Show HN: M1 Finance – Automatically invest in what you want, for free
m1finance.comHello HN! I lead the team at M1 Finance responsible for designing and building our product.
M1 is an automated brokerage that allows you to easily invest in a custom portfolio on our web site or mobile apps. Whenever you deposit or withdraw money, we automatically calculate and execute the trades for you. Your money is invested down to the penny using fractional shares.
For the investor, we think robo-advisors don’t offer enough choice over your portfolio, and other brokerages require too much effort to manage your investments. We created M1 to be the ultimate investing tool. And today, we announced we are eliminating all fees to make the investing experience completely free.
We would love to get your feedback! I’ll be around all day watching this thread, or you can reach me anytime at r.spradlin@m1finance.com.
What are some of the "other sources of revenue" that you're planning on rolling out in 2018?
We're adding additional personal finance products to our offering. We'll share specifics in future announcements -- stay tuned!
Hey, I've got a question I can't find an answer to (or I'm blind). Does M1 work for EU users unlike robinhood?
Unfortunately M1 is only available to US citizens or permanent residents at this time.
Assumed so, thanks!
Nice work! Any tradeoffs compared to Robinhood?
Thanks!
M1 is like Robinhood in that you can own any stock/ETF you choose. The biggest difference is that Robinhood is a traditional brokerage, where you must manually buy and sell individual securities. This is good if you are a trader, but pretty annoying if you are a typical investor. For example, let's say you are investing in a diversivied portfolio of several stocks and ETFs -- whenever you want to invest more money, you must calculate and enter exactly how much of each holding to buy in order to keep your portfolio proportions in balance. (And further, you're limited to buying only full shares.)
M1 automates all of this for you. You set the target proporitions for your portfolio, and whenever you deposit money, we intelligently buy exactly the right amount of each holding to keep you in balance. Our aim is to be a new kind of brokerage -- the easiest and most convenient option for a modern investor.
How do you make money?
Yes. Please add details about this on the site. Without them I feel skeptical.
Good question, we of course need revenue to serve our customers and grow. The short answer is that brokerages can make money from the assets held in their accounts and from handling customer trades. And compared to legacy brokerages, being digital-first allows M1 to minimize costs and offer our investing service without commission fees.
Our founder and CEO goes into more detail about our sources of revenue in this blog post: https://blog.m1finance.com/m1-is-now-free/. (Look for the section "How We’ll Make Money".)