WeBull is an investment and trading platform with a website and a phone and desktop app that offers several great free stock options for new users. First, a deposit of $100 will net you 1 free stock. Second, if you invite a friend and they deposit $100, you’ll get 2 free stocks. There are some promotional events that will give you more free stocks for successful referrals. There are also some promotions for signing up, allowing you to get 2 free stocks for signing up and depositing money, and 2 or more for referring a friend. There are no trading fees and a lot of market data.
Clicking the above provided link will send you to a page where you can sign up for WeBull. Doing so will be using my referral link.
WeBull was a great initial investment because of the free stock. I was able to refer Accaliah and get a total of 3 free stocks between us. It should be noted that I was unable to resolve an issue where I wanted to fund her account with my bank by ACH. They required that the bank account be in the name of the account holder. While this is a decent security measure, it does exclude people who do not have their own bank account, or a joint account with their name on it. I was not very happy that WeBull support staff did not resolve this issue for me, but I worked around it by taking $100 from Accaliah’s SSI in her bank account and routed it to WeBull for that month.
My initial deposit of $100 was not nearly as hard, as all of my finances are routed through one of my bank accounts. The free stocks do have to be claimed in a special tab, but they send you a notification that they are available to be claimed. If you don’t claim your free stock after 30 days, it returns to WeBull. I don’t think that is how it should work; instead of reclaiming stocks issued to users who do not redeem it in 30 days, users should be credited the stocks directly (think Robinhood).
The app is a little bit difficult to navigate. I have not tried the desktop app or really used the website, so I will be covering primarily the WeBull phone app. They give good snapshots on their primary screens, but you have to navigate through a few additional screens to get to individual stocks and information, the ability to buy or sell, and to see your transaction history. I think they could improve this by putting it all under the stock you select, so your actions are displayed directly related to that stock below it. Navigating multiple tabs to accomplish one thing aside, finding your transaction history can be a major pain. There’s a “More” section below the trading graph that shows “Quick Trade”, “Performance”, and “Deposit”, but this just brings up a lengthy list of other options. Statements and trading confirmations also come in PDF format, which require another app on your phone to view. This could be improved if they displayed your direct transaction history on a per-stock or per-account basis on the first page.
I luckily keep a spreadsheet of my own investments. These are only mine and do not include Accaliah’s. As I joined with a promotion, deposited money, and referred Accaliah, I was able to get 4 total free stocks from WeBull, displayed below in white.
As you can see, my $100 went to purchasing 2 shares of AGNC, 4 shares of PSEC, 2 shares of SCM, 2 shares of WSR, 1 share of CPTA, and 1 share of CRT. The first four were purchased on 6/25/2020, and the latter two on 6/29/2020. Over the next two and a half months, they have alternatively done better or worse.
AGNC has gone up $1.10 per share since purchase.
PSEC has gone down $0.31 per share since purchase.
SCM has gone up $1.34 per share since purchase.
WSR has gone down $1.10 per share since purchase.
CPTA has gone down $6.28 per share since purchase. (Ouch!)
CRT has gone down $1.13 per share since purchase.
Since I received the following from WeBull, their initial value is not tracked in the spreadsheet above, but here’s the data:
PEB has gone up to $12.79 from $11.40 (an increase of $1.39).
RF has gone up to $11.52 from $10.60 (an increase of $0.92).
SAN has gone down to $2.12 from $2.50 (a decrease of $0.38).
Taking the above into account, -$5.96 + WeBull’s $1.93, I have a negative P/L of -$4.03 for the account. This is still, however, $35.25 higher than the $100 I invested to start, when you take into account the $2.19 cash value and the fact I got WeBull’s stocks for free.
Of course I expect these stock values to fluctuate as they provide dividends (or don’t) and COVID-19 continues to impact the economy. Many things could drive the prices down for REITs, or up for other recovering businesses. I look primarily for dividend stocks, because while some dividend stocks have cut their dividends or removed them to help them recover from the pandemic, others are staying at the same level.
Here are my dividends from WeBull so far:
Doesn’t quite make it to recovering half of the negative account P/L, but there are a number of months to go before I really take a look and see if the stocks are doing well or not. After all, until things get back to normal when the pandemic diminishes, you’ll see businesses that do well during pandemics surviving and thriving while others struggle to keep up, and even fall. So I’ll wait and see. This is no good indicator of how well these stocks will do overall.
Back to the dividends, WeBull’s lack of transaction history like Robinhood has makes it very difficult to track your dividends. They send you a notification in the form of a message on the app about dividends, along with a flood of referral program offers and other messages that are really unnecessary. If I had to compare WeBull to Robinhood, WeBull would be a 3 and Robinhood would be a 9 when it comes to displaying transaction history and stock information. However, WeBull has the 9 when it comes to market data and company information, while Robinhood sits at about a 5. There are improvements that they could make, but it’s all a learning game.
If I start using the desktop app or website more, I will update this post or make a new post covering the features I use and find most helpful, and the things that I don’t like about it.
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