to both new and existing customers. I was hesitant last year. Comments say everyone got the bonus paid. The service is bad, so current offer is not worth the trouble. Wait for a better offer in future.

There is also a swagbucks offer for $16, so get some SB while you sign up.

UPDATE 12/18/2024 => IRA added too for bonus. IRA do have 24 month requirement.

 

 

01/02/2023: TD Ameritrade Brokerage Bonus Offer of $500 for depositing $100K+ => continuation from 2022

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/td-ameritrade-up-to-1000-brokerage-bonus-nc1000/

https://www.tdameritrade.com/client/referral/index.html

This offer is continuation of the offer from 2022. The lower tier offers are better, but higher tier offers are worse. Best offer is $300 for $50K. Best to go for higher offer of $500 for $100K, resulting in 0.5% APR, which is an OK offer. However, since TD Ameritrade is going to get bought by Schwab and integrated into Schwab sometime in 2023, this might be the last chance to dip into both schwab and Ameritrade bonus offers. It says CODE is NC1000, it's automatically entered for you if following the referral link above (else you have to enter it manually, or you may not get the bonus)

 

 

 

2022:

 

 

 

12/30/2022: M1 Finance Brokerage Bonus Offer of $250-$10000 for transferring stocks - expires Feb 28, 2023

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/m1-brokerage-bonus-up-to-10000/

This offer is same as what was offered in Jan 2022, but now the bonus amount is lower for transferring $50K. However, if you can transfer $250K, then you get $1K in bonus (About 0.4% return in a year). They do charge $100 or so for transferring securities out, in case you want to close your M1 account in future. So, be aware of that future loss.

 

 

03/16/2022: Charles Schwab Brokerage Bonus Offer of $101 for new accounts after depositing $50+ => expiry unknown. Still active as of 12/23/2024

https://slickdeals.net/f/15673204-open-and-fund-your-account-for-50-and-get-101-split-equally-across-the-top-five-stocks-in-the-s-p-500-at-schwab

Link: https://www.schwab.com/investing-starter-kit

This is free $101 on top of referral of $500 that you can get. This is for new accounts only. This is the time to open an account at schwab, if you haven't opened it yet.

 UPDATE 12/23/2024 => This is still active. Link => https://www.doctorofcredit.com/charles-schwab-101-brokerage-bonus-easy-requirements/

 

 

01/25/2022: TD Ameritrade Brokerage Bonus Offer of $500 for depositing $100K+ => expires Mar 31, 2022. Extended to May 31, 2022. Still valid as of June 10, 2022

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/td-ameritrade-up-to-1000-brokerage-bonus-nc1000/

https://www.tdameritrade.com/client/referral/index.html

Best offer is $500 for $100K, resulting in 0.5% APR, which is an OK offer. However, since T.D. Ameritrade is going to get bought by Schwab, this is the last chance to dip into both schwab and Ameritrade bonus offers. It says CODE is NC1000, it's automatically entered for you if following the referral link above (else you have to enter it manually, or you may not get the bonus)

 

 

01/15/2022: Merrill Edge Brokerage improved Bonus Offer of $1000 for transferring $250K+ => expires Apr 22, 2022

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/merrill-edge-brokerage-up-to-1000-cash-bonus-for-moving-over-your-investments/

https://www.merrilledge.com/offers/pr1000

This is improved offer. Std offer is $600. This is $1K in bonus, but you need to be a preferred rewards member or need to signup for one after opening a bank account with them (otherwise you get std $600 bonus).

 

 

01/12/2022: M1 Finance Brokerage Bonus Offer of $500-$5000 for transferring stocks - expires Feb 18, 2022

https://www.m1finance.com/earn-up-to-5000

On top of the bonus amount of $500 for opening the account (posted below from 2021 and still live), M1 finance is also offering a generous bnous of $500 for transferring $50K worth of stocks from other brokerage. $500 seems best as it's 1% of free money on your investment, They do charge $100 or so for transferring securities out, in case you want to close your M1 account in future. So, be aware of that future loss.

 

 

01/08/2022: etrade Brokerage Bonus Offer of upto $3500 for transferring $1M - expires Dec 31st, 2022

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/etrade-up-to-3500-brokerage-referral-bonus-25000-1000000-required/

This is the best offer for bonus at around 0.35% cashback on $1M transfer. If you don't have $1M in securities+cash, then $1K bonus for depositing $250K is also not too bad.

 

 

 

2021:

 

 

 

11/10/2021: M1 Finance Brokerage Bonus Offer of $500  - expires Dec 31st, 2021

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/m1-finance-500-brokerage-bonus/

You have to deposit $50K in cash (NOT securities) to get $500. If you end up buying securities with cash, you will have to pay $100 for transferring it to other brokerage firm.

 

 

11/01/2021: Tastyworks Brokerage Bonus Offer of $500  - expiry unknown

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/tastyworks-brokerage-bonus-transfer-10000-earn-500-bonus/

Need to deposit $10K and leave it there for at least 3 months. Not bad. In order to be eligible for this Promotion, the Referral Code of “GIVE_ME_FIVE_2021” is required to be entered in the REFERRAL CODE FIELD when applying for an eligible account. 

 

 

 

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