Plynk is another investment app similar to Robinhood, Wealthfront, and Webull. In our Plynk reviews we take a look with a Plynk investment app review to determine is Plynk a scam, is Plynk legit, and is Plynk worth it.
As of today, Plynk offers a $20 deposit bonus and a $22 matching bonus for up to $42 in bonus cash upon deposit of $22. Let’s take a deeper look at the Plynk investing app.
What Is Plynk?
What is Plynk anyway? Plynk is another entry into the so-called world of fintech, or financial technology. With most standard online brokers like Schwab and Fidelity already offering free stock trades, apps like Plynk need to diversify further than just being free. Plynk’s attempt at individuality is that Plynk allows free stock purchases, or fractional share purchases with as little as $1. Then, there is a self-guided tool called Plynk Explore that will suggest investments based on the questions you answer. Finally, Plynk claims to be the most user-friendly interface by, among other things, “eliminating jargon.” There is also a Learn Plynk section that appears to be a bunch of blog posts about investing concepts.
How Does Plynk Work?
Like other micro-invest apps Robinhood, Webull, Stash, and Public, Plynk works by having you attach your Plynk brokerage account to your checking account. This allows you to transfer money back and forth with the app. Once you have money in the account, you choose your investment, how much you want to invest, and what type of trade. Plynk then executes the order and credits your account with stock shares.
As with all micro-investing apps, Plynk allows the purchase of fractional shares, or slices of a full share. So, if you want to buy Intel trading at $50 per share, but you only want to invest $5 in INTC, then Plynk will credit your account with 1/10 of a share of Intel. You will receive 1/10th of the dividend payments. This setup is similar for Plynk vs Robinhood.
Of course, there is no such thing as 1/10th of a share of Intel, so Plynk must own 1 whole share of Intel and then just keep track of the fractions their users invest in as an accounting exercise. As such, you can only buy the stocks that Plynk allows. This is a wide range of stocks, but not all.
How Does Plynk Explore Work?
What investment methodology does Plynk Explore use? Does Plynk Explore suggest good investments? Our Plynk invest reviews dug into the fine print to find out.
The first question for Plynk investing is about your risk tolerance. If you answer Conservative, then your results are limited to mutual funds and ETFs (no stocks) that have a risk rating of 1-3 from Morningstar.
If you answer Moderate, then you get mutual funds and ETFs that have a 4-6 rating from Morningstar, or stocks that are considered Moderate risk based on an algorithm based on annual average beta, large market capitalizations, and 3 or higher Starmine Equity Summary Score.
If you answer aggressive, then you get Morningstar 7-10 ratings, and stocks with higher risk ratings.
Then you answer what kind of stocks you would be into like Big Data, FinTech, Robotics, and some others.
Finally, the algorithm sorts your selections using Equity Summary Score, Morningstar Overall Star Rating, three-year average annual returns, and/or three-year cumulative returns. You get a top three in each category, mutual funds, ETFs and stocks.
Is Plynk a Scam?
Plynk is not a scam. It is a registered broker dealer as a service of Digital Brokerage Service, which is a member of FINRA and SPIC.
Plynk is limited to a regular brokerage account. No IRAs or other account types it looks like.
What is Plynk catch?
Unlike the typical micro-investing apps, Plynk charges you money. That’s right. Investing isn’t always free. After a three-month trial period, you will start paying a $2 per month subscription fee to Plynk. Is that a lot? Well, it sure depends on how much you are investing and using Plynk. If you took advantage of the highlighted “Invest as little as $1” you would be at negative $1 as soon as your trial period ended.
Another way to look at Plynk cost is a percentage. If you have $20 invested with Plynk, then you are paying a 10% monthly fee (approximately equal to 120% annual fee) which is outrageous. If you have $1,000 invested with Plynk then you are paying a 0.1% fee, which is potentially reasonable.
Overall Plynk Reviews
If you were investing more, or making a lot of transactions, then the $2 per month might be worth it, but it is hard to see how. You can basically do everything that you can do on Plynk on other micro-investing apps, without the $2 per month charge. I guess if you like the whole Plynk Explore thing, then the $2 a month might be worth it.
The reality is that for almost any situation, you would be better off going with one of the free micro-investing apps like Webull, Stash, Wallethub or Robinhood.
2 Stars out of 5 stars.
Plynk $20 Bonus and $22 Matching Bonus
As of this Plynk reviews publication, Plynk is offering a $20 deposit bonus. In other words, you get the Plynk sign up bonus of $20 after you open an account AND after you deposit any amount of money. In addition, Plynk will match your deposit, up to $22. So, for maximum Plynk bonus, you would want to deposit $22 into your Plynk account, triggering both the $20 deposit bonus and the full $22 matching bonus.
The end result would be $64 in your Plynk account in exchange for a $22 deposit. That’s almost a 300% return on your money immediately.
The smart move would be to withdraw and close your account after the three-month free trial period is over to avoid the $2 monthly charge.
Author
By Brian Nelson – Mr. Nelson is a former Certified Financial Planner, or CFP with several years’ experience as a financial advisor. Although Mr. Nelson is no longer a licensed financial planner, he writes for numerous financial publications and firms. You can reach Mr. Nelson via his professional freelance writing business, Arctic Llama.
This article is an informational review only. It is not a recommendation to buy or sell securities. As of the date of publication, Mr. Nelson owned shares in Intel, but no other securities mentioned. This may change at any time without notice.
You censored my post?!? Oh we’ll see about that
That’s my real email and name
Think about that
I didn’t censor anything. To avoid trolls every comment must be approved manually. I was not online between Christmas and New Year’s. Hope you are able to get it sorted with them.
I signed up with Plynk expecting a $10 bonus and they have my money matched. They never matched anything and then asked her to trade. They sent me an email saying that they reserve the right to close accounts for any reason and that my money was gone then when I responded to them and asked for my money back, they told me to have my bank canceled the direct payment, however you can’t do that after you’ve already made two trades with the money look at the reviews on the App Store. They have stolen thousands.
I’m currently in the process of working with a guy who had $7000 stolen from him by them, and we’re working with some friends of mine who I connected with back in my 4chan days.. they have already promised to track down every single person at that company and we’ll see how they like it