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UBS Acquires Wealthfront for $1.4B

reuters.com

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Re: UBS Acquires Wealthfront for $1.4B

#261

Post by onphonenow »

da39a3ee wrote: post #240
onphonenow wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wined and dined people also often really don't want to deal with a website and they want someone to call who can "get things done" if needed. So for wealthfront and friends, let's say a family member is closing on a property purchase. You said you'd put in $500K. Closing comes and you try to wire the money over. But wait, it doesn't work. 1) First you have to sell investments 2) Trades have to SETTLE (T+2 or more…

If you have planned to contribute $500K then presumably your plan involves making the money liquid with the necessary few days anticipation. Also, my Wealthfront account is offering me approximately 25% "Available to borrow". I haven't tried it yet but I assume I could grab that immediately and then sell stock to pay back the loan. I'm not challenging your claim that having a human financial advisor can be useful. I'…

Having been through this a few times betterment at least did not have a way AT ALL to wire out any amount of money regardless of balance in the account. This caused an issue during a real estate transaction - somewhat to extremely painful.

If wealthfront is offering an available to borrow that is perfect (for this issue).

You do get to a point though where you are like - hey, can I transfer $x of stock to a donor advised fund on this day and are just glad it can happen.

I'm not saying the fee is worth it, just that some folks may be willing to pay it because it appears to improve quality of life, even at cost of performance.

And actually, for something like a favor of $500K to help a close, you may NOT be doing a lot of planning in advance. Sure, call me when you need it if it ends up being needed. Call comes in (days / weeks / months later) - now its a pain.

Re: UBS Acquires Wealthfront for $1.4B

#262

Post by borski »

dnadler wrote: post #197
borski wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is honestly a huge deal - when I make an angel investment, I send a text and/or wire info via the Merrill Lynch app, and I know it will be taken care of (by the same people every time) same day or next day, depending on when I send it. That plus introductions and referrals to tax accountants, estate attorneys, etc., and access to investment vehicles I otherwise wouldn’t get (easily), definitely makes the 0.7% fe…

This is very interesting to me. I've been working on a retirement calculator in my free time as a hobby project for a while [1], but it never really occurred to me that there is real value in allowing people to do the 'what-if' analysis more easily. It seems obvious now... Could you see yourself using something like this if there was an easy way to compare different scenarios? [1] https://lunchmodel.com/lmrc/scenario

You'd make a lot of money with this, I think. A lot of people don't have financial advisors and also don't have any method (or knowledge) of how to model various scenarios; if you built this out I bet you'd have a nice little passive income tool. Would it make billions of dollars? Probably not.

I'd use it and pay for it though, especially if it factored in historic market data, automatically figured out housing increase rates for my area, etc.

Re: UBS Acquires Wealthfront for $1.4B

#263

Post by chris47493 »

da39a3ee wrote: post #240
onphonenow wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wined and dined people also often really don't want to deal with a website and they want someone to call who can "get things done" if needed. So for wealthfront and friends, let's say a family member is closing on a property purchase. You said you'd put in $500K. Closing comes and you try to wire the money over. But wait, it doesn't work. 1) First you have to sell investments 2) Trades have to SETTLE (T+2 or more…

If you have planned to contribute $500K then presumably your plan involves making the money liquid with the necessary few days anticipation. Also, my Wealthfront account is offering me approximately 25% "Available to borrow". I haven't tried it yet but I assume I could grab that immediately and then sell stock to pay back the loan. I'm not challenging your claim that having a human financial advisor can be useful. I'…

Their margin loan feature isn't much faster in my experience. ~2 days to open the initial request, 2 days to transfer via ACH, couple more to clear. I don't remember if there was a wire transfer option or not. Overall I still appreciate how easy it was to use

Re: UBS Acquires Wealthfront for $1.4B

#264

Post by Bostonian »

maxclark wrote: post #174
lzrs wrote: post #131

I've been researching robo-advisors quite a bit recently. They are really interesting and innovative. I'll preface by saying that I have been talking to a lot of financial planners (at top-tier institutions). They basically set you up with a good set of ETFs, hedge funds, etc. and rebalance occasionally. Sometimes they do tax-loss harvesting. They also provide a few other nice little services. But at the end of the d…

I started with and was a Wealthfront customer for many years. I'm appreciative and credit them with starting my education and understanding on investing. What caused me to leave? - They aren't global portfolio aware. Bonds belong in tax advantaged accounts, then taxable. If you've maxed out your 401k/IRAs in Bonds that $ as an absolute percentage should be accounted for in your taxable portfolio construction. - They…

"Bonds belong in tax advantaged accounts, then taxable."

That's true when say taxable bonds are yielding 8% and municipal bonds 6%. But when taxable bonds are yielding 2% (about the current 10-year U.S. Treasury yield), the tax hit from owning them in a taxable account is small, and maybe the growth assets such as stocks belong in a Roth IRA.

Re: UBS Acquires Wealthfront for $1.4B

#265

Post by astrange »

twblalock wrote: post #253
astrange wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't ask for your IRA transactions, TurboTax and other consumer products don't even try to work out wash sales between multiple brokers let alone IRAs, and Congress intentionally doesn't fund IRS investigators because they don't want them to actually enforce anything, so… Similarly, HSAs are taxable in California but I doubt most people know this and it hasn't caused my HSA investment account to offer tax state…

So your argument is that it's ok to avoid the wash sale rule because you are unlikely to get caught?

I would not recommend everyone in the US move to a robo just in case you accidentally claim too many capital gains losses, no.

Even better, don't read this thread, since ignorance is a defense in tax law and you're not legally required to get your taxes perfectly right.

On the other hand, it is a federal crime (fine or imprisonment not longer than six months) to walk a dog in a national park with a leash longer than 6 feet.

Re: UBS Acquires Wealthfront for $1.4B

#266

Post by popupeyecare »

2bitencryption wrote: post #17

really interesting takeaways from the Wealthfront landing page[0]: * every example is shown as a smartphone app - not a single "desktop-oriented" screenshot to be found. I guess we are finished with the days where every service has an app. Now, every service is an app. * In the first example, an investment portfolio is shown where roughly 10% of the holdings is in a group called "single stock bets." Yikes! Though may…

Re: the first example - Wealthfronts dashboard aggregates all your investments (if you give it access). The "single stock bet" is being pulled from the user's Robinhood account. The other two investments (with the purple icon) are through Wealthfront.

Re: UBS Acquires Wealthfront for $1.4B

#267

Post by hedgehog »

TameAntelope wrote: post #169
hedgehog wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on strategy you can do ok, I'm up over 20%/year going back 15ish years. There's certainly a lot of luck involved but also tolerance for volatility.

Funny, I'm up 45%/year going back 30ish years, since we're on the Internet just saying things.

It's not a flex, I'm just saying that it's not super rare for people to get those returns. If you're really doing 45% that's above and beyond though and would be curious what your strategy is.

Re: UBS Acquires Wealthfront for $1.4B

#268

Post by sixminuteabs »

dartdartdart wrote: post #12

Anyone know of any other product offer that will take excess after direct deposit and invest it for you? I've called Fidelity and Betterment and both do not offer an automated way like wealthfront does. Really sad to see wealthfront being the only player in that space. Edit: by automated I mean something like "everything over $10k after bills, invest". It takes a couple of clicks per month manually, but it's been pre…

[Disclaimer] I'm the founder of farther finance (https://www.farther.com) - the first digital family office.

We offer this to our clients at farther - set a minimum amount to keep in your bank account, everything over set minimum gets swept to your investment accounts and invested based on how you set them up and any relevant regulatory stuff (like max IRA contribution amounts) or goal amounts.

Quick note - We focus on holistic management for pretty significant wealth (compared to the target client for most offerings) and all of the stuff that comes with that - more intricate planning around events, alts, families, collabs with CPAs, attorneys etc. That's best achieved with a hybrid approach - an advisory team boosted by tech - so advisors are part of the deal! If you're interested, feel free to PM me and I'll connect you with one of our advisors.

Re: UBS Acquires Wealthfront for $1.4B

#269

Post by cobertos »

subsubzero wrote: post #89

Back in 2015 I put some of my money into wealthfront, despite the market doing well at the time, my wealthfont fund which was heavily stock balanced did somewhat poorly. This was over a year's time so not short lived by any means. I pulled my money out and invested into stocks I chose and never looked back(typically get 10-15% returns a year). I would like to hear other people's perspectives about how their wealthfro…

I believe I've gotten lucky, but I moved all my money from Fidelity (making, 7% I think?, in a money market? I couldn't understand their UI so I don't recall) to Wealthfront. It currently shows and it's made 15% - 35% over 2 years.

Re: UBS Acquires Wealthfront for $1.4B

#270

Post by Yhippa »

hedgehog wrote: post #267
TameAntelope wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I'm up 45%/year going back 30ish years, since we're on the Internet just saying things.

It's not a flex, I'm just saying that it's not super rare for people to get those returns. If you're really doing 45% that's above and beyond though and would be curious what your strategy is.

If you're getting 20% returns you've quit your day job and are doing this exclusively, right?
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