Chase Investment Account Review: All About The Self-Directed Trading Platform

Not sure where to start on your investing journey? The Chase trading platform can simplify the process.

With no account minimums, minimal fees, a simple onboarding process and an intuitive mobile app, Chase could be a great place to get started. Plus, if you’re already a Chase client, your brokerage account seamlessly connects to the rest of the Chase ecosystem.

However, as you’ll learn in this Chase brokerage account review, more sophisticated investors or active traders may find the banking titan’s brokerage accounts to be lacking.

Want to see if Chase is right for you? Keep reading for a detailed Chase investing review that can help you decide your next steps:

J.P. Morgan Chase Investment Account Review in 2023

The Bottom Line: Commission-free trading, no account minimums, and a simple onboarding process make Chase investment accounts a solid choice for existing Chase clients and beginner traders alike.

However, a lack of advanced tools and limited tradable products can be a deal-breaker for advanced investors and active day traders.

Chase Brokerage Account Overview

Chase offers a few different types of brokerage accounts:

• General investment account
• Traditional IRA account
• Roth IRA account

With your chosen Chase brokerage account, you can invest in a variety of asset classes, including:

• Stocks
• ETFs
• Mutual funds
• Options
• Bonds

With the exception of options trades (which come with a small fee), the platform offers no-fee trading.

Plus, the easy-to-use platform can be integrated with your existing Chase accounts, so you can manage them all in a single app.

However, the platform doesn’t offer a lot of tools for active investors or day traders who use more sophisticated instruments such as options or futures contracts for their strategies.

For instance, you can’t trade futures with a Chase brokerage account, and options trading contract fees can add up if you’re a high-frequency trader.

As you’ll see in this Chase brokerage account review, the accounts are more suitable for passive or buy-and-hold investors. Let’s take a deeper look:

Pros of Chase Investment Accounts

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the benefits of Chase Investment accounts:

Low and No-Fee Trading

Low or no-fee trading is a big selling point of Chase accounts:

• No fees for trading stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs
• No inactivity fees
• No withdrawal fees

These days, no-fee trading for stocks and ETFs has become the industry standard. However, many Chase investment reviews praise the company for offering no-fee mutual fund trading. That’s not necessarily the industry norm, and it can save you some hefty fees.

In contrast, brokerages like Interactive Brokers, Ally Invest, and Merrill Edge do charge to trade mutual funds — anywhere from $10 to $20 per trade.

Mutual Fund Fees (Comparison)

Chase	Interactive Brokers	Ally Invest	Merrill Edge
No-fee	$15	$10	$20

Chase also encourages you to invest on your terms, since it charges no withdrawal or inactivity fees. With such a friendly fee structure, you can invest at your pace without pressure.

Simple Trading Platform  

Chase has an extremely user-friendly platform for trading. The Chase mobile app is designed to enable effortless trading on the go, with an intuitive UI and simple workflow.

Self-Directed Investing Account

The Chase trading platform offers two account types: a Self-Directed Investing account and an Automated Investing account (for AI-driven investing).

If you want to open the former, you start by choosing an account type:

• General investment account
• Traditional IRA
• Roth IRA

Then you’ll be prompted for some personal details to open the account, and then you’ll be ready to invest on the easy-to-use platform.

Automated Investing account

Although this Chase investment account review focuses primarily on the self-directed side of things, it’s worth mentioning the company’s robo-advisor service.

The Automated Investing account is great for passive investors. Once you create your account, you’ll have the option to choose this account style. From there, you’ll be prompted to answer some questions about your account size, goals, and risk tolerance.

Your answers will be used by AI to generate an investing strategy that suits your goals.

From there, the app will:

• Create your portfolio
• Define your risk profile
• Display a projected growth of your investment

Managing Multiple Chase Accounts With a Single App

If you’re an existing Chase customer, one of the big benefits of using Chase as a brokerage account is that you can manage all of your accounts on the same platform and mobile app. That includes easy transfers between accounts.

If you have multiple Chase accounts, you can access all of them with one username and password but you’ll need to link them via the “Manage linked accounts” option which you’ll find inside the “Profile & Settings” option in the app.

Cons of Chase Investment Accounts

While the Chase trading platform offers a lot of benefits, there are potential downsides.

Namely, the account types and tradable assets are limited. For many long-term investors, this won’t be a problem.

However, if you’re a more active or sophisticated investor, a few things could prove problematic, namely:

• Limited tradable assets
• No cryptocurrency trading
• No demo account
• No fractional shares

Let me explain.

Limited Tradable Assets

Chase offers trading for these assets: stocks, ETFs, Options, Mutual funds, and bonds.

However, it does not offer many instruments used by active traders like Forex, futures, and crypto.

So if you’re interested in the aforementioned assets, or if you want a more diverse portfolio, Chase might not be the right fit.

No Crypto Trading

Chase doesn’t offer crypto trading.

So if you’re hoping to win big in volatile markets, or even just to diversify your portfolio beyond traditional assets like stocks and bonds, you’re out of luck.

No Demo Account

Demo accounts, or trading simulators, can be an invaluable tool for investing newbies who want to get familiar with how trading works without putting real money on the line. They can also help experienced investors test new strategies.  

While Chase doesn’t offer a demo account, it does offer other educational resources, including:

• Educational articles
• Educational videos and tutorials
• Research reports
• Market news

While you’ll certainly benefit from these topics, you won’t have the opportunity to learn by doing that comes with a demo account.

No Fractional Shares

Fractional shares, or portions of stock shares, make it easier for you to buy expensive stocks that otherwise may be inaccessible.

Fractional shares let you build a more diverse portfolio and get ROI from top-tier companies’ stocks for affordable initial investment.

Since Chase accounts are so beginner-friendly in other ways, fractional shares could be a great value-add. But it’s not on the table at this time.

Who is Chase Brokerage Account Best For?

Chase brokerage account is best for:

• New investors
• Casual investors
• Existing Chase clients

Here’s why…

New investors will love the easy-to-use and beginner-friendly trading platform. Plus, no account minimum makes it easy to get started fast.

Self-directed and automated account options let you decide whether you want to make your own portfolio and trades or let AI do all the work.

Plus, existing Chase clients will benefit from the platform’s integration of all their Chase accounts in one app so you can check all your balances in one place.

Why Public and eToro Are Better Than Chase Investment

While Chase has a lot to offer for new investors, advanced traders may opt for a platform like Public or eToro, since they provide more tradable assets, educational resources, and trading tools.

eToro vs Chase 

Here’s what eToro has to offer:

1. No-fee Crypto, Forex, CFDs trading: Unlike Chase, eToro offers no-fee crypto trading, Forex and CFDs. The wider variety of tradable assets makes it more appealing for active traders.
2. Beginner-friendly trading features: The eToro trading platform comes with a unique CopyTrader feature that lets you see and follow the trades of successful pro traders on the platform. This gives you the chance to learn from experienced traders and potentially improve your trading performance.
3. No-fee options trading: Both Chase and eToro offer options trading, but Chase charges you $0.65 per trade, while eToro offers fee-free options trades.

Public vs Chase

Here’s what Public has to offer that Chase doesn’t:

1. Social investing features: Public.com allows you to join a robust online community of investors and see their trades. This is great support for beginner investors as the online community can give you access to new investment ideas.
2. Fractional shares: Unlike Chase, Public.com offers fractional shares, so you can buy a portion of a stock share or ETF. This is useful if you have a small account but want to diversify your portfolio with shares of companies like Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), and Berkshire & Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B — chart below), which may be too expensive otherwise.

Final Word: Chase Investment Account Review

If you’re an existing Chase customer, a beginner investor, or you just like stress-free casual trading, then a Chase investment account could be a great fit.

In this Chase investing review, you’ve learned the platform’s benefits, including low fees, easy integration with other Chase accounts, automated tools, and an easy-to-use app.

But while these features might be great for casual investors, they might not be as appealing for serious investors, speculators, or traders.

Forex, futures, and crypto are not available, and the platform isn’t optimized for day traders. So if you’re interested in these features, you should seek an account elsewhere.

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