Merrill Edge Review

Merrill Edge and its corporate parent, Bank of America, make a strong case to be your cradle-to-grave financial services partner. Other than Red Bull-fueled day trading, this broker does almost everything well and some tools are game changers.

Overall summary

Merrill Edge is a top-rated broker on the following guides

• Best for Banking
• Best Trading Apps
• Best Stock Brokers
• Best for Beginners
• Best for Options
• Best for IRAs
• Best for High Net Worth

Investment options

Merrill Edge provides ample investment choices and the available services of a megabank. On offer are stocks, ETFs, options, mutual funds and bonds. Fractional shares, paper trading, futures, forex, and cryptos are not available.

To get the full capabilities of Merrill Edge, plan on e-signing a few documents and seeing a ton of disclosure boilerplate. Other brokers demand less paperwork to accomplish the same tasks. It’s not overwhelming, but it’s noticeable.

Investment guidance: In addition to do-it-yourself investing, Merrill Edge and its corporate parent, Bank of America, offer a full range of investment guidance solutions.

For those looking for set-and-forget investing, Merrill offers automated (robo) portfolio management with only a $1,000 minimum.

Limited advisory services with an advisor ($20,000 minimum investment) are also available through its Guided Investing program. Guided Investing has what I think is a high annual base fee of 0.85%, but there are introductory offers and discounts based on your Preferred Rewards tier (see below). Guided Investing isn’t intended for clients with advanced planning needs.

High net worth clients of Bank of America and its investing divisions are eligible for curated experiences, lower fees and rates, and, of course, higher priority service. Money doesn’t solve all problems, but the more you have, the less time you’ll spend listening to hold music on your phone.

Cryptocurrency: Merrill Edge does not offer cryptocurrency. You will have to sign up with a crypto exchange to trade popular tokens such as Bitcoin, Ethereum or Dogecoin.

Retirement services: Merrill offers traditional, Roth and rollover IRAs, and placed among the best IRA accounts for 2024.

Commissions and fees

Merrill Edge, like other discount brokers, provides customers unlimited free stock trading ($0) and exchange-traded fund (ETF) trading. Options trades cost $0.65 per contract, a common price among top-tier brokers. Broker-assisted trades are a reasonable $19.95.

Margin rates: We ask every broker that we review for their current margin rates. The firm keeps it vague, saying that a client’s margin rate depends on the relationship. I looked on the site. I called in to telephone support. No dice. No one at Merrill would give me specific numbers to share with potential clients.

Penny stocks: Merrill Edge does not typically allow trading of OTC stocks with market caps of $300 million or less and are priced below $5 per share, though I was told there are exceptions. In practice, those restrictions mean that there is essentially no penny stock trading.

Preferred Rewards: Merrill’s rewards system makes for a top-notch combination of banking and brokerage, and it's a perennial top pick here at StockBrokers.com for best bank brokerages. To qualify for the base tier, Gold, customers must maintain a three-month average combined balance in their bank and brokerage accounts of at least $20,000. Benefits through the Preferred Rewards program include money market savings interest-rate boosts, credit card bonuses, investment discounts and more.

Mobile trading apps

Merrill Edge's mobile app is easy to use, great for research and exceeds the industry standard experience. For existing Bank of America customers, the universal account access and functionality make the app an easy winner.

Ease of use: Apple Face ID and fingerprint login, coupled with a cleanly designed dashboard, makes it very easy to jump in and check in on your portfolio. Research is excellent for stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds, thanks to the inclusion of Stock Story and Fund Story, though sometimes pages are slow to load.

Charting: Charting is comprehensive and includes a variety of customizations. The default view is attractive, but I found navigating and customizing mobile charts to be awkward. Scrolling and zooming in and out was frustrating, because my finger movements never accomplished what I expected. There are 34 optional technical indicators.

Merrill Edge Mobile app gallery

The Stock Story feature on the Merrill Edge mobile app. Press play for a demo.

Other trading platforms and tools

Merrill Edge offers everyday investors access to everything they need (and more) to manage an investment portfolio through the Merrill Edge website. For active traders, Merrill Edge offers its MarketPro desktop trading platform, which is feature-rich but not suitable for day trading.

Dynamic Insights: Merrill Edge’s AI powered account dashboard, called Dynamic Insights, again won our industry award for No. 1 Client Dashboard. Dynamic Insights pulls all your data into one spot and uses AI to personalize it, making it the ultimate launching pad for your Merrill Edge account.

After opening Dynamic Insights, you will find a high-level summary of your brokerage and bank accounts. Below that, realized gains and losses, portfolio performance against the market, holdings insights including news events, tax events, movers, and ratings changes, are all included. A high-level market overview for the day is also present.

Trading tools: MarketPro is built for active traders and has a variety of bells and whistles. Highlights include close to 300 optional columns for watch lists, easy-to-use charting, automated technical analysis through Trading Central (Recognia), and numerous options tools, including the idea generation tool OptionsPlay.

On the downside, MarketPro has three drawbacks that might deter day traders. First, there are no one-click buy and sell buttons for speedy order entry, nor is there an option to disable the order confirmation window. Second, direct market routing or advanced order types, such as conditional orders, are not supported. And, third, some of the widgets felt as if they were taking forever to load.

Ironically, for something that’s positioned as a trading platform, I was happiest using MarketPro for fundamentally driven, long-term stock ideas. There’s a phenomenally powerful screener, ample stock data and research, an economic calendar, and good portfolio analysis.

User experience

Merrill Edge’s design is among the best out of the brokers I review. It’s easy on the eyes and easy to navigate. Users suffering from icon and emoji overload will find a welcome refuge here. Everything is clearly labeled, there’s plenty of space, and the visual elements are appealing but not overdone. The platforms are rich with insights, data and handy explanations. Professional investment advisors would do well to look at Merrill’s Portfolio, Stock and Fund Stories and ask themselves if they do as good a job informing their clients as the job Edge does for its customers.

Merrill presents info in bite-sized chunks that frequently come with explanations and context. The five or 10 minutes it takes to read through a Portfolio Story is time well spent. Mine alerted me to which stocks and sectors are dominating my portfolio, which led me to thinking about how I could diversify further. Too many brokers emphasize short-term thinking through “what’s hot today” lists and charts. Merrill Edge has those lists too, but also encourages you to invest responsibly.

On the downside, I found Merrill Edge’s customer service to be maddening. Though the broker scored well in our third-party customer service testing, in my experience, the reps were ill-equipped to answer moderately complex questions. For example, a question about how to reset MarketPro, Merrill Edge’s browser trading platform, to its “factory default” setting led to extensive hold times, repeat calls, referrals to the wrong people (including to a third-party vendor) and ultimately filing a support ticket. This wasn’t an isolated occurrence. Instead of getting frustrated, I use my calls to Merrill’s support line as opportunities to work on being a kinder, more patient human being.

Research

Merrill Edge offers research for stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds that will satisfy the pickiest of investors. Merrill is also quite strong in environmental, social, and governance investing, or ESG.

Stock research: Merrill Edge offers several unique research tools found nowhere else, including Stock Story, Portfolio Story and Idea Builder. Also included are excellent third-party research integrations, including Trefis (company valuations), Trading Central (Recognia) for automated technical analysis, and 43 variables from MSCI ESG ratings, among others.

ETFs and mutual funds research: Merrill Edge is unique in that it uses both Morningstar and Lipper as its primary research providers. Thanks to this dual offering, Merrill Edge's ETF and mutual funds research is extremely thorough. Fund Story presents convenient, bite-sized chunks of relevant mutual fund info.

Bonds research: While the breadth of fixed income research at Merrill Edge isn’t quite as robust as at Fidelity, I found the fixed income reports from B of A Global Research to be high quality with in-depth coverage of news and fundamental analysis of the bond markets.

Education

Learning about investing and retirement is a pleasant experience at Merrill Edge, thanks to the excellent organization, high quality, and the breadth of topics covered. If you want to test your knowledge, there are quizzes. Unlike most brokers, Merrill’s education menu is available when you are logged in. Other brokers make education publicly available to get site traffic, which is inconvenient for logged-in clients who must log out to read content when it might matter the most.

Learning center: Resources in Merrill Edge’s Investor Education section feature an assortment of articles and online courses licensed from Morningstar that can be searched according to topic or your level of investing experience. They inform, but they won’t keep you on the edge of your seat, either.

Investing basics: Merrill offers an excellent set of curated webinars on different themes, including ETFs, technical analysis and options trading. The on-demand videos can be searched through topic and/or difficulty level.

Life events education: Through Merrill Edge's Guidance and Retirement Center, customers can conduct goal planning for life events, use calculators to determine areas for improvement, read educational articles, watch videos, schedule one-on-one appointments, and more.

Podcasts: It’s worth mentioning that Merrill offers audio segments. The Merrill Perspective podcast discusses themes and current news topics. Though it’s driven by current events, it educates at the same time. We like it.

Customer service

To score Customer Service, StockBrokers.com partners with customer experience research firm Confero to conduct phone tests from locations throughout the United States. For this year's testing, 135 customer service tests were conducted over six weeks, with wait times logged for each call.

Customer service representatives were asked for assistance or details for prospective customers in several areas of broker services, including account opening, trading tools, apps, rollovers, active trading, and more. Here are the results for Merrill Edge.

• Average Connection Time: <1 minute
• Average Net Promoter Score: 9.1 / 10
• Average Professionalism Score: 9.4 / 10
• Overall Score: 9.3 / 10
• Ranking: 2nd of 13 brokers

Banking services

Merrill Edge is part of Bank of America, which offers a full suite of personal banking products, including savings accounts, checking accounts and credit cards. When it comes to banking and brokerage, Merrill Edge takes the crown thanks to seamless universal account management and its Preferred Rewards program.

Online banking services with Bank of America include $250,000 in FDIC-insured account protection. I’ve found moving back and forth between bank and brokerage accounts to be easy and efficient.

Preferred Deposit: For a minimum initial deposit of $100,000, the Preferred Deposit account at Merrill Edge allows you to earn variable interest on your cash. Merrill Edge, acting as your agent, deposits these funds into a Bank of America account. Funds must be manually deposited in increments of at least $1,000 and must be manually withdrawn back into your Merrill account for trading (cash will not be automatically withdrawn to cover trades or margin in your Merrill account). However, the interest rate for the Preferred Deposit is typically much higher than the cash sweep option, with rates as of June 28, 2024, at 4.71% for Preferred Deposit compared to 0.01% for cash sweep accounts with balances under $1 million.

Final thoughts

Overall, Merrill Edge offers customers a superb, well-rounded offering. Investors will appreciate Merrill Edge's $0 trades, robust research and reliable customer service. Similarly, Bank of America customers will discover that Merrill Edge is an excellent extension of the Bank of America brand.

Here are our top findings on Merrill Edge for 2024:

1. Proprietary tools such as Stock Story and Portfolio Story alongside robust educational resources make Merrill Edge is a standout for research, beginners and goal-focused investors.
2. Merrill Edge remains our top pick for investors looking to manage banking and brokerage under one roof.
3. While Merrill Edge offers a feature-rich trading platform (MarketPro), it didn't impress us enough to make our top picks lists for day trading. It’s great for fundamental research.

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What's the difference between Merrill Lynch and Merrill Edge?

Merrill Lynch is not the same as Merrill Edge, but they do share many resources and both are part of Bank of America. Merrill Lynch is a traditional full-service broker with financial advisors that serve affluent and emerging affluent investors. Merrill Lynch brokers are encouraged to focus on building and retaining relationships with wealthy clients. Merrill Edge is a discount online broker that has no account minimum and $0 commission stock and ETF trades while still providing some access to Merrill Lynch’s research and tools. Both are owned by Bank of America.

Can I trust Merrill Edge?

Yes, you can trust Merrill Edge. The broker is a subsidiary of Bank of America and the assets in your account are insured against insolvency (not market losses) from the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, or SIPC; the FDIC (bank cash deposits only); and Lloyd’s of London.

Is Merrill Edge good for beginners?

Merrill Edge is a top platform for beginner investors. It placed in our top 5 brokers for this category in our 2024 Annual Awards. Its Stock Story, Fund Story, and Portfolio Story features make investing a piece of cake. The downsides are missing out on fractional shares and paper portfolios.

How much money do you need to open a Merrill Edge account?

There is no minimum to open a Merrill Edge account. Certain services do require a minimum account balance. The robo-advisor portfolio management requires a $1,000 investment, and fully managed advisory services with an advisor carries a $20,000 minimum.

About Merrill Edge

Launched in 2010 and headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Merrill Edge is the self-directed trading arm of Bank of America. Merrill Edge’s origins go all the way back to discount broker Quick & Reilly. Merrill Edge was originally created by Merrill Lynch, which became a subsidiary of Bank of America in 2008.

Merrill Edge 2024 Results

For the StockBrokers.com 2024 Annual Awards, announced on Jan. 23, 2024, all U.S. equity brokers we reviewed were assessed on over 200 different variables across eight areas: Commissions & Fees, Investment Options, Platforms & Tools, Research, Mobile Trading, Education, Ease of Use, and Overall.

StockBrokers.com also presented “Best in Class” awards to brokers for additional categories Beginners, Options Trading, Futures Trading, Day Trading, IRA Accounts, Investor Community, Penny Stock Trading, Bank Brokerage, High Net Worth Investors, and Customer Service. A “Best in Class” designation means finishing in the top five brokers for that category.

For more information, see how we test.

Category awards

Industry awards

We've been reviewing Merrill Edge longer than anyone else on the internet. Every year since 2011 we've spent hundreds of hours collecting data, testing platforms, and writing reviews. Here's how Merrill Edge has fared over the years.

StockBrokers.com Review Methodology

Our mission at StockBrokers.com is simple: provide thorough and unbiased reviews of online brokers, based on an extraordinary level of hands-on testing and data collection. Our ratings and awards are based on this data and our in-house experts’ deep authority in the field; brokers cannot pay for preferential treatment. Here’s more about trustworthiness at StockBrokers.com.

Our research team conducts thorough testing on a wide range of features, products, services, and tools for U.S. investors, collecting and validating thousands of data points in the process; this makes StockBrokers.com home to the largest independent database on the web covering the online broker industry. We test all available trading platforms for each broker and evaluate them based on a host of data-driven variables.

As part of our process, all brokers had the annual opportunity to provide updates and key milestones and complete an in-depth data profile, which we hand-checked for accuracy. Brokers also were offered the opportunity to provide executive time for an annual update meeting.

Our rigorous data validation process yields an error rate of less than .001% each year, providing site visitors quality data they can trust. Learn more about how we test or about StockBrokers.com.

Merrill Edge fees and features data

The data collection efforts at StockBrokers.com are unmatched in the industry. The following tables show a deeper dive into the offerings available at this broker. You can also compare its offerings side-by-side with those of other brokers using our Comparison Tool.

In addition to meticulous annual data collection by our in-house analyst, every broker that participates in our review is afforded the opportunity to complete an in-depth data profile. We then audit each data point to ensure its accuracy.

Trading fees

Account fees

Margin rates

Investment options

Order types

Beginners

Stock trading apps

Stock app features

Stock app charting

Trading platforms overview

Trading platform stock chart features

Day trading features

Investment research overview

Stock research features

ETF research features

Mutual fund research features

Options trading overview

Banking features

Customer service options

References

Merrill Edge's Wikipedia

About the Editorial Team