Have you ever felt like the stock market is an opaque beast that you’re better off steering clear of?
If you’re of the mind to buy and sell individual securities, there’s a new app you should know about that helps give you a look-see into OPP — other people’s portfolios!
RELATED: 8 ways to start investing when you only have $100 or less
Introducing the socially driven free stock trading app Matador
First off, a caveat: Money expert Clark Howard doesn’t recommend investing in individual stocks. He prefers ultra low-cost index funds so you can easily diversify your money by buying the entire spectrum of capitalism rather than putting your money into a handful of companies.
That said, we understand some people do like to trade individual stocks, so today we have an introduction to Matador.
What is Matador?
Matador is a free social media-centric stock-trading app.
After you register and add a bank account to transfer money, you can link your profile with friends so you can see when they add stocks to their portfolio or liquidate existing positions by selling out of particular stocks.
You can also follow other amateur and professional investors in order to track their trades.
It’s all designed to take the fear and confusion out of investing by crowd-sourcing investment knowledge. The benefit is that customers (aka “Matadors”) can learn from each other’s successes and mistakes.
If you don’t want to share your trades with your followers, you can turn off that functionality in your account.
Matador offers free stocks trades
Matador is one of a small handful of apps that offer free stocks and ETF trades. That means absolutely zero in the way of commissions to either buy or sell stocks.
In addition, there are no maintenance fees on your account and there’s no required account minimum.
Does Matador charge for withdrawals?
There’s been a rumor going on for about a year now that you have to pay up between $30 and $75 to withdraw money from your Matador account.
However, a quick examination of the Matador fee schedule shows there are no fees for bank transfers either in or out of your bank account:
This rumor of a hefty fee to transfer your money may have started because there is a $75 automated customer account transfer service fee if you want to move your entire account from Matador to another online brokerage.
However, that $75 fee is fairly standard across the industry.
You can see Matador’s full commissions and fees schedule here.
Is my money safe with Matador?
Matador says it uses bank-level security with AES 128-bit encryption and TLS 1.2 to exceed industry standards for safety.
What operating systems does Matador work with?
Matador is currently available for iOS devices only, though an Android version is under development. You can sign up for updates at MatadorApp.com so you’ll know when the Android version goes live.
