- So in this video today,
we're going to be looking
at a commission-free brokerage platform known as Public
which is essentially on a mission to make investing social.
The best way I can describe this brokerage,
is it's like a hybrid between a social media platform
and a brokerage where you can follow your friends,
your friends can follow you
and everybody can see each other's investment activity,
that way you can keep up with your friends
and what they are investing in.
Beyond that, it is $0 commission with $0 minimums
and they do offer fractional shares
as well as some other great features
which may make them a good fit for you.
So we're gonna go ahead and review them today
and I'm also going to be doing a live demo
of this app at the end of the video
to show you exactly what it looks like.
Also, Public has made an exclusive offer
for viewers of my channel.
If you use my affiliate link down below,
you're going to get a free $10 slice
of a stock of your choosing and you get to choose
from one of nine popular blue-chip stocks.
So if you like what Public has to offer
and you wanna get 10 bucks worth of a free stock,
that's gonna be the top link down below
and for transparency, I may earn a commission
in the process if you do decide to use that link.
But that being said guys, let's jump into the review now
and talk about what Public has to offer.
So Public is a commission-free trading app
with no fees for standard trading
which is pretty common these days
with other investing apps out there
that have largely done away with commissions.
But again, the big difference
between Public and other brokerages
is the social aspect of this investing app.
Now currently, the only type of account they offer
is a taxable individual brokerage account
so at this time they do not offer retirement accounts
or anything fancy like that.
In addition, you're not gonna find a lot of
fancy research tools or advanced charting,
it is a relatively basic app.
However, that was the goal that Public had in mind
when creating this app,
is to make it as simple as possible for complete beginners
while integrating that social aspect
of sharing your investments with other people.
So now let's talk about the different features available
through Public and one of the coolest ones
that they offer is something called investment themes
which are essentially portfolios of stocks
and ETFs that are completely free to invest in.
Now I looked on their website
and they had over a dozen different themes
but I picked a couple here for example sake.
First of all, we have Future Ed
which is essentially 25 stocks
related to digital at-home learning.
Another one they had here was called Stay at Home
which was 41 stocks and six ETFs
that are poised to benefit
from the new stay-at-home culture related to this pandemic.
And another one they have here is the Meatless Revolution
that requires no real explanation.
That's 12 different stocks involved in the meatless trend.
Now another cool feature they offer
which is 100% free to use
is called the ticker time machine.
I tried this out the other day,
essentially it allows you to put in
a given investment and a given date
and it shows you how much money you would have made
if you just put your money in there and didn't touch it,
that's a really cool tool
if you're looking to look back on investments
that you've sold and determine
if you made a good decision or a bad decision.
That's completely free for all users,
you don't even need to have a brokerage account with them
if you wanna try that out.
Now in addition, they also offer fractional shares
which means you don't have to buy an entire share
of companies that trade at high prices
such as Tesla or Amazon for example,
by default it is $25 increments
that you're able to purchase shares in
but you can actually buy any amount of the stocks and ETFs
that are supported with this fractional investing.
As far as stocks and ETFs go,
there's over 5,000 different ones to choose from
so there are a lot stocks and ETFs available
as well as these investment themes
so you have options for both the passive investor
and the active investor.
Now as far as the social side of the app goes,
you're able to share your investment activity publicly
if you want to and you can also leave comments and feedback
about why you bought or sold a given investment.
So now let's jump into my phone
and I'm gonna give you a live demo
of the Public brokerage app
so you can see for yourself what this app has to offer.
All right guys, so here we are inside of the Public app
and as you can see right off the bat
it gives you notifications about
what is going on with your portfolio.
So I put a $100 in here to test this out
and in a minute we're going to buy $25 of a stock
just to show you guys what this can do here.
So I have a notification up top,
my portfolio was down 0.54% today,
I've lost 58 cents just based on some market fluctuation
and in my portfolio I own, AMD, Apple, Google and Amazon.
And so right here on the main feed,
you have the social platform
where people are able to share different thoughts
and again, like I said, it's just a really cool hybrid
between a brokerage and a social media platform
and it seems like this could really be something
that takes off if more people adopt to using this platform
and sharing their investment activity.
And just like with other social media platforms,
you can choose people to follow.
So for example, this guy right here, 4,087 followers
if I wanna follow what he is doing,
I simply click follow
and I can see what he decides to share
in terms of his portfolio and his investment activity.
So right here, we can see that this guy Scott Galloway
has a portfolio of Apple, Amazon
and a company called Lemonade.
And just like with other social media platforms,
you can comment on different investment activity
and see what other people are doing
and gain feedback from other investors.
Now as mentioned earlier,
there are dozens of different investment themes
that you may decide to invest in
if you don't wanna pick and choose individual stocks.
So for example, let's go ahead and pick Green Power
and it's gonna tell you about what the holdings are
and what this is designed to do.
You can also send your friends messages within this app
and you can also form group chats
if you wanna start an online stock community
right within your brokerage account.
So at this point in time,
I'm gonna go ahead and purchase a stock
and I'm gonna buy a fractional share,
that way I don't have to buy an entire share
of stocks that are very expensive.
So it's gonna be a stock
that I own in one of my other portfolios,
we're gonna buy some shares of Lowe's.
So as you can see looking at this,
it currently trades at $167 per share
but thanks to the fractional shares,
I don't have to buy one entire share.
So if I go ahead and click the Buy button,
you will see the options I have available.
I have $25 and 2 cents in buying power
so I'm gonna hit $25 and I'm going to invest
or if I wanted to do a different amount,
I could literally do $1 and put that into Lowe's stock.
But in this case, we're gonna go ahead and do $25,
I'm gonna click Invest and just like that,
I'm gonna confirm
and I now own a fractional share of Lowe's.
And this is where you can share
why you are investing in that stock
so I'm going to say the global pandemic
is causing more people to do home improvement.
So now I click Post and that's going to show up on my feed
for other people who follow me to be able to see this.
All right guys, so in a nutshell,
Public was designed to make investing as simple
and as social as possible
and it's kind of like a hybrid
between Robinhood's commission-free trading
and a social media platform in one.
Like I said, they have that exclusive offer
if you wanna grab 10 bucks worth of a free stock,
that's gonna be the top link down in the description below
if you think this is a good fit for you.
If you are looking for an advanced trading platform
with a lot of research tools
or if you're looking for retirement accounts
and things like that,
this is probably not going to be the fit for you.
But if you're just getting started
and the social aspect is interesting to you,
you may decide this is a good platform.
But anyways guys, that's gonna wrap up this video.
Thanks so much for watching, I hope you enjoyed it.
If you did, please drop a like
and subscribe to be notified of any future uploads
and I hope to see you in the next video.