With the major market downturns, yesterday and again today (4/3/25-4/4/25), many readers who have done brokerage bonuses are left worrying that their balances have dropped below the tiers necessary to keep the bonus.
For example, if they needed to hold $100k and within the 6 month period the market drops to $90k, do they lose the bonus? (Or course there are broader concerns here as well, we’re just focusing now on the bonus angles.)
I wanted to go through some of the top brokerage bonuses and see if they make it clear in the terms, but didn’t have the time. I figured it worth a post for people to discuss and hopefully let us know what they find.
I’ll just write some generalities and readers can feel free to discuss more specifics in the comments. I’ll try updating the post with more specifics as well.
- It’s very common for brokerage bonuses to stipulate clearly that market downturns will not affect your bonus. For example, if you meet $100k bonus tier and then the market goes down to $90k, you’ll keep the bonus.
- The caveat here is that you didn’t transfer out any funds. Example, if you met the $100k bonus tier and the market went up to $110k and you sold $10k. Sometime later the remaining $100k went down to $90k, you might have an issue.
- Some brokerage bonuses are a percentage, not a tier. Those bonuses are less risky since the worst you can lose is the percentage, it’s not a risk of jumping down a tier. But again, typically I believe you won’t lose anything provided that you have not moved investments out.
- A reader pointed out that the Wells Fargo $2,5000 bonus is less secure since that bonus is not really a brokerage bonus, it’s an assets bonus of cash or investments. And so I’m less certain that they’ll allow for market dips not to count. There are likely other similar bonuses which are like that as well. Again, I did not have a chance to comb through the terms on the specific bonuses.
- Another angle to consider is brokerages like Merrill and U.S. Bank who offer extra rewards and perks for customers who have $100k invested with them. If the market drops you might lose those perks. With Merrill you don’t lose it right away. I’m not sure how it works with U.S. Bank.
If you voted for Orange chimp, please look at yourself in the mirror and realize you are an IDIOT.
Something for people in the market for a brokerage bonus to keep in mind is that brokerages may be adjusting their tiers downward.
Which Brokerage has best bonus right now for about 200K worth of assets, if i want to move them ? I just utilized the Etrade promo. Looking for one more brokerage to move my assets to.
SoFi, 1% bonus if you hold to the end of the year.
Tastytrade, especially if you have a P2. $2k bonus for each $100k. You could net $4k if you have a P2.
US Bank Smartly terms say average account balance over past 90 days.
Question: I’m a moron about investing. For all my investment bonuses I’m doing.. I only purchased SGOV, that seemed like the “safest” option. Can SGOV go down in value, or will it?
I came so close to doing the FREX offer last month but was worried they were gonna crash the stock market intentionally so held back at last minute
Practically speaking, no, they are not subject to price risk. SGOV is composed entirely of US Treasurys with remaining maturities of 3 months or less, with an average duration of around 45 days. The duration is so short that any change in the yield curve isn’t going to materially affect value, one way or the other.
While what you wrote is correct,
Summer technically asked “Can SGOV go down in value”. I’m surprised that you didn’t answer that in a more pedantic way. 😉
Not something to worry about, it only fluctuates a little with its dividend cycle.
I think that you are being too harsh on yourself by writing “I’m a moron about investing.” Buffett, who is well-respected by most, famously said that he only invests in companies that he understands what they do. You seem to have the same mindset of Buffett so you are no moron! 😀
i write that because often times I get a reply like “you should spend years reading and researching about investing for yourself.” The problem is I lost half my vision a year ago permanently.. so I can’t read like I used to.. I need to read things in small bites like comments. usually people are more knowledgeable.. so I like to see what the wisdom of the crowd is sometimes. I call myself a moron instead of saying I’m visually impaired. I can type with my eyes closed though. I just can’t read with well with my eyes closed
I’m sorry to hear that you lost half your vision. ☹
Hopefully, my habit of making long comments hasn’t upset you too much!
Re: Wells Fargo:
“Bring $250,000 or more in new deposits to qualifying linked accounts by Day 45 and maintain at least a $250,000 balance through Day 90 after account upgrade or opening.”
What if you already had, say, $100k in a linked Wellstrade account, then chunked new money of $250k in for bonus, for initial balance of $350k. Couldn’t you have up to $100k in market losses and still — arguably — “maintain at least $250k balance through Day 90”?
That sounds right to me. But, I think it’s unlikely that you’d find data points of people who have done that; and if there’s a glitch that causes the bonus to not post automatically (or if their system was not coded in a way that matches the terms exactly), it might be harder to get them to manually post the bonus.
ROBINHOOD DP:
I checked this some time ago with Robinhood customer service. I am participating in their 3% bonus with a 5 year commitment period.
Bottom line: the balance at the time of transfer plus the value of the bonus is the key amount to keep in mind.
If the market goes up and your account rises above the key amount, then you are free to withdraw any amount above the key value without clawback.
If the market goes down and your account is lower than the key amount, you are still free to withdraw money. However, that will result in a proportional clawback of the bonus.
RH customer support is happy to provide you with your key amount.
I went into Robinhood and tried a transfer, and it warned me that amount would be below my transfer value and showed me the amount of the clawback. Very nice programming on their side! 🙂
Merrill is another inflow minus outflow for their calculation, market drops don’t matter, I am currently using this as an opportunity to tax loss harvest out of Moomoo, since they don’t do ACATS, and into Merrill.
Phew, I did a Merrill recently and just dropped below due to market downturn
Specifically,
For purposes of this offer, qualifying net new assets are calculated by adding total incoming assets or transfers (including cash, securities and/or margin debit balance transfers), and subtracting assets withdrawn or transferred out of the account within the preceding 24 weeks.
Re: the recent (continuing?) Tradeup ACAT offer —
“An account is said to have “maintained the value of the transferred assets” if it does not initiate any withdrawals or outgoing account transfers during the specified period. Transactions involving securities purchases and changes in asset valuation do not affect reward eligibility. However, withdrawals or account transfers will result in forfeiture of the reward.”
FWIW, re: the current SoFi ACAT offer —
“The Match is calculated based on the total net dollar amount of incoming settled transfers from another brokerage to an individual SoFi Active Invest during the Offer Period less any outflows or withdrawals (“Net Transfers”) and maintained through the end of December 31, 2025 (the “Holding Period”).
So market fluctuations after the inbound transfer is complete are NOT relevant. At least that’s the way I read it.