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Wells Fargo Automatic Investments
2022: Does Wells Fargo offer automatic investment plan (AIP) contributions? WellsTrade dollar cost averaging
program (DCA) setup and review. Fees on ETFs, stocks, and mutual funds monthly/weekly recurring periodic investment service.
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Does Wells Fargo Offer Automatic Investment Plan?
Investors at WellsTrade can sign up for an automatic periodic investment service (AIP) for mutual funds. The
broker has a computerized system that will place mutual fund purchases of at least $100 on the same day every
month. There is no charge for the service, and the purchase can be made automatically without any input from the investor.
Wells Fargo Dollar-Cost Averaging
This is a convenient system that takes a lot of effort out of the investing equation. It's a kind of
dollar-cost averaging where a fixed dollar amount is invested regularly instead of a fixed number of shares.
Because the number of dollars is fixed rather than the number of shares, when the net asset value is low, the
number of shares purchased increases.
Brokers With Automatic Investing
Wells Fargo Automatic Investing in ETFs and Stocks
Wells Fargo's automatic investment service is not available on ETFs and stocks.
How to Set up Wells Fargo Automatic Investing Plan
Automatic purchases can be established on any day of the first 28 days of the month. Presumably, if the day
selected falls on a weekend or market holiday, the purchase would be made on the preceding or following market day. Instead of monthly, WellsTrade also allows automatic purchases to be made quarterly, semi-annually, and annually.
There is no form that needs to be filled out to enroll in the service. WellsTrade customers simply need to call the broker to have automatic purchases set up. If you establish the 12th as the day each month to make a purchase, be sure to also establish recurring deposits into your account a few days earlier, such as the 8th, so that there are adequate funds in your account when the purchases are scheduled to be made.
Each fund has a minimum purchase amount of $100. So if you wanted to set up periodic automatic purchases on three mutual funds, the total minimum purchase would be $300. If a particular mutual fund had a subsequent minimum higher than $100, then the $300 figure would actually increase.
Say for instance that two funds each had a minimum purchase amount of $100 or less, while the third fund had a minimum subsequent purchase amount of $500. The minimum amount of cash in your account to complete the periodic investment would be $700.
Only mutual funds are available for this service. WellsTrade, does however, have a DRIP service for stocks and ETFs that can be set up free of charge. This program will automatically purchase new shares of enrolled securities whenever they pay a cash dividend.
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Wellstrade Review
Wellstrade is a brokerage division of a Wells Fargo bank and investors could take advantage of full range of banking services
offered through this institution. Actually, Wellstrade is "somewhat modified" brokerage services of Wachovia Bank, that was purchased by
Wells Fargo during the crisis of 2008. The company rushed this transition and, as a result, it did not go smoothly - there are many bugs and technical
issues with Wellstrade trading tools. The tools are not well designed and lack many features which are standard in the online trading
industry. Order execution is in dire need of improvement. Customer service at the company is hard to reach - when we emailed them asking for
information, we got automatic reply to our email but no actual representative response ever came.
Wellstrade currently charges $0 per trade for
stocks and ETFs and $5.95 plus $0.75 per contract on options. In addition, the broker charges the greater of $34.95 or 3.5% of principal on stocks
priced below $1 (read about Wellstrade penny stocks). Mutual funds are priced at reasonable
$35 per trade rate. There is no minimum deposit required to open any self-directed brokerage account.
There are many advantages to having investment services located with the same institution as banking services. First, and possibly the most important,
is the ease of managing the account. When banking and brokerage services are with the same firm, moving money in and out of the brokerage account
can happen the same day, sometimes instantly.
The second advantage would be lending and margin accounts. It
is easier to trade on margin or borrow against a brokerage account when all the services are under one roof. Third, is that brokerage balances
can give the customer credit towards premium checking account services and lower lending costs, as banks look at the entire relationship with the
bank when deciding what benefits a customer will receive.
Lastly, is that brokerage firms that are connected to banks tend to offer more personal
advisory services for smaller investors than large brokerage houses. Brokerage firms are generally interested in courting large investors. Typically,
investors with less than $100,000 are restricted to phone service advisors. Wells Fargo offers each customer a personal licensed advisor even if the
customer only has $10,000 invested, or is starting out will as little as $50 a month transferred into a mutual fund account for investing. This can
be a significant advantage to customers who are new to investing.
Chad Morris is a financial writer with more than 20 years experience
as both an English teacher and an avid trader. When he isn’t writing
expert content for Brokerage-Review.com, Chad can usually be found
managing his portfolio or building a new home computer.
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