Firstrade is a discount brokerage firm that is smaller but has been around for decades. They have a new IRA match promotion with a 3% match on contributions and a 2% match on IRA transfers and 401k-to-IRA rollovers (up to a $20,000 match amount). They have no minimum balance requirements, no annual fees on the IRA, and they don’t require any premium subscription (like Robinhood Gold). There is a minimum 5-year hold period. You can also get up to $250 in transfer fee rebates for eligible transfers over $2,500. Must open IRA by 2/21/25.
Update: For IRA rollovers, note that the fine print states “Mutual funds and Fixed income products transferred into the account are excluded from the calculation of rewards for this offer.”
More details:
1. Open a Firstrade IRA. Open a Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, or Rollover IRA during the promotion period.
2. Make Contributions or Transfers. Contributions: We’ll match 3% of new contributions made within 30 days of account opening. Transfers: We’ll match 2% of the total amount transferred from another IRA or 401(k) made within 30 days of account opening, up to a maximum of $20,000 match bonus.
3. Earn Rewards. Bonuses are paid 30 days after your new account is approved.
Get a 3% match on contributions and a 2% account transfer boost when you open a Firstrade No-Fee IRA. No minimums, annual, setup or maintenance fees—plus, enjoy commission-free trading on stocks, ETFs, options, and mutual funds.
Promotion Period: Open to U.S. residents who open a new retirement account (Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, or Rollover IRA) between January 21, 2025, and February 21, 2025, and fund the account within 30 days of approval.
This is very similar to the current Robinhood IRA promo, but without the Robinhood Gold requirement that costs $5/month. You may prefer Firstrade as they have a published phone customer service number and a physical branch in Flushing, NY. Customer support is also available in traditional and simplified Chinese, with representatives who speak both Cantonese and Mandarin. Or you may just appreciate that they aren’t Robinhood.
This would be a great offer if Robinhood didn’t already do it first and locked many of us into their 5-year hold period, but then again, if Robinhood didn’t do it first, then Firstrade probably wouldn’t have made this offer.
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Worst brokerage I ever dealt with; hopelessly incompetent customer service, you have to explain even basics about trades, kind of mind boggling.
Avoid.
I wanted to see what mutual funds they offer.They say they offer 11000 of them, but I am not able to see the exact fund families. One needs to open an account probably for that. I want to do an in-kind transfer, with the mutual funds being exact. Without knowing if they have the same mutual funds, it may not be worth it, if they need to sell and buy similar funds.
Why not just call them up and ask, before you transfer or open an account?
The transfer bonus explicitly does not apply to mutual funds.
Good catch.
I attempted to open a Roth IRA to take advantage of this promotion, but after going through the process, they asked for multiple pictures of various documentation to “verify my identity”. After doing that, they came back and asked for even more invasive documentation plus a selfie. All this in spite of the fact that I already have an open individual brokerage account with them. After the second round of this I decided that I had wasted enough time on this and will go with the 3% match available from Robinhood.