Mint.com, you finally — finally — provided a relevant offer that piqued my interest. Instead of offering ways to deal with the debt-that-i-do-not-have, you shared an investing company I had not heard of yet — Motif.com, and enticed me with an offer for $150 to sign up, and sign up I did.
The general concept of Motifs is that, much like ETFs, they provide you the opportunity to diversify in a specific industry without buying a ton of individual stocks. But instead of being limited to existing ETF funds, they offer “Motifs” — themes with a group of stocks that they recommend looking into for investing. You can also customize the Motif so you can make it more to your liking and still pay the same fee for buying the diversified batch of stocks. Instead of boring ETF themes they can be very niche, such as the high-performing “fracking” theme (see screenshot below), yet enable you to diversify within this motif for a $9.95 trade fee. That’s quite high compared to the cost to buy an ETF at Vanguard or even Sharebuilder (where I enjoy autotrades for $3.95 to buy), but it does provide some interesting means to go after short-term growth. Continue reading Motif Investing vs ETFs: Digital Finance Tech