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:
Happy investing!
