Chase You Invest Trade Review

Chase You Invest Trade provides current Chase Bank customers a convenient way to invest in the stock market. While Chase doesn't provide all the bells and whistles like some of its non-bank competitors, our testing found the site to be easy to use and reliable overall.

Top Takeaways for 2019

After opening and funding an account with Chase You Invest Trade, here are my top findings:

• JP Morgan Chase, the bank behemoth with over $2.6 trillion in assets, now offers self-directed investing services, which includes buying and selling stocks, ETFs, options, mutual funds, and bonds.
• Chase You Invest Trade is terrific for current Chase Bank customers seeking a simple way to buy and sell stocks. The multi-account benefits are widespread, including instant transfers, universal login, and discounted trades.
• While You Invest Trade is reliable and easy to use, it is also very basic. When compared against standalone full-service brokerages such as TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab, Chase trails across the board, from trading tools to research to total tradeable assets.

Special Offer:

• Enjoy up to $625 when you open & fund a new account with $25K+*. Open Account

Overall Summary

--> View Chase You Invest Trade Features List

Commissions & Fees

You Invest Trade has no minimum deposit to open an account, and, as part of its launch, all new customers receive 100 free trades for the first year, regardless of account balance or banking status. This is the offer I took advantage of for my testing. Beyond this, commissions are just $2.95 per trade.

There are two ways to receive free stock and ETF trades each year:

• Chase Premier Plus Checking customers ($15,000 min avg account balance) – First 100 trades free each year.
• Chase Private Client customers ($250,000 min avg account balance) – Unlimited free trades each year. Also applies to Chase Sapphire Banking, J.P. Morgan Private Bank, and J.P. Morgan Securities clients

Chase vs Bank of America: Without question, Chase You Invest Trade’s approach to free trading is modeled after Bank of America Merrill Edge and the Preferred Rewards program. With Preferred Rewards, at least $20,000 (Gold status) is required to receive unlimited free trades each month. Preferred Rewards also comes with a slew of additional benefits, including money market savings boosts, credit card cash back bonuses, and more. Compare Chase You Invest vs Merrill Edge.

Offering of Investments

Chase You Invest provides everything an investor would require to invest in the stock market. All investment vehicles are offered, from stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, and bonds. With Chase You Invest Portfolios, Chase customers can also have their money invested for them for an annual advisory fee of 0.35% per year ($2,500 minimum).

Limitations: You Invest Trade does not offer the ability to trade during pre- and post-hours, nor can customers trade penny stocks. Also, only basic (single leg) options trades are offered. Additionally, order types are limited (order types such as trailing stop orders and conditional orders are not available), and the primary focus is on the US markets. Bottom line, we do not recommend You Invest for penny stocks trading, options trading, day trading, or international trading.

Banking

From basic checking and savings accounts to home mortgages and credit cards, Chase Bank is a household name brand in the United States. JP Morgan Chase holds assets of well over $2 trillion and operates in more than 100 countries, according to Wikipedia.

Compared to Bank of America Merrill Edge, Chase goes toe to toe. Both banks offer FDIC-insured banking through 5,000+ branch offices across the United States. That said, Bank of America offers better rewards for loyal customers who hold multiple accounts.

Platforms & Tools

Chase offers no downloadable trading platform, and only one trading tool, Portfolio Builder, is available through the website. Overall, beyond managing a basic portfolio, maintaining a simple watch list, and placing trades, You Invest doesn't come close to competing with the best online brokers.

Stock charts: For the average investor though, everything required to conduct basic chart analysis is present, including customizations of time frame, bar type, event markers (e.g., earnings or dividends), and a respectable 20 optional indicators (think simple moving averages, volume, and Bollinger bands). Stock and index comparisons can also be conducted. However, compared to industry leaders such as TD Ameritrade and TradeStation, Chase You Invest leaves much to be desired.

Watch lists: Watch lists are very basic, showing only four columns of data and sorting for just Symbol and Price. Yes, there are real-time quotes, but they are not streaming, which is the same throughout the entire You Invest Trade site.

Portfolio Builder: Taking a closer look at Portfolio Builder, it is accessible only to accounts with at least $5,000 available to invest. While traditional robo advisors simply funnel you into one of several predefined portfolios, Portfolio Builder does the same but requires you to choose the exact holdings, then allows you to modify the weightings for each holding. Overall, for the average investor, having significant input as to what goes into the portfolio and how each holding is weighted is not ideal. I would recommend using Portfolio Builder solely for educational purposes.

Gallery

Research

Researching the markets trails industry leaders Fidelity and Charles Schwab but is sufficient for novice investors. Just be aware of the constant site timeouts (see below).

Stock research: Less a downloadable research report for certain stocks from JP Morgan, stock quotes are on the whole, nothing unique, and include no data that cannot otherwise be found at Yahoo Finance. As a comparison, Fidelity offers 12 third-party reports with free ($0) trading for all customers, regardless of the account balance. Quotes aside, You Invest Trade does provide an easy to use stock screener tool.

Fund research: Fortunately, quotes for ETFs and mutual funds fare much better thanks to the inclusion of basic Morningstar data. Screening also includes Morningstar data, which is a nice plus. Like stocks, casual investors will be satisfied; however, research trails industry leaders by a measurable amount. For example, Schwab includes the full Morningstar PDF report alongside far more visual elements to help break down essential takeaways.

Market commentary: Also from J. P. Morgan's research team, is the weekly market analysis articles. Considering that J.P. Morgan Asset Management manages over $1.7 trillion, I was not surprised to see their research present in You Invest Trade. On the whole, while the readability of Schwab's Insights articles and Fidelity's Viewpoints market commentary is much more fleshed out, I found the market analysis articles from J.P. Morgan to be informative and insightful.

Constant site timeouts: One final note here on research: while a lack of streaming real-time quotes throughout You Invest Trade was disappointing, I was more annoyed by the constant account time outs whenever I went to check my email or work on this review draft. For investors who prefer to remain logged into their accounts and check back throughout the day for quotes and research, You Invest Trade is not accommodating.

Gallery

Mobile Trading

Chase makes it easy to manage your You Invest Trade account via the regular Chase mobile app available through both Apple iOS and Android. Once logged in, you can view and manage all your Chase accounts, both banking and brokerage. While the app lacks features active traders would demand like advanced charting, streaming watch lists, and alerts, it provides a bug free, clean experience for everyday investors.

Watch lists: For whatever reason, Chase made watch lists nearly impossible to find. From your dashboard, scroll down to the Indices overview, then tap "View U.S. Overview". Next, from the top dropdown menu, tap and select "Watchlists".

Gallery

Education

Chase provides a positive educational experience for the topics of general investing and retirement. Navigation isn't perfect, but a foundation for growth is in place.

Educational videos: In the Learning & Insights section of the site, market reports are accompanied by educational articles and videos, which I found to be well put together. In particular, I really enjoyed the videos, which reminded of the animated educational videos found at TD Ameritrade. I counted only seven videos in total, but given the strong emphasis on quality, I'd be surprised if more aren't added in the future.

ETFs, mutual funds, options: If there is a drawback to the learning experience at Chase You Invest Trade, it is the lack of topic focused content. For example, while there are several articles on ETFs and Mutual Funds, it isn't enough to pass our test of offering at least ten pieces of content to earn credit in our scoring.

Gallery

Final Thoughts

Chase You Invest Trade is targeting current Chase Bank customers seeking an easy, convenient way to invest in the stock market.

If are already a Chase customer and all you require are the basics to buy some shares of your favorite stock, ETF, or mutual fund, then take advantage of Chase’s free trades. If you don’t meet the minimum for free trades, or you desire a complete brokerage experience, there are better online brokers to choose from.

About Chase

The roots of Chase stem back to 1955. In 2000, Chase Manhattan Bank merged with J.P. Morgan, forming JPMorgan Chase Bank. Headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, Chase is ranked by S&P Global as the largest bank in the United States, operating more than 5,000 branches and 16,000 ATMs nationwide. JPMorgan Chase is publicly traded on the NYSE, ticker "JPM".

2019 Review Methodology

For the StockBrokers.com ninth annual best online brokers review published in February 2019, a total of 4,544 data points were collected over six months and used to score brokers. This makes StockBrokers.com home to the largest independent database on the web covering the online broker industry.

Participation is required to be included. Each broker completed an in-depth data profile and provided executive time (live in person or over the web) for an annual update meeting. Our rigorous data validation process yields an error rate of less than .001% each year, providing site visitors quality data they can trust. Learn more about how we test.