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I’m a boring investor. My hot tip at cocktail parties is build your financial life brick by brick. What I am a firm believer in is index fund investing. I follow a 90/10 strategy in stocks and bonds as a DIY investor. What I don’t mention very often is part of the 90 percent is actually individual stock investments. It’s why I want to talk about what I invest in and what new app I’ve been testing out. Spoiler alert, welcome to my Webull review and your chance to get a free stock.
I completely understand if you only want to invest in index funds. I mean John Bogle is a legend. JL Collins is a deep voiced James Earl Jones index fund professor. The FIRE community pretty much lives on the stuff. Even those who have individual stock investments like Carl from 1500 Days he admits so with the caveat that he has learned from his crazy ways.
In fact I can’t think of many in the personal finance and especially financial independence community that recommend individual stocks as a large part of your investment strategy. I am no different, do your research and invest in index funds, Keep it simple.
Like the wise individuals from above a very large percentage of my investment portfolio is invested in index funds. I follow a personal investment rule to invest in individual stocks to keep me in line. My overall investment portfolio rule is to invest in individual stocks up to 10%. Although at this time it’s closer to 5%.
Most of my individual investments are in my brokerage account with U.S. Bank (former employer). My brokerage account allows me 100 free trades per year since I have a Platinum account with them, but $4.95 per trade after that.
The idea of paying $4.95 per trade led me to see what other brokerage firms were offering. That’s when I came across Webull.
Recently I have been testing out Webull a popular trading platform that offers zero commission trading, that’s free in my books and what amounts to .02 sales trading fee.
I have invested in the past without much success. Only recently did I develop an actual investment philosophy. My individual stock choices have included a Groupon IPO, Musclepharm an OTC stock, and even Lehman Brothers if you are including my Roth IRA I started long ago.
Not all individual stock investments were as bad as the ones I previously mentioned. My biggest success was my old emergency fund investment choice, Nike. I did eventually sell which helped to pay off my student loans, but I bought an individual stock and made money! Success! That’s how it’s supposed to work.
As I mentioned I have an investment philosophy now. Here are a few items from my criteria.
A great example of my investment criteria philosophy holding true is Nike. I plan to buy and hold Nike at least until 2029 but quite possibly forever. By that time there will be a new Michael Jordan and I’m sure the company will be selling a new athletic dream to the masses.
There are many footwear and accessory companies out there. Adidas and Under Armour come to mind. But the Nike brand is the best in the industry. Kids grow up dreaming of having their own shoes and featured in their own Nike commercial. This company fits my criteria to buy, pretty simple right.
Over the last few months I have been looking into more and more the research behind buying individual stocks, just like Nike. My fear with my US Bank brokerage is the possibility of running out of free trades. Fees are the enemies of profit.
I came across Webull which is similar to Robinhood in the fact they offer commission free trading. Personally I think more and more brokerages will make this move into $0 trades. Webull could have an early adopter advantage that could turn out to be really beneficial for their business.
What jumped out at me immediately was that Webull was offering a free stock for signing up with an initial deposit of a $100 or more and trying their platform. The range of the stock price would be $8-$1,600 so while Google and Amazon were out the picture I could wind up with a very large range of great companies like Apple, Tesla, or Costco to name a few. 
I needed to sign up, make a deposit of $100 or more and the free stock was all mine! I was curious what everyone was getting for their free stocks so I headed over to Wallet Hacks. He ended up getting Budweiser. Well not exactly, he received ABEV (parent company to Anheuser-Busch, valued at $4.335 at the time of his referral.
I think this was the old referral system because at the time of writing the minimum stock value would be $8 and thus not part of the promotion. Although since he had a number of referrals he received ABEV a few times and snagged Apple stock for one of them, which is a pretty great referral bonus.
Let’s just say I was pretty excited to get SNAP as my deposit bonus. It’s probably not something I would have invested in on my own, but if the kids like it then it has a chance. It’s always interesting to learn and read about a new company. Let’s dive more into my Webull review and free stock that you can get for signing up and making a deposit.
I’m not much of a technical guy when it comes to stock investing. I definitely look at the numbers behind the company and the stock price fluctuations, but these are just a couple of the factors I use when looking at the company.
I predominantly use Yahoo Finance when I am researching companies, stock market news, and potential stock trades. At this point I’m pretty familiar with what they have available to use.
However when I went on to Webull I was really impressed. So much data and charts were available that I had never seen before. Here’s a few things I really liked.
Quite simply there was just a ridiculous amount of data, trends, and analysis. Overall I was impressed.
It would be hard not to mention that I really like the fact that they gave me a free stock just for opening up the account. I have not had a platform do that for me before. Not US Bank, Vanguard, or Fidelity.
I think it’s important to mention that I’m not a day trader or do much technical analysis. I’m not charting earnings or key performance indicators. So for me the vast amount of data that’s available is overkill for someone like me. In the future as I learn more I think it could be very beneficial.
My entire review is based off of using the app which is platform used on my phone. Personally I tend to research and buy stocks using my personal computer. Webull currently offers desktop and web applications for trading only. So for me personally I would prefer to spend the majority of my time on my laptop with some supplemental use on my phone. I’m excited to dive in to the desktop and web applications in the near future. At first glance looks great so far.
Overall as I have been testing out Webull I have been impressed. It’s a platform that offers free commission trading, has a ton of data to do your research, and is pretty user friendly.
Personally I’d like to see the free stock trading platform increase it’s desktop capabilities, but that’s not anything that would deter me from using the platform today.
Lastly I should add they have a lot of community features that I didn’t dive into but could certainly see the benefits of. They even have a Learning Center which I could use more of like “Building Your Trading Toolbelt” for example.
It’s a very interactive community that they have started which is going to be really beneficial not only for the long term future of Webull but for the users as well.
That’s my honest and truthful opinion on Webull. Like anything I talk about on Even Steven Money, make sure to do your own research on the information I provide and read the fine print. If you click on any of the Webull links I may be compensated with money, stocks, or a new Tesla (Just kidding about that last one). Make sure to consult a licensed professional when making any investment decisions. Remember I’m just guy on the internet who likes to talk about money.