Just sharing with you some good news from Gotrade. For those who don’t know, Gotrade is the platform that I use to purchase US and foreign stocks. I wrote about them here: Gotrade: How to Deposit Funds from the Philippines
Well, since that time, they have been improving the app and have been releasing updates.
One of the updates that they have released is the Filipinos can now use GCASH to deposit or cash into the app. Fees though for GCash is at 3%. I hope that Gotrade will be able to strike a good deal with GCash and lower the fees.
Although this will be very convenient for most of us since most of us have GCash.
Another new feature that they introduced is the Top Movers feature. Now, you will be able to see the stocks that are the top movers. No need to search through each stock one by one (although this seemingly tedious activity relaxes me… haha!). I love window shopping for stocks.
So that’s it, folks. Start stock trading using Gotrade now and use my invitation code so that you can get inside the app.
Use this invitation code so you can use Gotrade! It’s by invitation only 🙂
It’s been a few weeks since I mentioned that I am testing out this new Stock Trading platform where your can purchase US and Foreign Stocks. I’ve been wanting to purchase US Stocks directly, but the other platforms don’t offer buying fractional shares to non-US residents. Gotrade is the only platform that I saw that offers non-US residents to trade fractional shares. You can dowload it now from the App Store or Google Playstore.
Use this invitation code so you can use Gotrade! It’s by invitation only 🙂
What are fractional shares?
Let’s say you want to buy Tesla Stocks. A Tesla Stock, let’s say, is around $600 per share. So in order for you to buy a Tesla stock, you need to have $600 to purchase and start trading. For Gotrade, if you don’t have that amount yet, you can still buy fractional shares of Tesla.
For Filipino users, I get this question in my blog and social media accounts when I posted about Gotrade.
How do I fund my Gotrade account?
Right now, these are the options: UnionBank, BPI or International Wire Transfer (deposit in USD).
You can either deposit instantly (just takes minutes) or you can wait for three days before funds are deposited.
For instant deposits, you can deposit up to USD1,000 at any one time instantly. The difference is that in Instant deposits, Gotrade’s clearing broker will credit your deposits immediately into your Gotrade account. They will advance the funds for you.
In order to see how much you can instantly deposit, tap on the “Instant deposit to Gotrade” option on the funding screen. The amount you see there is the outstanding limit available to you right now. It will be replenished to USD1,000 again once all your deposits reach the US – 3 business days after your last instant deposit.
Please see also that UnionBank and BPI have their respective fees.
To see your funding activity, you can go to this part of your app. You can see your total deposits, total withdrawals and net deposits to Gotrade.
So far, it’s so fun using Gotrade. By the way, the markets open at 9:30 pm since they are following the time markets are open in the US. They close at 4:30am.
Once you have funds in your Gotrade account, you can proceed to buying shares. I’ll discuss that in another article!
Again, here is my invitation code that I want to share with you: 458377. Just download the app in Google Playstore or Apple App Store.
Use this invitation code so you can use Gotrade! It’s by invitation only 🙂
As you all know, for the past month, I’ve been investing in Crypto currencies. I haven’t earned yet, to be honest (haha! I bought half of my coins when the market was high). But the past month, I’ve been learning a lot. Plus, this is such an exciting space. Anyway, I digress. What I wanted to share was that I started Stock Trading in the US Markets, too! We’ve been investing in local stocks for years now. Having listened to financial US vloggers made me curious about trading in DOW, S&P and NASDAQ. Yup, I’m easy to influence! With this, I checked out Gotrade.
I actually signed up for eToro and Gotrade, and decided to go with Gotrade first. The reason was because there were certain stocks like Tesla stocks that I wanted to purchase, but eToro had minimum lot sizes (you needed to invest $1000 to buy into Tesla). Since I just wanted to try trading in the US market first and not jump into it, I went ahead and used Gotrade. Gotrade allows you to invest with smaller amounts.
Signing up and Depositing into a Gotrade Account
When you sign up to Gotrade, you need to have a invitation code. I used my friend, Marvin’s code. For those reading this, you can use this code below.
Gotrade will give you free $5 if you go through the process — signing up, getting verified, depositing $10, and trading your first stock.
For depositing into Gotrade, you can choose instant deposit to Gotrade and transfer up to $1000 or you can use deposit to Gotrade for bigger amounts. For the former, you can use a Unionbank account (instantly deposited with a fee of Php 10) or a BPI account (instantly deposited with a fee of Php 12). For the former, you can use a Unionbank account (3 days to be deposited with a fee of Php 10) or a BPI account (3 days to be deposited with a fee of Php 12). The minimum amount that you can deposit for both options is around $1, so the equivalent of whatever the given exchange will be.
You can also deposit in USD via Swift transfers.
Trading in Gotrade
Just go to a particular stock that you want to purchase and click on trade. When the markets are closed in the US, you can’t trade. I don’t know if it’s just my account (since I only deposited $10 to try it out), but there is no day trading or setting limit orders in Gotrade. You buy the stocks at market rate, which may be to a disadvantage for more savvy investors. It’s simple enough though for those who are starting.
How Gotrade makes money
So to know how this platform earns, they’re very transparent. They actually enumerated these things in the app. I’ll share it with you here, too, just so you know.
These are their sources of revenue:
A small fee collected on the foreign exchange from your deposits
Interest income generated from cash
A premium paid subscription program (coming soon!)
Interchange fees on your debit card spends (coming soon!)
My purchases so far and my experience…
I appreciate the fact that the app is very simple to use. All of the features are presented in a way that’s very straightforward. I love the way the sign up process (onboarding process). I just started yesterday and deposited $10, so I will still explore the app further and let you know my thoughts on this.
I bought partial shares of AMC, Amazon and Tesla. Why? Just copied the vloggers that I watch really (so copy me at your own risk, too! haha!). For each stock though, I appreciate the fact that they have a very comprehensive page that shows the market stats for the stock, news about them, and the story behind the company. This is so that users can read up on the company who’s issuing the stock.
So for one day of trading, I grew the $15 ($10 from me and the $5 FREE from Gotrade) to $25.15. This is really because I got into AMC when it was $33+, and with one day of trading, it’s now at $62.55. So this is really not how quickly you earn (for full disclosure). There has been a lot of hype on AMC lately so treat this as an irregularity.
Going back to Gotrade, when you share your first few trades, you earn a dollar for each share. I think I earned a dollar back for the first 3 shares.
Withdrawals from Gotrade
You can enroll your bank account and they will deposit your money via SWIFT. Again, for full disclosure, I haven’t tried to withdraw yet. I’m holding on to the stocks, but once I get to a comfortable position, I will withdraw just to try it out and write about it.
So there you have it, peeps! I hope this article helps. I’ve been doing a lot of financial content on Tiktok, too, so please head on over to: gingerarboledatv on Tiktok (content in both Filipino/English).
Let me know if you have questions or tips for me regarding Gotrade in the comment section. I’d be happy to share it.
Again if you want to join GoTrade, here is my invitation code:
