Investing
Schwab Brokerage Review: Everything You Need To Know
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Charles Schwab is a financial firm founded in 1971 in San Francisco, California. It’s best known for its wide range of financial services including access to commission-free stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and options. Users can also invest in mutual funds, bonds, futures contracts and spot Bitcoin ETFs. Available accounts include taxable brokerage accounts, individual retirement accounts (IRAs), Roth IRAs and 529 college savings plans.
In 2023, Schwab began finalizing its merger with the leading financial services company TD Ameritrade. The move gave customers access to TD Ameritrade’s robust trading and research platform thinkorswim.
Schwab stands out for numerous features including the following:
- Commission-free stock, options and ETF trades
- More than 8,000 mutual funds that charge no transaction fees
- More than 2,000 funds with expense ratios of 0.50% or less.
- Schwab Stock Slices: Schwab allows customers to buy fractional shares or portions of stocks in the S&P 500, which includes equities from some of the nation’s largest companies like Apple, Amazon and Alphabet– the parent company of Google.
- Schwab Intelligent Portfolios: This is a robo-advisor service that creates, manages and automatically rebalances an investment portfolio based on personal factors like your financial goals, risk tolerance and time horizon.
- Schwab Intelligent Portfolios Premium: With this account, Schwab customers can get access to the firm’s robo advisor and a certified financial planner (CFP).
- Award-winning research: Clients have access to market research and insights from Schwab financial experts and third parties like Morningstar, as well as digital tools like stock screeners to guide your investing strategies.
- Thinkorswim: Through its merger with TD Ameritrade, Schwab offers this suite of advanced trading platforms that provides market analysis, charting capabilities, live-streaming news, educational material and more to help you develop and execute trading strategies. Thinkorswim is available on desktop, mobile and through a browser.
- Schwab Personalized Indexing: Schwab offers a separately-managed account that you can customize by investing in your choices of stocks within four index-based strategies, with the capability to exclude specific stocks or entire industries.
- Personalized wealth management and financial advice from registered financial advisors (RIAs)
- Estate planning services
- Tax-advantaged charitable giving services
- Schwab Bank Investor Checking: This checking account can be linked to your brokerage account and offers unlimited ATM rebates, no minimum balance requirement and no monthly service fee.
- Customer service available via phone, 24/7 chat and at physical branches throughout the U.S
Check out our stories below for reviews, in-depth guides, and more about Charles Schwab
Charles Schwab Stories
Benefits
Our summary of Schwab Advisor Services, everything you need to know
A review of Schwab HSA: is it worth it
Our review of Schwab’s Roth IRA, is it worth it?
A look at The Schwab 529 College Savings Plan
Our overview of Schwab’s 401(k): is it worth it?
How-To
Our guide to understanding the Charles Schwab Roth IRA fees
Our summary of the Schwab Credit Card Review: Is It Worth It?
A breakdown of how to open a Schwab brokerage account, step by step
An overview of what a Charles Schwab Custodial account is, and how to use it
A step-by-step guide to setting up Schwab Automatic investing
A step-by-step guide on how to do a Schwab 401(k) rollover.
Trading
A breakdown of Charles Schwab’s FDIC insurance status
An overview of Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, are they any good?
Our coverage of the pros and cons of investing with Charles Schwab
Find out if Charles Schwab is a bank and dive into its benefits.
News and other info
Our profile of the face behind the company: Who is Charles Schwab?
Schwab was one of the first major brokerage firms to offer commission-free stock, ETF and options trading. However, it also seeks to save investors money by offering a large selection of low-cost mutual funds and index funds. There’s also no minimum investment to open a brokerage account with Schwab.
Those interested in cryptocurrency can invest in spot Bitcoin ETFs, cryptocurrency futures contracts and ETFs that offer exposure to the wider crypto market including companies linked to blockchain, the underlying technology behind crypto and other digital assets. However, Schwab doesn’t let customers invest directly in crypto coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum and Binance Coin.
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