Public Investing 2024 Review

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Public Investing is best for active traders who want to invest in stocks, ETFs, options, alternative assets, and cryptocurrencies. The use of community and transparency are huge part of what makes Public Invest unique. Free research, commission-free trades, and portfolio screen sweeten the pot. The app also offers several educational resources (including live events), so it could be useful for beginners who want to jumpstart their investment journey.

About Public Investing

Public Investing is a transparent, innovative online social investing platform offering a wide range of investable securities and asset allocation plans. Public is one of the most noteworthy commission-free investing apps to check out in 2024. 

The online brokerage mainly offers self-directed investing options best suited for active investors. But there are automated investing features and advisor-assisted portfolio options that may appeal to more hands-off individuals. 

In addition to offering a $0 minimum requirement, Public allows you to filter its investment selection to see the securities that best align with your preferences. You can make informed decisions based on how the market moves or the actions of other traders and/or public figures.

The online brokerage’s social feed offers you a way to follow different Public Investing members to see what and how they’re investing. That way, you can share your investment knowledge with other users. You can also create chat groups with other investors, participate in investing events, and listen to live conversations through the app.

Investors can unlock even more worthwhile features, like no-fee extended trading hours and additional portfolio management tools with Public Premium. And unlock other premium account offers with some of the best online brokerages, Public Premium doesn’t require a high account minimum to unlock. Instead, there’s a $10 monthly charge. 

In this social investing platforms review, we’ll explore what Public.com has to offer investors in 2024. 

Is Public Investing Right for You?

Both experienced traders and beginners could benefit from Public’s large selection of trading tools, real-time data, custom portfolios, and transparent fee structure.  While Public is quite suitable for active traders who want to take their investments into their own hands, it’s arguably an even better fit for those who can benefit from the community-like investing features it provides. 

However, Public doesn’t offer a robo-advisor platform for passive investors. Its account options are also limited, as you can’t open a retirement-savings, education savings, or custodial accounts through Public.com. 

Public Pros and Cons

Public Investing Pros

• Low-cost trading and account options
• Multiple investment options (crypto, ETFs, stocks, treasury bills, royalties, etc.)
• Low-cost options trading
• Community and social trading features
• Educational resources
• Pre-built Investment Plans

Public Investing Cons

• Doesn’t offer day trading for stocks
• Crypto investing is through a third-party platform
• No mutual funds

Is Public.com Trustworthy?

The Better Business Bureau gives Public.com an A+ rating. These ratings generally reflect the bureau’s opinion of how well a company interacts with its customers. It hasn’t racked up any major lawsuits over the past few years.

When evaluating companies, the bureau also considers things like type of business, time in business, licensing and government actions, and advertising issues. However, it’s important to note that its ratings don’t guarantee whether a platform will be reliable or perform well. 

Public.com isn’t involved in any major controversies or lawsuits.

Ways to Invest with Public

Stock and ETFs

Investors get access to more than 9,000 stocks and ETFs, as well as fractional shares trading on Public Investing. Moreover, Public offers over 300 over-the-counter (OTC) stocks that majorly focus on large-cap international companies. 

Its “Investing Themes” feature allows you to toggle your portfolio according to your interests. The “Top Movers” tool lets you view which stocks are experiencing the highest or lowest movement during each day, and its “Stock Trends” feature compares the most popular investments to the least popular ones. 

Other features include extended-hours trading for stocks, automatically reinvested dividends, and a comparison stock analysis tool called Compare. 

Options Trading on Public

Low-cost options trading on Public is one of the investment app’s strongest features. Rather than paying a per-trade fee on options contracts, Public promises to pay you 50% of the options revenue to reduce transaction costs. Moreover, options trades don’t charge fees on commissions or contracts. 

With Public you access long calls, long puts, and covered calls. The platform plans to offer more options and strategies soon. 

Public provides investors with a suite of technical analysis tools, multi-leg options strategies with a comprehensive strategy builder, options research, asset tracking features, and an Options Hub to track earnings dates and trading opportunities. 

Bonds and Treasury Bills

Public wants to make bond investing just as simple as investing in stocks and ETFs. The investment app offers thousands of corporate and Treasury bonds, with municipal bonds coming soon.

The intuitive bond search filters offer a more accessible way for investors to sort through bonds based on popularity, high yields, term lengths, and more. Corporate bonds also come with their own information pages on individual businesses’ free cash flow, debt-to-equity-ratio, overall business health, and other key financial metrics. 

You can also invest in treasury bills (aka T bills). These are generally low-risk, short-term investments. Public’s offers a Treasury Account with a 5.2% yield and no account minimum. Plus, with a high-yield savings treasury account, investors don’t have to pay state or local taxes on the income generated from the treasury bills. 

Public Investment Plans

Public’s Investment Plans are different collections of automated, pre-defined portfolios that utilize dollar-cost averaging as a means to mitigate risk in your investment portfolio. Portfolios differ based on asset allocations, risk tolerances, and investment styles. 

Examples of Public.com Investment Plans include:

• Core Plans: Issuer-model portfolios that align with your risk tolerance (conservative, moderate, aggressive)
• Bonds Plans: Focused on exposure to the bond market and protecting investors against inflation, this plan is balanced based on your income.
• Theme Plans: Portfolios that trade assets based on certain market themes and trends, such as AI or the cannabis industry. 
• Geographic Region Plans: Assets diversified across geographic regions, including exposure from global markets. 
• Personalized Plan: Investors can set up their own portfolio asset allocations up to 20 stocks, ETFs, and/or crypto-assets (must be a Public Premium user).

All pre-built Investment Plans can be adjusted in 1% increments once you sign up with a Plan. Users can also evenly split their funds across all assets in their portfolios. 

Crypto-Account

Public.com partnered with Bakkt Crypto, a licensed virtual currency company and licensed money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Although you can access and manage your crypto account through Public.com, remember that you’re technically opening an account with Bakkt Crypto, so your crypto account will be separate from your Public brokerage account. 

Cryptocurrency accounts can hold and trade bitcoin, ether, dogecoin, and more. You can set up automatic routine trades for either individual tokens or personalized crypto combinations. Recurring investments can be scheduled on a daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis.

Public provides a multitude of helpful investing and crypto-related content. This includes stats, news, live crypto analysis, and more. 

Alternative Assets

Public recently introduced alternative assets to its platform. This now gives its users access to contemporary art, NFTs, collectibles, and more. In addition, the platform has vetted each available investment, and it takes away a lot of the legwork in maintaining each asset by managing things like storage, authentication, and more. 

This new offering makes diversification much easier since you’ll ultimately have your fair pick of stocks, ETFs, crypto, and alternative assets.

Public Premium

A Public Premium account offers all the same benefits and trading features of a regular Public brokerage account, but with additional enhanced trading features like custom Investment Plans, beta access to new features, VIP account management for trades and transfers. 

You can also get a complete breakdown of your asset allocation in comparison with Morningstar benchmarks, real-time customer price alerts, weekly market breakdowns, an upgraded stock and ETF dashboard, and exclusive audio content. 

Public Fees

A standard Public brokerage account has no minimum requirement and no management fees. A Public’s Premium account costs $10 per month. But folks with at least $20,000 deposited into their account when they sign up for a standard account unlock complimentary Premium access. 

You’ll lose complimentary Premium access if your account ever goes below $15,000. 

Public Premium members are exempt from paying nominal fees based on the assets in their investment plans. Premium members also get free extended trading hours and OTC trades ($2.99 per trade for non-Premium members). 

Bakkt Crypto charges a fee of 1.25% of the total crypto order amount when you add cryptocurrencies to your Investment Plan. Also, alternative assets charge commission fees of 2.5% per transaction. Treasury accounts charge 0.05% per month based on your Treasury account balance. 

Accounts with no activity in the last 6 months, or balances of under $70 are subject to a $3.99 monthly inactivity fee.

Public Investing Alternatives

Public Investing vs. M1 Finance

Public and M1 Finance both offer stocks, ETFs and crypto. But the two brokerages differ when it comes to fees, investment options, trading features, and tools. 

Public Investing is best suited for investors interested in buying and selling alternative investments (like wine and art), Treasury bills, royalties, and bonds. It’s also better for trading options, plus fractional shares trading on Public Investing. 

Although M1 Finance has a higher minimum requirement ($100 minimum and $500 required to open a retirement account), it’s an overall better option for investors looking for a wider range of account types and goal-planning features. Available assets through M1 Finance include stocks, mutual funds, REITs, ESG investing options, ETFs, private equity, and crypto.

M1 Finance review

Public vs. Tornado

Public and Tornado both offer a vast selection of stocks and ETFs. Both investment platforms are great choices for those who value educational resources, community investing, and social media-style features.

Tornado only offers stocks, ETFs, and American Depositary Receipts (ADRs). Tornado is a better option for beginners as it launched its Learn and Earn program. This program allows investors to complete educational modules on topics like economics and investing while earning monetary rewards. 

Public is the best choice if you want to access a larger selection of investment options and advanced trading features. 

Why You Should Trust Us: How We Reviewed Public

We examined Public using Personal Finance Insider’s rating methodology for investing platforms to compare pricing, account flexibility, ethics, security, and overall customer experience when reviewing investing platforms. Platforms are given a rating between 0 and 5. 

Investing platforms generally offer multiple assets, trading tools, fees, and other resources. Some investing platforms are better for more advanced investors or active investors, while others may better suit beginner investors and passive investors. Public was evaluated with a focus on how it performed in each category.

Business Insider’s Overall Public Investing Rating

Public.com — Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)