Getting started with M1 Finance

M1 Finance: Getting started...

• What is M1 Finance
• Getting your referral $10 bonus at sign up
• What you can expect 

Click to sign up for M1 Finance and get your bonus

What is M1 Finance and what is a no fee brokerage?

M1 Finance offers many services like investing, barrowing, banking and research. For the purposes of this article I will focus on the investment side of their website. M1 Finance is perfect for the buy and hold, long term investor searching for dividend income with no fees. It allows you to buy fractional shares, so you can get the stocks you want even if you can't afford to purchase an entire share. Instead it will buy chunks of the stocks over time to build the portfolio as you go. I started my account by depositing $40 a week. Because this site is for dividend investors like you and me, there is only one trading window. That's right, stocks are bought at the beginning of the day during the trading window[2] and can't be sold or bought again until the next day during the trading window.  This type of trading platform is perfect for people who want to invest money over time in stocks they plan to hold for long periods. It's also a great platform for people with very little money to invest or people new to investing.

How to get your referral $10 bonus

If you're new to M1 Finance and don't have an account yet, use this referral link or the button at the top when you sign up and you and I will both get a 10$ bonus when you deposit money into the account. The link takes you to the M1 Finance site. Once you have create your account, you'll need to deposit money before you can receive the bonus and invest.

What can you expect

They have both a website and a mobile app that are easy to use. You select the stocks you want and they are divided into a pie. You can specify how much of the pie each stock will allocate and when a purchase is made that is how it will be allocated. If you've never invested before this site makes it very easy to do, users can share there pie (here's a link to mine) or you can pick from prebuilt "Expert pies". I recommend buy stocks in companies you can understand as opposed to one you don't. Example I own Target, I shop at Target and it's competitors and I follow this sector to help understand my exposure. I also recommend buy dividend growth stocks every Monday for a period of about 20 years.
The trading window begins at 9am CT and runs until all orders have been completed.[2] There is a way to get access to a second trading window by subscribing to M1 Plus for $125 per year.
Fractional shares are shares split up into 1/100,000th of a share, so you can buy shares with real high proces like Amazon or Google.
M1 uses tax minimization feature to help users reduce the amount of taxes owed when selling. It prioritizes the shares of a sale like this:
1) Losses that offset future gains
2) Lots that result in long-term gains
3) Lots that result in short-term gains
Because M1 uses pies each purchase made is effectively rebalancing your portfolio, any pie section that is underweight will be bought  up before buy pie sections that are overweight.

I just started With M1 five months ago and I'm extremely happy, it solves so many of my problems that kept me from investing in the past. Problems like:
How do you buy shares when you don't have much to invest?
What do you do with small dividends that set in idle cash?
How can you spread out your purchases over time when you don't have much to invest?

Cons:
No day trading (might be a pro)

Here's a link to a video I did "My First $10 in dividends on M1 finance"

References

[1] © Copyright 2019 M1 Holdings Inc. https://www.m1finance.com
[2] © Copyright 2018 M1 Holdings Inc Trading Window