I’m working on making my own index fund. And it’s proving surprisingly difficult.
The Goal
My goal is to create a portfolio of the highest yielding Dividend Aristocrats. Dividend Aristocrats are blue chip companies that have increased their dividend every year for at least 25 years.
But even being an Aristocrat isn’t enough for your demanding author. I want only stocks with a yield above 3%, so I have some chance of keeping up with inflation.
I call this special group the Dividend Royals.
So which broker should I use to construct this portfolio?
The Contestants
In this corner: Robinhood!
Robinhood is one of the best known brokers today. It took the financial world by storm by offering zero commission trades.
And in this corner: Interactive Brokers!
This stalwart of finance has existed for decades and offers sophisticated tools to active investors.
Who will be the next champion?
Fight!
Robinhood is dead simple. Its intuitive mobile app makes it easy to buy and sell shares of stock, including fractional shares.
And then there’s the feature that made it famous: no transaction fees.
But Interactive Brokers no longer charges fees either in its Lite product. And its Pro offering can get you such great prices on shares that it should be worth the nominal fees if your trades are large.
Robinhood’s simplicity is also its Achilles’ heel. It lacks many of the powerful research and trading tools of Interactive Brokers.
Implementing a Dividend Royals strategy would be manual and painful.
What’s more, if you ever decide you’re sick of Robinhood, it’s expensive to get your money out. Robinhood charges you a usurious $75 fee.
Interactive Brokers charges nothing.
By Unanimous Decision…
Interactive Brokers is a much better choice. Its trading tools are powerful and its fees are even lower than famously cheap Robinhood.
I’m working with Interactive Brokers’ support to find out how to implement the Dividend Royals strategy using their BasketTrader tool. I’ll keep you posted!
There will be no blog on Monday. I’m background acting in an awesome forthcoming show from Netflix!
See you Tuesday. Have an awesome weekend, everyone!
More on markets:
Let’s Make Our Own Index Fund!
Plaintiffs Fight Back in Citadel Lawsuit
Starting a Financial Plan from 0
Photo: “Packerland Pro Wrestling – Roadhouse Rumble” by Ross LaRocco is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
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