Merrill Edge is a popular electronic trading platform, which is the trading arm of BOFA securities, under the Bank of America. The services offered by Merrill Edge are electronic trading platforms that allow traders to trade by streaming prices of the live market on their trading app.
Active traders can trade Equities, options, and mutual funds. Merrill Edge has also put efforts into giving traders an insight into making successful trades and is accommodating to both beginners and active traders.
This review is targeted towards giving you all the information you need to know about Merrill Edge. At the end of this review, you should be able to make information on whether this platform is the right fit for your investment needs or not.
Popularity
Merrill Edge is a quite popular broker trading platform. They enjoy the trust people have for the parent company, the Bank of America. This has helped their image because traders believe they are a trustworthy and reliable broker. Merrill Edge has also been able to build its reputation by also offering a quality and robust platform that meets the needs of both traders and investors alike.
The company has about 2.5 million users showing how people are actively using the platform. Besides, Merrill Edge boast of about 101,000 followers on twitter, with 20 reviews on TrustPilot and 8 on SiteJabber. In general, the company has an approximate 70% positive user rating on TrustPilot showing how well trusted it is.
The user rating of the trading app is fairly trustworthy as over 60,000 traders gave a review of 4.45/5 on google play store and apple IOS, showing that their trading app is well received by most. The common comments in reviews states that the platform is reliable with $0 commission on trading.
All these factors have generally made Merrill’s rating on mainstream media high, with medium criticism. Overall, the company has gained a lot of fans among active traders and people looking to start trading.
| Query | Answer | Reference URL | Date |
| Number of users (approximate) | 2.5m | https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180911005141/en/Merrill-Edge-Hits-200-Billion-Assets-Management | 26 Aug 2020 |
| Website traffic (estimated) | 2.14m | https://www.similarweb.com/website/merrilledge.com/ | 26 Aug 2020 |
| # results on web | 20.8m | https://www.google.com/ | 26 Aug 2020 |
| Search volume Google | 90.5K | https://searchvolume.io | 26 Aug 2020 |
| Twitter followers | 101K | https://twitter.com/merrilledge | 26 Aug 2020 |
| FB followers | – | – | 26 Aug 2020 |
| How popular on mainstream media? | High | Investopedia, The Washington Post, Kiplinger, Financial Planning, Barron’s, Advisor Hub, Yahoo Finance | 26 Aug 2020 |
| Negative media? | Medium | https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2016-128.html https://advisorhub.com/merrill-fined-1-4-million-retail-margin-settlement-violations/ | 26 Aug 2020 |
| Notable awards | 1 Overall Client Experience and ESG Investing, Named the top global research firm 2019 | https://www.merrilledge.com/why-merrill-edge/awards-ratings | 26 Aug 2020 |
User Rating
Background Information
Merrill Edge was launched in 2010 on June 21 as the brokerage unit of the Bank of America’s retail banking section. It was created after Merrill Lynch took over in 2008 as a subsidiary of the Bank of America. This gave Merrill Edge about 500000 customers upfront from its startup. These customers were loyal customers from the Bank of America.
By 2015, traders and investors who are well educated and who has the ability to invest up to $250000 began to invest with Merrill Edge so that Merrill Edge entered a portfolio amount of about $118billion and about 2million customers.
As of now, Aron Levine is the CEO of Merrill Edge and currently the President with about 2500 employees.
| Company public/private | Division of a public company | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill_Edge |
| Revenue Data | No data because it’s a division of a bigger company | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill_Edge |
| CEO and bio | Aron Levine – currently the President, Preferred and Consumer Banking & Investments at Bank of America | https://www.merrilledge.com/about/executives |
| Number of employees | 2,500 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill_ |
| Notable investors (private companies) | None | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/merrill-edge |
Security
Merrill Edge has never taken the security of their customers assets for granted. The company is regulated by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Merrill edge also offers primary protection of traders and investors customer accounts by providing a biometric entry, which involves fingerprint and face recognition for people using mobile devices.
Also, when you are to login, you will have to first generate a soft token which ensures the security of your account. Trades that are high risk would need authorization which is either by phone, email or test before they can be executed.
A SafePass card is also used to authorize high risk trades. The risk of loss is also mitigated by the Securities Investors Protection Corporation. This is why significant breaches have not been reported since November 2019.
| Query | Answer | Reference URL |
| HTTPS Certificate | Yes | https://www.merrilledge.com/ |
| 2FA ? | Yes | https://www.education.ml.com/bol/Pages/Article.aspx?Title=tipstoprotectyourselfonline |
| Device monitoring? | Yes | https://www.merrilledge.com/mobile-investing |
| New device extra security? | Yes | https://www.merrilledge.com/help-support |
Fees & Offering
Merrill Edge offers fees that are similar to other broker firms that are trending on the market. It began trying to meet up with a target of zero fees and give free trades to active traders and beginner traders in October 2019, and as of now they charge no commissions on online equities and ETF.
With the Zero fees they offer, comes a no barrier on the account minimum an investor can operate. This has made the platform very inviting to new traders who are looking for an accommodating broker.
They also do not charge per- leg commission for traders into option trading, while their per- contract commission is $0.65. There also no fees when a trader is inactive, sending checks, receiving wires or making trade confirmations.
How Merrill Edge makes its money despites its zero fees policy is arguable. The most likely means is through the spread system on traders’ trades.
| Query | Answer | Reference URL |
| Account minimum | None | https://www.merrilledge.com/pricing |
| Account fixed fees | None | https://www.merrilledge.com/pricing |
| Fractional shares? | No | – |
| Margin costs | Varies | https://www.merrilledge.com/pricing |
| ETF buying fees | None | https://www.merrilledge.com/pricing |
| Stock buying fees | None | https://www.merrilledge.com/pricing |
| Option buying fees | None | https://www.merrilledge.com/pricing |
| Short selling fees | None | https://www.merrilledge.com/investing/margin-trading |
| Futures buying fees | Not available | https://www.merrilledge.com/pricing |
| Future options buying fees | Not available | https://www.merrilledge.com/pricing |
| Cryptocurrency fees | Not available | https://www.merrilledge.com/pricing |
| Fixed income fees | None | https://www.merrilledge.com/pricing |
| Mutual funds fees | None | https://www.merrilledge.com/pricing |
Trading App
Merrill Edge reviews for the quality of its trading app has been really interesting. Their trading app appears to be a favorite of most users as a larger percentage of reviews favored the trading app. This might be because of the many features you enjoy when trading on the app and the quality of its customer support.
The customer support includes a range of options that include a 24/7 phone line available for phone calls and a live chat option for online customer support. You can even be connected to a live broker if it is needed. The various trading options available to trade include the stock, mutual funds, bonds, options and international trades.
Another reason for Merrill Edge’s high ratings might be because of the quality educational material made available on the app to guide traders and investors on how to make trades.
Another unique approach of this trade platform is that unlike most other online brokers, Merrill edge doesn’t put emphasis on customization but on personalization. The implication of this is that it’s easier to find what customers are using repeatedly by using artificial intelligence programmed with the trading app.
This means that when using trading app, your trading becomes relatively straightforward and consistent. This approach encourages a long-term investing for investors seeking to take a long position while trading.
Final conclusions:
One of the major things this review has shown is that long term investors will enjoy trading on Merrill Edge, especially if such traders are already banking with the Bank of America.
New comers also can leverage on the robo-advisor guide to Investing and enjoy great offers on loans and discount on management fees as they begin to invest. Also, there are a variety of resources to explore and invest in that will meet up with whatever stage you are in as a trader.
All these makes it look like Merrill Edge is biased towards new investors who are just starting out and will want them to have a long investment relationship with it (Merrill Edge), which is a good strategy. This is probably why Merrill Edge has been able to retain most of its investors since inception.