A New Way to Trade: Webull Pioneered Commission-Free Trading Help Smaller Investors

Webull was one of the sponsors for the Benzinga Global Small Cap Conference that took place on December 8-9, 2020. The information contained in this article in no way represents investment advice or opinion on the part of Benzinga or its writers and is intended for informational purposes only.

Webull is a zero-commission trading platform that allows investors to easily invest in stocks, options and cryptocurrencies. Webull was launched a couple of years ago and was one of the first brokerage platforms to offer free trades.

“When we launched in May 2018, the zero-commission philosophy was very different,” said Anthony Denier, CEO of Webull at the recent Benzinga Global Small Cap Conference. “There were a lot of naysayers.”

Like other app-based platforms, Webull offers free stocks for new clients when they open an account with at least $100. Additionally, all Webull brokerage account holders are able to send their own unique referral link to friends or family and earn more free stocks when they use that referral link to open up a brokerage account with $100 or more.

When Webull launched and offered free trades, the company was one of the first to break down that barrier. In the past, making trades could cost a customer as much as $7 per trade. The zero-commission philosophy allowed traders with smaller accounts to make more trades without having to worry about fees.

The rest of the investing world soon followed suit. “It took about a year and a half for the whole world to kind of see that light,” Denier observed. “The whole investing world went to zero commission in October 2019, and it was a total vindication of what we had been saying. This model can exist — we can provide the best quality executions for everyone, regardless of their account size.”

Beyond the free trades, Webull seeks to provide traders with smaller accounts and more access to data. In the past, only big financial institutions could afford financial information terminals. A Bloomberg machine could cost as much as $20,000.

“Some of our peers only care about accounts that have $25,000 or $50,000, which to me is a total shame,” Denier said. “Webull’s vision has always been to give everyone equal opportunities in the markets. You should have access to all the most powerful analytical tools available — that was our goal from day one.” He added, “We want to provide all the most powerful tools that we can to all of our users from a mobile device. That is where we believe the future lies.”

Denier also spoke about the added increase of retail investing that was correlated with COVID-19. He said because more people were at home and had more time in their schedules, they used some of that time to invest.

“All brokerages had a nice tailwind with COVID. People had extra time on their hands because they didn’t have to commute — idle time makes someone want to be busy,” Denier said. “The pandemic gave a lot of people the opportunity to invest.”