capital one trading account review

Capital One Investing Have Been Discontinued

Etrade has acquired Capital One Investing service and it has been terminated. As an alternative, see TD Ameritrade Review or visit Brokerage Reviews to choose another company instead.

Capital One Investing Commissions, Fees, and Minimum Deposit

Investments	Commissions
Stocks and ETFs	$6.95
Stocks and ETFs phone trades	$19.95
Options	$6.95 + $0.75 per contract
Mutual funds	$19.95
Automatic Investments (stocks, mutual funds and ETFs)	$3.95

Investments	stocks, options, mutual funds, ETFs
Capital One Investing minimum deposit to open account	$0 for cash account, $2,000 for margin account

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Our 2021 Capital One Investing review starts with broker commissions and minimums. The firm is charging higher than average by industry standards rate on stocks and exchange traded funds - $6.95 per trade. No-load transaction fee mutual funds are priced well, at $19.95 per transaction. Options are $0.75 per contract.

Capital One brokerage minimum initial deposit to open an investment account is $0 for cash account, $2,000 for margin account. There are no minimum account balance requirements as well as no account maintenance or inactivity charges.

Does Capital One Have Brokerage Investing Account?

The Capital One Investing new account opening process is one of the easiest and fastest we experienced. The registration screens are very well designed, with excellent attention to detail, and it took us less than 10 minutes to complete all of them.

There is no minimum initial deposit requirement, so investors can quickly open an account and see whether they like what Capital One Investing has to offer before committing any money. If they do choose to deposit money, it becomes available for trading the next business day.

Customers can conveniently and easily fund a newly-opened brokerage account electronically from their checking account, or alternatively they can open a high-interest bank account with Capital One Investing's parent company, Capital One. Linking Capital One bank account directly to an investing account allows to instantly transfer money to/from brokerage.

Capital One Investing is a member of both SIPC and FINRA.

Capital One Investing Mutual Funds

Investors will find over 400 mutual funds at Capital One Investing that come with no load and no transaction fee. There are over 500 funds that do carry a transaction fee, but are no load. In total, the broker has slightly more than 1,000 funds. This is a very small list compared to what most other brokers offer, including Fidelity and Vanguard. Capital One does have a small screener that can search by various criteria, such as Morningstar rating, expense ratio, and performance history. The broker does have other mutual fund resources on its site. There are pre-defined screens, such as value funds and low expense ratios. One article describes the difference between mutual and exchange-traded funds. Overall, there isn't much from this broker for mutual fund investors.

Capital One Investing does not set a minimum purchase amount for the funds available on its site. Instead, each fund has its own minimum established in the prospectus. Some funds available for purchase have a $250 minimum. There is no low-balance fee for funds charged by the broker, although there is a $49.95 fee for selling a no-load, no-transaction-fee fund less than 3 months after purchase. Transaction-fee funds will set traders back $19.95 on both the buy and sell sides.

IRAs

Capital One Investing offers Roth, Traditional, and Rollover IRAs. The broker does not require any minimum deposit to open an IRA, and there is no on-going minimum balance requirement. A Capital One Investing IRA has no setup, annual, or inactivity fees. There is also no fee to close a retirement account.

The Capital One Investing website does have some IRA materials on it. There are articles that cover retirement issues, such as creating an income stream after work, rolling over a 401(k) plan, spousal IRAs, and tax planning. A tool called RetireMyWay helps users estimate how much income they will have during retirement, and how much they could have by saving a little more each month. It bases its calculation on various inputs, such as age at retirement, conservative or aggressive investment style, and life expectancy. Compared to Merrill Edge and E*Trade, there are fewer IRA resources on the Capital One Investing site. Nevertheless, Capital One has retirement specialists available at 1-877-464-0292 during the weekday to answer any questions about opening an IRA.

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Capital One Investing Website/Trading Platform/Tools

Website

Capital One brokerage's trading tools are easy to use but rudimentary. They get the job done in simple cases, but the firm should invest in developing a more sophisticated trading platform. One feature that we liked is email trade confirmations that get sent right after each trade is executed, not the next day as with many other brokers. Another nice feature, is an ability to make bill payments and check deposits right from a smartphone or a tablet.

Capital One brokerage makes it easy to set up a dividend reinvestment plan, enabling clients to buy stocks (including fractional shares) with dividends earned, creating compounding effect with dividend-paying stock positions. If a client decides to cash out any earned dividends, that is easy to setup as well.

Their website looks clean and is easy to use. With just a few mouse clicks customers can quickly view information such as most-active market movers in a particular security type and index. For the more macro-minded investor there are performance metrics available by sector and industry, showing a given sector's performance over time and even allowing quick comparison to the S&P 500 Index.

Portfolio Analysis tool allows users to review either their entire portfolio collectively or each individual investment, so they can examine aspects such as top holdings, allocation among asset classes and industries in which they currently hold positions (handy for checking on diversification), as well as global regions and market caps related to their holdings. Users can create custom screeners for stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, and bond funds, allowing to search for investments that meet their requirements. There are even research tools for them to gather information on IPOs, such as a calendar that shows upcoming IPO dates. And for options traders there are calculators, and a calendar for keeping track of expiration dates.

Advanced Platforms

Unlike many online brokerage firms, Capital One Investing does not offer an advanced trading platform which is the must for active traders, day traders, and professional investors.

Mobile Trading

Mobile apps are available for iPhone, Kindle Fire, or Android. These applications enable users to trade stocks, ETFs, and options; get quotes and news; check balances and order status; and transfer money. The apps, however, are rated poorly, at 3 stars, by users in iTunes and Google Play stores.

Portfolio Builder

The Portfolio Builder is a cost saving tool that Capital One Investing offers its clients. For $18.95 charge clients are able to create a whole portfolio of ETF's. Instead of determining how many shares to buy, and how much in commissions and fees to deduct, investors simply enter how much money they have to invest and the Portfolio Builder takes care of the rest. Investors choose from an assortment of ETF allocation models, and also get to choose their ETF fund classes for maximum customization. Investors track their progress against the indexes and can make changes to allocations as needed. The Portfolio Builder is a great way to increase diversification in ETF's which regularly outperform the indexes.

Investment Research

Capital One Investing uses Morningstar research tools and analytics (ratings and reports for stocks and funds), which provide enough information for investors to make educated trades. The sections for equities, ETF's, mutual funds, bonds, options and IPO's are filled with search options so that investors can limit data with very specific criteria. Some of the equities criteria included are: highly rated performers, dividend stocks, bargains, and "tech titans." Investors can search for ETF's and mutual funds based on criteria such as analyst ratings, returns and net expense ratios.

The "What if I had invested" tool allows investors to run reports and numbers on hypothetical investments. There is also Markit Research Team Consensus reports, which bring together ratings and analysis from up to 13 providers in one easy-to-read package. The research tools are customizable and easy to use.

Capital One Brokerage Pros

• Low cost automatic investing plan
• Free DRIPs (dividend and capital gains reinvestment)
• No fee IRA account
• No account maintenance or inactivity fees
• Easy and cost effective way to create a portfolio with Portfolio Builder tool
• $0 to open cash account, $2,000 for margin account
• Good banking services (savings, checking accounts; debit and credit cards) provided by the parent company Capital One bank

Capital One Brokerage Cons

• No extended hours trading
• Shorting is not allowed
• Basic trading tools and no trading platform
• $49.95 fee on any no-load, no-transaction fee mutual fund held less than 90 days
• Automatic Investing plan trades are made only on Tuesdays
• $0.007 per share surcharge on real-time trades on stocks under $1 (subject to a maximum of 15% of the principal amount of the trade, but no less than the base commission)

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Recommendations

Compared to other brokerage firms, it's hard to recommend Capital One Investing. Some investors may like its Portfolio Builder tool. Others may prefer its affiliation with the financial strength of the Capital One Financial Corporation.

Promotion

New customers of Capital One Investing are eligible for a bonus of $50 with a small deposit— merely $5,000. Going to $15,000 earns $100, while a deposit of $50,000 qualifies for $200. A net deposit of $100,000 is eligible for a $300 prize, and moving $200,000 or more gets the broker's biggest award of $600.

Besides IRA's and regular securities accounts, custodial accounts are also eligible. The promo code is GET600S17 and expires on January 31, 2021. The new funds must reach the Capital One account within 90 days and remain with the broker for 9 months.

Capital One Investing Review Summary

Capital One Investing (previously called ShareBuilder) is part of U.S. banking giant Capital One. While many investors do not take the likes of Capital One Investing seriously, it has its place in the world of online investing. ShareBuilder made a name for itself with its Automatic Investing plans, which allow customers to take advantage of dollar-cost-averaging by arranging to have a set amount invested in stocks, ETFs, and some mutual funds weekly at a relatively low cost of $3.95 per trade. With ShareBuilder's plan clients can only make investments on Tuesdays.

Capital One brokerage does not have minimum balance requirements, or inactivity or maintenance fees. Investors can open a cash account with $0 down.

Capital One Investing offers a potentially helpful service called Express Funding. The idea there is that a client doesn't actually have to have the funds already transferred into their Capital One Investing account, but can instead include a (pending) funds transfer instruction as part of the order entry. This costs an extra $6.95 per transaction - doubling the base trading fee, and allows clients to buy investments whenever there is an opportunity without waiting for funds transfer.

Unlike almost all other online brokers, Capital One Investing doesn't offer pre-market or after-hours trading which is a real problem for many active investors. The firm is also one of the few discount online brokerages that doesn't allow shorting stocks. Coupled with very basic trading tools and slow executions, it makes the company a terrible choice for traders and active investors.

To summarize Capital One Investing review: if you are looking to invest automatically (dollar-cost-average your investments) or want a cheap way to create a portfolio consisting of ETFs, then Capital One Investing is one of the best options available. The company is definitely leaning more towards passive investment style, therefore active investors or anyone looking for advanced tools, products or services from their brokerage should check out other online brokers.

capital one trading account review

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