Re:Acorns – Automatically Invest Your Spare Change
by jliptzin on Friday November 14, 2014 @12:08AM
(#8605896)
The fees are too high. I get that they're much lower compared to what a hedge fund might charge, or even the run of the mill mutual fund, but consider this:
That means that at the high end of Acorn's fee structure, the average investor is paying almost 20% of his investment earnings on Acorn management fees. That's high!
Considering the platform is all automated (according to Acorn), I'm not sure what part of Acorn's system demands such fees, as really all it's doing is shifting funds around through a set of simple rules (unless I'm not understanding completely?)
What I'd really like to see is an open source passive investing platform which you can hook up to your bank and your broker's API (if both of those even exist), with a config file where you state your preferred portfolio breakdown (i.e. s&p 10%, bonds 10%, stock XYZ 5%, gold 10%, euro 20%) along with specifying frequency and amount of transfers from bank -> brokerage account, which would handle all buying and selling and periodic rebalancing. I wouldn't be surprised if some brokers already offer something similar and with no extra fees on top of normal trade fees.
The average investor over the previous 10 years earned a 2.6% net annualized return (http://www.forbes.com/sites/advisor/2014/04/24/why-the-avera...). The performance actually gets worse over longer timeframes.
That means that at the high end of Acorn's fee structure, the average investor is paying almost 20% of his investment earnings on Acorn management fees. That's high!
Considering the platform is all automated (according to Acorn), I'm not sure what part of Acorn's system demands such fees, as really all it's doing is shifting funds around through a set of simple rules (unless I'm not understanding completely?)
What I'd really like to see is an open source passive investing platform which you can hook up to your bank and your broker's API (if both of those even exist), with a config file where you state your preferred portfolio breakdown (i.e. s&p 10%, bonds 10%, stock XYZ 5%, gold 10%, euro 20%) along with specifying frequency and amount of transfers from bank -> brokerage account, which would handle all buying and selling and periodic rebalancing. I wouldn't be surprised if some brokers already offer something similar and with no extra fees on top of normal trade fees.