Thoughts on M1 Finance

May 21, 2020 interactive brokers m1finance [investing]

I finally got around to setting up my M1 Finance account two years after I first applied. When I applied two years ago, in 2018, they asked me for a utility bill and a picture of my driver license. I sent those in and then they ignored me. Others on the M1 subreddit report this is common and expected.

Two years later (like last week), while ruminating on the hedgefundie thread on the Bogleheads forum, I decided to check up on M1. Surprisingly I found my original login still worked but my account was closed. I have no idea how that works. I requested a new account and they asked me for a utility bill and license photo. Again. But this time they’ve approved my account and I transferred in $100 to get started.

The premise is simple but the implementation is odd. You can define pies but you can’t have more than one pie per account. And I can make a pie a subset of another pie. It is then considered a slice although, when you click on it, the slice is referred to as a pie. What?

Coming from Interactive Brokers Lite, the selection is woefully inadequate. I couldn’t find QMJ, Direxion’s High minus Low Quality ETF, or WVVIP, which is Willamette Valley Winery’s preferred shares. Both are readily available on IBKR Lite, even as fractional shares. I’m sure there are other omissions. Also there is no forex, futures, bonds, mutual funds, or even revenue sharing from stock lending. All of which are also offered by Interactive Brokers.

Anyway I went ahead and set up a pie consisting of a slice of companies I think are going to zero and a slice of hedgefundie’s portfolio. I have no idea what I’m doing and just want to lose the $25 I put in so I can blog about it. lol.

To get on board with the other shills, please consider using my referral link. I’ll get $10 and you’ll also get $10 to start. Although the minimum investment to start is $25. I don’t know how that works either.

I’d put an Interactive Brokers referral link here. However they require you keep at least $10,000 in your account for a year. And for this I’ll get $200 and you’ll get nothing. I can see why they don’t have as many shills as M1.