Ally's Investment Platform: What's The Deal?

Ally Invest is the brokerage arm of Ally Financial, a bank holding company founded in 1919 by General Motors to provide financing to automotive customers. Today, Ally is one of the largest car finance companies in the US and also provides online banking, corporate lending, and mortgage loans.

Ally Invest offers a range of investment options, including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and fixed-income products. It also provides forex trading through a separate account with Gain Capital's Forex.com brand. The platform is designed for both beginner and intermediate investors, with low fees, no account minimums, and easy account opening.

Ally Invest has three trading platforms: a web trading platform, a mobile trading platform, and a desktop trading platform. The web and mobile platforms are user-friendly and well-designed, but lack two-step authentication and don't support all trading products. The desktop platform is provided by MetaQuotes Software and is available only in English.

Overall, Ally Invest is a good choice for investors looking for low fees and a focus on the US market. It offers competitive rates, robust platforms, educational support, and helpful tools such as screeners.

Ally Invest's trading platforms

Ally Invest offers a range of trading platforms to suit different users' needs. These include a browser-based platform, a mobile app, and a more modern platform called Ally Invest Live. The browser-based platform is basic but effective, offering quick trading capabilities, real-time streaming quotes and data, a customizable dashboard, and access to all of the broker's tools. It's a good option for customers who frequently trade from different computers. The mobile app, which is part of the larger Ally Bank app, allows users to access holdings, the trading platform, research, screeners, a stocks watchlist and more. However, it only provides streaming stock quotes, updating prices every three to five seconds rather than in real-time.

Ally Invest Live has a more modern design and includes streaming quotes. It has user customisation options for the look and feel, but it doesn't have all the functionality of the primary website. For example, only the ETF screener is available on the Live platform, and none of the screeners are on the mobile app.

Trading Tools

Ally Invest provides a suite of free tools for technical investors, including a profit-and-loss calculator, a probability calculator, and the Maxit Tax Manager, which helps identify the tax implications of trading decisions. It also offers options trading tools, including an options pricing calculator and a strategy builder.

Trading Hours

Ally Invest scores well for its extended trading hours, which run from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm Eastern Time.

Customer Support

Ally Invest offers customer support via phone, chat and email, Monday to Friday, 7 am – 10 pm ET, and Saturday, 8 am – 8 pm ET.

Other Features

Ally Invest allows instant money movement between Ally savings and brokerage accounts, letting investors take advantage of interest rates several times higher than the typical default sweep interest rates of most brokerages. It also offers two third-party research providers: Morningstar and TipRanks.

Account types

Ally Invest offers several account types, including:

• Individual and joint taxable accounts
• Traditional and Roth individual retirement accounts (IRAs)
• Coverdell education savings accounts (ESAs)
• Ally Invest Personal Advice, an advisory account for people with over $100,000, with an advisory fee capped at 0.85% of assets under management
• Self-Directed Trading (or brokerage account)
• Managed Portfolios (automated investing)
• Robo Portfolios
• Forex trading account (provided by GAIN Capital/Forex.com)
• Margin accounts

Customer service

Ally Invest offers 24/7 customer service via phone, email, and live chat. The average connection time is less than 1 minute, and the average hold time is 30 seconds. The average Net Promoter Score is 8.7/10, and the average Professionalism Score is 8.3/10. The overall customer service score is 8.69/10, ranking Ally Invest 4th out of 13 brokers.

Ally Invest's customer support is excellent, with well-informed representatives and relatively low wait times. The support team can provide assistance with account opening, trading tools, apps, rollovers, active trading, and more.

Ally Invest also has a community page with content areas for life, money, cars, homes, banks, investments, trends, and more. The community page can be customized by the user, with options to include or filter out topics such as budget, credit, estate planning, finance basics, savings, and taxes. The page also features blogs, market updates, and the ability to connect with other Ally Invest traders.

Ally Invest's customer service is particularly well-suited for beginners, with supportive educational content directed at those just starting to save and build wealth.

Investment options

Ally Invest offers a wide range of investment options to its customers. The company provides online banking, securities brokerage, investment advisory, mortgage and auto financing, and insurance offerings services to its approximately 11 million customers.

Ally Invest provides several options for investors of all experience levels, including self-directed and managed accounts. The company has focused more on millennial and women investors in recent years, but its products are also an excellent choice for both new and more active traders because of its competitive rates, robust and intuitive platform, educational support, helpful tools such as screeners, and 24/7 customer support.

Ally Invest offers stocks, ETFs, options, bonds and nearly 5,500 no-transaction-fee mutual funds. There is no commission for stock, ETF, mutual fund, or foreign exchange trading, and options trading costs of $0.50 per contract are lower than most brokers. There is no minimum for self-directed investment accounts, and only a $100 minimum for most robo-managed accounts, which are charged a 0.30% annual fee.

Ally Invest also offers a robo-advisory service called Managed Portfolios. It's a great service if you need help managing your investments. To get started, you have to answer questions about your investment goals, risk tolerance, time horizon and available funds. Then, based on your answers, a portfolio is created and the robo-advisor will automatically rebalance the portfolio when needed. It only takes a $100 minimum amount to start your portfolio and the annual advisory fee is low, at 0.3% of the account balance.

Ally Invest is a good choice for IRA investors. For investors who want to be more active, the broker also offers a decent suite of tools.

Fees and commissions

Ally Invest offers commission-free trades for eligible US stocks, options and exchange-traded funds. There are a few instances where a fee may be charged on a transaction using Ally. For stocks and ETFs priced under $2, Ally charges a base commission of $4.95 plus $0.01 per share.

Ally Invest's per-contract fee for options trades is $0.50, which is lower than some other brokers. There is no minimum for self-directed investment accounts, and only a $100 minimum for most robo-managed accounts, which are charged an annual fee of 0.30%.

Ally Invest charges $50 for a full or partial transfer of securities out of your account (ACAT transfer). This fee is generally not as high as some other brokerages, although they may charge a reduced fee for a partial transfer.

Ally offers $0 no-load mutual fund trades. Bond buyers will find plenty of choices and useful muni bond research. Bond trades are $1 per bond, with a $10 minimum and $250 maximum per transaction.

Ally Invest does not charge a base commission for options trades, and its fees are competitive and include zero-commission trading for stocks and ETFs.

Ally Invest's robo portfolios, also known as automated investing services, have an investment minimum of $100 and do not charge for robo portfolios with cash allocations of 30%. Otherwise, an annual fee of 0.30% of assets under robo-management is charged.

Ally Invest makes money in the same way as other banks and brokers. On brokerage accounts, they make money from the practice of payment for order flow, or PFOF, as do nearly all other brokers in this age of $0 trades.

Ally Invest offers competitive interest rates (currently 3.85%) on cash balances transferred by the client from the investment account to a linked Ally Bank account.

Ally Invest has a dividend reinvestment program. There is an account-wide default on dividend investment, but this can also be specified at the time of trade via phone or live help. Any amounts unable to purchase a full share will result in fractional shares rather than idle cash being returned to the account.

Ally Invest's US stock index options fees are less than half of the industry average, at $0.50 per contract.

There is no inactivity fee or account fee, and no withdrawal fee if you use ACH transfer. Withdrawals to other banks using wire transfers cost $30.

Ally Invest's margin rates are low, with an annual fee of up to 0.85% of assets under management.

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Frequently asked questions