Motif Investing Review

Empowering You to Invest Your Way

Motif was designed with you in mind. Do you want to invest in a particular industry or with a particular investment style? Motif was made for this type of bundled trading. 

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Best For:

New and experienced investors looking to trade large numbers of related stocks without spending a lot of money.

Motif Investing Highlights

• Trade up to 30 stocks or ETFs for a single $9.95 fee
• Trade in exact dollar amounts
• Get paid to share your portfolio with other investors

Pros

• Low-cost trading fees
• Highly functional mobile application
• Concept-driven trading allows you to invest by industry
• Simplified approach is great for new investors
• Social media platform makes investing fun

Cons

• Lack of diversification for retirement investments
• Added perks only offered with higher-cost Motif Blue
• $9.95 commission fee is also charged when a trade is rebalanced

​Security Research

The Explore Motifs page is an immensely helpful resource for anyone looking to compare potentially lucrative trends. From here, you can review top stock trends from the past 30 days, browse top-performing motifs based on one-year return, and find the highest-dividend yields. You can also analyze how the most popular motifs are performing and explore commission-free asset allocation models.  

Portfolio Guidance Tools

Motif doesn’t provide you with expert advice like you would find on many other online trading platforms. There is no chat functionality with financial advisers. A blog and FAQs are the best resources currently available for those seeking guidance on the Motif platform. Additionally, there are some research capabilities, but you are left to deduce the information and make your own decision. This is all understandable, though, as the Motif platform is somewhat unique. It has less to do with single-stock trading and more to do with diversified motif portfolios. The very point of Motif is individualization and creativity. 

Market Analysis Tools

If you decide to forgo the platform’s pre-built motifs and customize your own portfolio, the “Build a Motif” tool provides you with enough in-depth market information to make informed decisions about which stocks to add to your bundle. You can compare a range of factors including price, market cap, one-year return, and price-earnings ratio, and you can even customize how these variables are weighted. Search for stocks by industry or keyword, and create filters to narrow down your options. 

Fees

The fees with Motif are comparable to other online trading platforms. Costs for single stock trades are $4.95 per trade. Comparatively, E*TRADE and TD Ameritrade feature a $9.99 trade fee while TradeKing offers a $4.95 trade fee. However, Motif’s real area of differentiation can be found in their own innovative stock portfolio known as a motif. A motif is a concept-based portfolio, which may contain up to 30 different stocks. A motif trade is only $9.95, which represents an exceptional value. This is quite a bit less than a mutual fund trade, which varies from $9.95 to $76 but typically runs around $20 per trade. Motif Blue Unlimited allows you to make unlimited trades for a monthly subscription fee.

Quote Data

Users at all membership levels have access to 15-minute delayed quotes. If you upgrade to the Blue Unlimited membership, you will gain access to real-time quotes on all of your trade pages. In addition, you can still view 15-minute delayed quotes on all other pages throughout the site, even if they don’t appear in your portfolio.

Conclusion

The motif portfolio concept is a work of genius and ought to be celebrated as such. The ability to trade a group of up to 30 stocks that are related by concept and traded for a low $9.95 fee is game-changing in the world of online stock trading. Motif is hard to compare with more traditional online trading platforms. However, the motif concept is appealing and can be used to mitigate risk and increase returns.

About Motif Investing

Motif Investing was founded in June 2010 as a concept-driven trading platform. The concept is to allow users to act on their investing desires, regardless of the strategy, trend, or style. Their portfolios are easily customizable and they offer more than 150 professionally built portfolios for those investors not ready or wanting to build their own. Motif Investing provides users the platform and tools to succeed in their investing goals.

Industry: Online Brokerage

Founded: June 2010

CEO: Hardeep Walia

Founders: Hardeep Walia

Geos: International

Links to social pages:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/motifinvesting/

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/motifinvesting

• Google+: https://plus.google.com/104520525248879166156

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