J.P. Morgan Chase vs Ally Invest

2022 Ally Invest vs J.P. Morgan Self-Directed Investing (Chase): which broker is better? Compare IRA/Roth accounts, online investing fees, stock brokerage mutual fund rates, and differences.

Overview of Ally Invest and J.P. Morgan Chase

If you’re a budget trader who needs the best services at the lowest possible cost, you really have to try out Ally Invest and J.P. Morgan Self-Directed Investing. Both brokerage firms provide good values for securities traders, but who is the better choice? That’s what this article is going to try to find out.

Cost

Broker Fees	Stock/ETF Commission	Mutual Fund Commission	Options Commission	Maintenance Fee	Annual IRA Fee
Ally Invest	$0	$9.95	$0.50 per contract	$0	$0
Chase	$0	$0	$0.65 per contract	$0	$0

Services

Broker Review	Cost	Investment Products	Trading Tools	Customer Service	Research	Overall Rating
Ally Invest
Chase

Promotions

Ally Invest: Up to $3,000 cash bonus + $0 commission trades.

Chase: Get up to $625 when you fund a J.P. Morgan Self-Directed Investing account.

Range of Investments

Ally Invest traders have access to ETF’s, mutual funds, closed-end funds, stocks, options, bonds, forex, and penny stocks. At J.P. Morgan Self-Directed Investing, all of these products are available except penny stocks and forex.

The winner of the opening category is Ally Invest.

Trading Software

Ally Invest customers get to trade on a simple but effective website. A trade bar appears near the bottom. It provides security data and trading ability. Options can be traded on it, too. The website is where mutual fund orders must be placed. We found the order ticket easy to use.

There’s also a browser platform available to Ally Invest traders. Called Ally Invest LIVE, it offers a lot of useful features, such as advanced charting, option and bond trading, and API compatibility. There is no desktop platform at Ally.

Ally Invest vs JP Morgan Chase

The equity order form on LIVE offers several order types, including trailing, stop, and market-on-close. Option orders provide multiple legs.

Like Ally Invest, J.P. Morgan Chase provides no desktop system. Furthermore, J.P. Morgan Chase lacks a browser platform and a trade bar. The broker’s customers trade on its website, which is very basic, but somewhat difficult to navigate at the same time.

Charting on the J.P. Morgan Chase site is very elementary. We found better charting tools on Ally Invest LIVE. For example, on LIVE a chart can be detached into its own window and displayed the full width of the computer monitor. This is not possible on the J.P. Morgan Chase site.

J.P. Morgan Chase vs Ally

J.P. Morgan Chase’s order form offers 2 duration choices and 4 order types. Trailing is not one of them, so we of course prefer Ally’s order ticket.

Ally Invest easily wins this category.

Mobile Platforms

J.P. Morgan Chase clients can use the company’s mobile platform on Apple and Android devices. During our research, we were disappointed in the number of trading features on the app. Charting, for example, offers no tools, and the order form is as simple as the website’s version. Even worse, there is no check deposit tool. On the positive side, the app does have a watchlist, and mutual funds can be traded on the platform.

JP Morgan Chase Trading App

One of the first things we noticed on Ally Invest’s app is the mobile check deposit feature, a major advantage over J.P. Morgan Chase’s app. Like the J.P. Morgan Chase app, the Ally Invest app is the same as its banking parent’s app.

Ally offers much better charting. We found multiple chart styles, technical indicators, and a great deal of customization. Another nice feature is the ability to save a graph. We hope Ally Invest will eventually add horizontal mode.

Ally Invest App Review

As for order placement, the Ally Invest ticket provides the same choices as its website cousin. While options can be traded on Ally’s app, there are no multi-leg strategies.

J.P. Morgan Chase fails again.

DRIP Service

Ally Invest offers a free DRIP service. This takes cash dividends from stocks and ETF’s and converts them into additional (fractional) shares. To be eligible, an equity must trade at $4 or more.

J.P. Morgan Chase has a DRIP service, too; and the broker-dealer charges nothing to use it.

Looks like we have our first tie.

ETF’s and Mutual Funds

Using our Ally Invest account, we found 11,877 mutual funds that were open to new purchases. This is the largest list at Ally we have ever seen. It tells us the broker is growing. Out of this list, 2,247 come with no load. The other funds have no transaction fee.

At J.P. Morgan Chase, we found slightly more than 3,500 mutual funds. This is a small list, but all of them are no-load, no-transaction-fee products. Furthermore, we did think J.P. Morgan Chase’s screener was easier to use than Ally’s.

Ally Invest and J.P. Morgan Chase offer all ETFs commission-free.

We pick Ally here.

Investment Research

J.P. Morgan Chase’s website has many articles on financial education. We found materials covering topics such as market crashes, when to invest, how to survive volatility, and more. The site also has videos from Chase Private Client.

The broker’s equity profile pages provide basic trade info such as volume, market cap, and P/E ratio. For some unknown reason, Chase failed to include financial statements for stocks. There are option chains (although trading is not yet possible) and news articles.

The Ally Invest website hosts short articles just like J.P. Morgan Chase’s site. Moreover, there are several personal financial articles on topics such as compound interest and CD ladders.

Security profile pages at Ally Invest provide a great deal of information, including insider trading activity, earnings history, news articles, advanced charting, fundamental metrics, and more. We especially liked free stock reports from CFRA.

Ally Invest wins another category.

Recommendation

Because of browser trading platform and better mobile app, we recommend going with Ally Invest for stock trading.

For education and retirement saving, we suggest Ally Invest over its rival. Ally offers more account types.

Because neither Ally nor Chase requires a minimum balance for a brokerage account, small investors can do well with either firm.

For mutual and exchange-traded funds, we propose Ally over J.P. Morgan Chase.