Gyroscopic Investing

I stumbled upon this at a forum.

https://www.motifinvesting.com/

"Choose up to 30 stocks and ETFs, and trade the entire motif for just $9.95 total commission."

Good find.

This seems like a cost-effective middle ground between a DIY ETF-based PP and a single fund (PERM or PRPFX). Motif's price structure is better for PP investors who trade infrequently than https://www.folioinvesting.com/, which is similar.

There's one thing I don't understand about their price structure. Suppose I want to move money into the portfolio and also rebalance what's already in there. Is that one $9.95 transaction? Or two, one rebalance plus one buy?

I don't know.  I just established an account at a brokerage, so I will not be using them.  Just thought that others might like to consider a low cost way as many appear to use on-line accounts and ETFs.

I have an account with them, but last time I looked they didn't allow you to create your own motif.  So this is very good news.

Buy Motifs / Sell Motifs / Additional Buys of the Entire Motif You Own / Rebalance Positions in a Motif $9.95

I have an account with them, but last time I looked they didn't allow you to create your own motif.

MG: How good an execution does MOTIFINVESTING obtain? Are they all market orders, price at the close or can you choose, when you place an order to modify your motif?

MachineGhost wrote: Buy Motifs / Sell Motifs / Additional Buys of the Entire Motif You Own / Rebalance Positions in a Motif $9.95

Right --- does that mean there's one uber-transaction that does any combination of those operations for $9.95? Or that there are three separate operations that all cost $9.95 separately?

You can set up a complete PP at Fidelity for $7.95.

Hold LTT and T-Bills direct (free).  Buy IVV (S&P 500 index, free).  Buy IAU ($7.95 per trade).  If it's a closed or semi-closed account then like a roll-over or roth IRA with infrequent contributions then you'll have very few rebalance events and it will be a very cheap PP to manage.

My 401K is a horrible mess of a situation I'm still working out, but my rollover and Roth are tight and right.

MachineGhost wrote: I have an account with them, but last time I looked they didn't allow you to create your own motif.  So this is very good news.

Buy Motifs / Sell Motifs / Additional Buys of the Entire Motif You Own / Rebalance Positions in a Motif $9.95

I'm curious, did anyone ever confirm definitively how the trade execution works?  Is it as MangoMan suggests?  This deal seems to fall into the "too good to be true" category.  And when something seems too good to be true, it usually is.  I wonder what the catch is.

Yea,if they do it with market orders it could be expensive.

cnh wrote: I'm curious, did anyone ever confirm definitively how the trade execution works?  Is it as MangoMan suggests?  This deal seems to fall into the "too good to be true" category.  And when something seems too good to be true, it usually is.  I wonder what the catch is.

The catch is you have to buy/sell/rebalance entire motifs after they are set up, otherwise its $4.95 per trade at the individual stock level.  It's not that useful unless you have a custom motif that never changes its constituents?

MangoMan wrote: I'm pretty sure it's like foliofn.com where they do trades once a day at market. No limit orders and no choice of time of day for the trade.

That's not a major drawback for me.  Because of my wife's job I already have to wait for her company to give me prior approval on every buy/sell we make (only applies to ETFs, CEFs, and individual stocks in our IRAs; I can trade MFs and anything in our 401Ks without their approval). 

I just read through their FAQs, and one other drawback for taxable accounts is that they don't offer dividend reinvesting.  So if a company pays stock dividends then they will be added to your holdings in that company, but if they pay a cash dividend then it gets deposited into your cash account making it taxable.  So this might be best geared towards non-taxable accounts. 

One thing I do like is being able to create a diversified PP with multiple ETFs covering each of the PP holdings.  So you could set up a motif with up to 30 ETFs divided up between each of the PP holdings, and trade or rebalance the whole shebang for $9.95.  Not too shabby.