Wells Fargo Real Time Quotes
Investors at Wells Fargo get free real-time stock quotes, also known as Level I quotes. However, these are not streaming quotes—you need to refresh the page to see the current quote.
Level II Quotes at Wells Fargo
Unfortunately, Level II quotes, which give more detailed information and are used by professional traders, are not available at Wells Fargo at any cost.
Some of Wells Fargo's competitors offer this useful feature. Charles Schwab offers Level II data for free. Charles Schwab also charges $0 for stock and ETF trades.
Free Level II at Charles Schwab
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Banking Features
If you think WellsTrade is a good choice for cash management because of its parent company, think again. The brokerage does not offer any standard banking features with an investment account. You can request checks and a debit card, but only if you choose the Wells Fargo command account as your main option, which costs $100 per year.
One option is to open a savings or checking account with Wells Fargo and link it to your WellsTrade account. You can access both with one login. However, Wells Fargo's bank products are not the best in the industry (they have monthly fees), and the bank has faced several scandals in recent years.
Mutual Funds
While WellsTrade's banking options are lacking, its selection of mutual funds is impressive. Using the effective screener, we found 9,232 securities available for new investors. Out of these, 2,203 funds had no transaction fee or load.
The screener has basic and advanced modes. In basic mode, you can select Morningstar rating, return and risk levels, and expense ratio. You can also filter by fund family, category, and asset class.
In advanced mode, there are more options, like selecting the return history timeframe. You can also choose manager tenure, total assets, and minimum investment.
On the results page, funds are shown in easy-to-read rows and can be sorted by characteristics like 10-year performance or Morningstar category. A feature we liked is the ability to change columns by clicking a link at the top.
Clicking a fund's ticker symbol takes you to its profile page. Here, there is brief information about the fund. The portfolio section shows the top 10 holdings and asset allocation. We were impressed by the risk metrics, which include not only common figures like R-squared and the Sharpe ratio but also less common ones like Kurtosis, Upside Capture ratio, and Skewness. These extend up to 20 years, useful for long-term investors.
ETFs
WellsTrade's ETF offerings don't match up to its mutual funds. We noticed that WellsTrade doesn’t provide any commission-free exchange-traded funds. However, all US-listed funds are available for trading.
The ETF screener is similar to the mutual fund screener. You can search by Lipper rating, tax efficiency, and expense ratio, among other criteria like market cap and 3-year return history. The advanced screener has the same criteria as the basic one, which is a downside for the ETF category.
The results page isn't as good as what we found on the mutual fund screener. ETF results only show the categories chosen in the screener, but you can sort them.
On an ETF's profile page, there is a Lipper Scorecard showing ratings for different categories over several time frames. There is also information on investment goals, return history, sector allocation, fund manager, ticker symbol, and geographic exposure. Option chains are included for funds that have them.
Updated on 10/2/2024.
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