My business partner and I have been investing for over 8 years and have used a variety of investing platforms. We use Motif for our own investing strategies and have been doing so now for 2 years.
We do have investments in other platforms as well so this not our only investment platform that we use.
There are many different features and tools that most platforms will offer you, however, none of them are as unique as the Motif Investing platform.
The Motif investing platform was created with the purpose of allowing people to invest in a different way than most investing platforms.
With most investing platforms you can only buy one share at a time to accumulate your positions or holding in a certain stock. Motif is different in the sense that it offers something called fractional share investing.
If you are not familiar with fractional share investing or don’t know what this means, don’t worry, keep reading as it will be discussed later in this review.
Motif’s History
The company was founded by Hardeep Walia back in 2011 and the platform was launched in 2012. It was created off his own ideas for broader investing exposure into whole industry sectors.
Problem/Solution:
Before Hardeep started the company, he wanted to invest in the mobile internet. He was advised by friends of his to invest in single companies such as Apple (APPL) that would expose him to this sector.
Hardeep had bigger ambitions for his investing strategy though, he wanted exposure to the “mobile ecosystem” with chip manufacturers, operators and cell phone tower companies.
When he went to doing research on his investment options he discovered that during that time period there were no ETF’s or funds that successfully covered this investing strategy.
The problem he solved was to offer a concept-driven trading platform that allows you to invest in your desires or next hot trend that might be showing growth such as artificial Intelligence or block chain technology.
Its business model seeks savvy investors that have their finger on the pulse of the markets and OFFERS a COST-EFFECTIVE and faster way to invest money into intelligent ideas.
Motif is working with major leading global institutions such as Goldman Sachs, US Bank, J.P. Morgan and Global Atlantic Financial Group.
Accomplishments:
Below is a list of their awards that they have received for their innovation in the finance and investment industry.
- Forbes 2016 Fintech 50 list
- Ranked on Fast Companies “most innovative finance companies” in 2015 & 2016.
- Winner at Finovate for fall of 2013 and spring of 2014.
- CNBC ranked them on the “Disruptors 50 list” for 3 consecutive years in a row.
If you are concerned with their trust worthiness you can put that fear to rest. I don’t think that these big financial institutions would back it or put their name out their supporting the platform if it wasn’t a legitimate platform or business.
What is a Motif?
Before you read too much further, you might be wondering what is with the name Motif? What is a motif and how does it work?
A motif is defined as a basket of up to 30 motif stocks or ETF’s that can be weighted in an intelligent manner to reflect an investment theme, market insight from professionals or an innovative idea or trend that is taking place in the markets.
The concept is similar to an ETF or Exchange traded Fund. With an ETF, you can gain exposure to an industry sector or a weighted fund and it is allocated by the fund managers.
The biggest difference is that with a Motif, the investment options are limitless and even better, you get to become your own fund manager and creator of your own motif/ETF if you would like.
You get to control how you weight the Motif, what stocks to pick to create the fund, what asset allocation it should have, and you can even receive royalties when others purchase your Motif as an investment.
If creating your own Motif seems like a daunting task and you want a passive investment approach, then you can just purchase from over 150 pre-made Motifs that have already been created for you.
Take a Motif tour!
WATCH the video for a inside look at one of the best investment platforms on the market!
Fractional Share Investing
When you invest in stocks with most brokerage firms like Fidelity and Vanguard for example, you must buy a full share of that stock to own the stock.
If a share of Apple costs you 200.00, you would need 200.00 plus whatever the fee is for buying that stock to rightfully own 1 share of Apple. That’s how the traditional brokers work.
Let’s say you don’t have 200.00 to buy 1 share of Apple but you still want to invest in Apple.
With Motif you can buy a fraction of share of Apple. If you haven’t watched the tour video shown above STOP here and go back and WATCH the video. I explain this in greater detail and show you what I’m describing in this segment and it will make much more sense.
Note: (In order to get started or to invest in a single stock at ANY GIVEN TIME, you are required to have a minimum investment of 250.00.)
The AUTO Re-Investment DRIP feature
This new feature was finally added to Motif accounts and I am glad that we can take advantage of compounding finally.
For those that aren’t familiar with DRIP, it stands for “dividend re-investment plans”.
This means that when you receive dividends from a stock that you are invested in, you get the option of taking the dividend in CASH or have the CASH re-invested back into buying more stock.
The only drawback to this feature, is that you cannot re-invest your dividends from a created MOTIF back into the same Motif that you created.
When you set this feature up on your account, you have the option of selecting another motif or stock that you want to invest in rather than your very own created MOTIF.
So just to re-cap for you here…you will get dividends from your created MOTIF and you can set up the auto DRIP to go into a stock like the S&P 500 for example.
The way this new feature works is shown in video above. If you haven’t watched that just CLICK here and it will take you through a tour of the investing trader platform and show you where to go to set up the Re-investment DRIP.
Motif Trading Accounts
When you open a Motif Investing account you will gain access to all the brokerage services that you will read about below. The services provided by Motif fall into two categories. Non-Retirement and Retirement account.
Note:(The option for Re-Investment DRIPS has been added to accounts)
Non-Retirement Accounts
Individual Account – This is an account that is created for the individual who wants to buy, sell or trade securities. You may have a 5 to 10-year plan or just want to do some trading shorter term. Either approach you decide on, you can use an individual account.
Joint Account – This type of account is beneficial to those who want to invest with their spouse or a friend. We all know that investing with more than one person involved, can lead to building WEALTH much quicker than just one person’s efforts.
Trust account – If you go to their site you will not find a direct way to set up the Trust account and we didn’t find much on the Trust account from the FAQ page. You’re better off just calling their customer service phone number at 1-855-586-6843 or emailing them directly at service@motifinvesting.com
Retirement Accounts
Traditional IRA Account – The contribution is based on eligibility of what your contribution limit is. The only exception is that the account is NOT to succeed 5,500.00 per individual or 6,500.00 if you are 50 years of age or over as of the year 2016 and 2017.
Roth IRA Account –The same rule applies to Roth IRA’s as seen above with Traditional IRA’s. The same applies with age as well.
Roll Over IRA’s – This functionality exists for folks who already have a IRA but feel they want to link the existing IRA account to Motif and have the IRA transition over to the Motif platform instead.
The fee’s associated with this process are $95.00 to transfer the account to Motif and a $95.00 FEE to terminate the account.
Accounts with less than 10,000.00 but more than $0.00 from a combined portfolio of cash and motif stocks/securities, without a Blue Subscription and without any commission trades in the last 3 months will incur a quarterly FEE of $10.00.
If you don’t have a balance in your account, then you don’t have to worry about any charge or FEE from Motif.
If you want to request a distribution or have questions on a retirement account, you can do so by visiting the FAQ page.
Create your own Impact Portfolio account
The Impact portfolio is a unique and clever way to take modern portfolio theory to the next level by automating a lot of the process for you.
Let’s say for example, if you were to set up a financial plan around your portfolio with larger brokerage service companies, you would be appointed a financial advisor to help you along the way and the FEE’s would be high.
Motif gives you a way to automate what the financial advisor’s role would be in that process and the added benefit of still customizing your portfolio any time you want and at your control.
Another ward, this feature is for investors who want to directly own stocks that represent 5 different asset classes. It implements something called “automatic drift protection” which keeps you in line with your financial targets.
To minimize asset sales, it introduces a feature that deals with tax-aware auto investing. This helps you DECREASE your taxes due to sales fees at the end of the year, for buying and selling stocks.
This type of investing account takes you through a quick 2-minute form that you fill out based on your goals and financial targets.
There are a couple drawbacks to setting up this account however.
- It requires a minimum investment of 1,000.00 to get started.
- The annual FEE associated is .25% the cost or $2.50 of 1,000.00 which is still a low fee.
Get access to IPO’s and become the insider!
Although I am not big on investing in IPO’s, this is a great opportunity that is now available to retail investors.
Before you decide to get into an IPO or initial public offering you must know that this investing approach is VERY HIGH risk.
IPO’s are companies that are just going public for the first time and little is known about their income statements, cash flow and accounting practices. If this scares you it should but it can also come with very high rewards as an investor if you get in on the right IPO.
How do you select the right IPO?
PROs
- Motif has equipped investors with details on the company and pricing so that you have all the information you need to make a better purchasing decision. You can also sign up for their email news alert on IPO’s that are to be launched in the future.
- You can invest up to the IPO’s maximum amount of shares they allow you to invest in.
- Tell Motif the dollar amount you want to invest and they will estimate the maximum amount of shares that can be allocate to you.
CONs
- Minimum investment amount required is 250.00
- HIGH RISK for speculating. You could lose all your money and really fast!
Crypto Assets
The Crypto market is very volatile and going through a lot of scrutiny by regulators at the current moment. My business partner and I have been invested in cryptos since Bitcoins rise to 20,000.00 late last year in 2017 and we have also been invested as it has fallen to lows around 6,000.00.
Through this roller coaster ride with the innovation in block chain technology, Motif has not yet given access to investing in the Crypto market directly. My thoughts on the reasons why are justified by what I just said regarding regulations.
Eventually I do believe that Motif will be at the forefront of this flood gate that opens, when Cryptos are accepted into the main stream.
That is why they have allowed you to sign up for their waitlist by submitting your email address.
Why Thematic Investing and what is it?
This is not a new concept, but it is a NEW feature presented by Motif to invest your money more intelligently over time.
Motif is leading the way in this segment of investing concepts. We have not seen any other brokerage firm offer this as a service to date.
There may be a couple out there that do, but personally speaking, we have not seen any that promote it the way Motif does.
Thematic investing is more of an art for identifying changes that transform markets around the world and are long-term. It is a way to measure the impact of seismic changes that cause disproportionate growth to economies around the world.
A great example of this is artificial intelligence or Block chain technology. Both innovations are disruptive and will change the future of how we do business in the world and will have huge impacts on populations.
Motif has come up with a way to implement technology and has taken a technological data driven approach to thematic investing.
Here is how it works –
- They sift or “data mine” through Terabytes of information to discover important trends that are driving the current economies.
- The next step is identifying the companies with appropriate exposure to these trends.
- Motif uses automation for this process and turns these dynamic data driven models into financial products for individual and professional investors.
These financial products come in the form of Motifs that have been created for you and can be viewed from the motif website.
Our final thoughts as a customer
There are so many options for investing and trading platforms that can be used to build wealth. We couldn’t possibly compare all of them or even cover every little aspect of Motif for that matter.
In our experience as customers for over 2 years, we have been very pleased with the options available to us for investing. We created our own Motif that I specifically designed based on asset allocation theory from Ray Dalio.
The cool thing about Motif, is that the platform allowed me to buy at a fraction of the cost rather than going through a broker like E-Trade, to complete the portfolio.
To elaborate on how important this was for me, let me explain what this means. Basically, to acquire a basket full of stocks for my portfolio I was going to have to spend at least 2,000.00 to gather 1 share for each stock in my portfolio going through E-Trade.
I went through Motif and used the fractional share investing approach and spent just 300.00 instead. I had acquired all the stocks I was looking at buying through E-Trade. My portfolio was completed and up and running much faster and at a CHEAPER cost to me.
In concluding, if you want to start investing or you are an experienced investor but want a cheaper and more cost-effective way to building wealth, then Motif is for you.
If you enjoyed this review, please leave us your own opinions on Motif or let us know what else you might want us to cover on Motif and we will be sure to cover it in later posts.
Please feel free to share your own experience with us if you are a customer or have used Motif as well.