MarketRiders Review – A Digital Portfolio Advisor

About MarketRiders

MarketRiders is a long-term investment platform designed to help investors manage their money for retirement. Essentially, MarketRiders acts like an automated investment advisor, offering portfolio options based on your willingness to take on risk and your desired rate of return.

MarketRiders gives you more control than other robo-advisors while still making it easy to build a diversified portfolio. That said, investors with basic financial knowledge could accomplish much of the same portfolio diversification on their own using the tools provided with most IRA and 401(k) brokerage accounts.

So, is MarketRiders right for you? Keep reading our MarketRiders review to find out.

Pricing Options

MarketRiders costs $14.95 per month or $149.95 per year for access to the platform.

To put that annual fee in perspective, it’s 1.5% of a $10,000 portfolio. So, MarketRiders is best if you have at least $25,000 in your portfolio. Otherwise, you’ll likely end up spending more on MarketRiders than you might on commissions at your brokerage.

MarketRiders Features

Portfolio Design

The first thing that you do when starting out with MarketRiders is to fill out a basic questionnaire about your risk tolerance and investing goals. Based on this information, the MarketRiders algorithm will suggest a basic way to slice up your portfolio into different investment types.

Once your diversification strategy is set, MarketRiders will automatically generate a list of stocks, bonds, ETFs, and other assets for you to invest in. The list comes complete with the amount that you should invest in each asset.

You can specify your broker during this process, which allows MarketRiders to find commission-free ETFs so you can avoid unnecessary fees. The software displays the total cost of commissions for your portfolio at the bottom of the asset list. MarketRiders can currently make specific recommendations for Schwab, SogoTrade, TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, and Vanguard. You can use MarketRiders with any other brokerage, but it may suggest ETFs that aren’t commission-free.

More advanced investors can customize their portfolio allocation. In this case, MarketRiders will create a basic portfolio for you, and then you can manually change the percentage of your portfolio that you would like to dedicate to different asset classes. When you’re finished, you’ll get an updated list of suggested assets and the amount of each to purchase to build your own portfolio.

MarketRiders does not integrate with any brokerage. So, you’ll need to purchase the suggested bonds, ETFs, and stocks directly from your broker. This is a do-it-yourself service, in contrast to more managed services like Betterment and Wealthfront that invest your money automatically.

Investment Management

Once you create a portfolio within MarketRiders, the platform offers some relatively basic tools for managing it. If you want to add or withdraw money to or from your portfolio, MarketRiders’ calculators will let you know how to do so without disrupting the balance of your diversification. Alternatively, if your appetite for risk or investment goals change, MarketRiders will help you rebalance your investments to reflect those changes.

Since MarketRiders automatically tracks your portfolio, the software will alert you if your portfolio becomes significantly unbalanced from your target diversification. This could happen because of high growth in one asset class of your portfolio and underperformance in another asset class. You can customize whether MarketRiders should alert you about rebalancing when your portfolio is only slightly or highly out of balance.

You also have the option to set up multiple portfolios with different goals. Each of these portfolios can be managed individually, which is nice if you have one portfolio for retirement and another for alternative financial goals like paying for your kids’ college. MarketRiders does not make suggestions about the best way to use or balance your money across multiple portfolios.

Performance Monitoring

While MarketRiders cannot buy or sell assets on your behalf, you can monitor the performance of your portfolio through the software. Nearly all of the performance analysis tools within MarketRiders are available from your broker or can be made with a simple Excel spreadsheet. One minor benefit to MarketRiders is that you can break down performance by asset classes rather than only by individual holdings.

Customization and Layout

MarketRiders makes it extremely simple to navigate your account. All of your portfolios are displayed in a single dashboard. You’ll find options to further explore or make changes to each portfolio directly under the diversification pie charts. Pages for tracking performance, asset allocation, and your investment goals are prominently displayed and are well-organized. You can only view performance data for one portfolio at a time, although this is not an issue for most investors.

MarketRiders Platform Differentiators

There is very little that MarketRiders can do that a medium-tier or better brokerage cannot do. While the automated portfolio builder for creating a diversified portfolio based primarily on ETFs is useful, most brokerages include a similar tool with every IRA or 401(k) account.

In addition, since MarketRiders is not a brokerage, investors will need to go through their brokers to actually purchase the recommended portfolio. You can’t simply set and forget your portfolio, either, since you’ll have to log into your brokerage account to rebalance your assets from time to time.

The main advantage MarketRiders offers is that it can help you minimize commissions and management fees. In today’s world of commission-free stock and ETF trading, though, this isn’t a huge concern for most investors. Even if your brokerage does charge fees, you can eliminate most of them with only a basic understanding of how ETFs and mutual funds work.

Who is MarketRiders Best for?

MarketRiders is aimed at long-term retirement investors who are relatively new to investing. Most investors would be better served by using the diversification and portfolio building tools their broker offers, typically at no cost. However, if you’re worried about management fees, messing up your diversification, or just want some extra guidance, MarketRiders could be a worthy option.

Alternatives to MarketRiders

The traditional alternative to MarketRiders is to seek out a human investment advisor. Of course, this is expensive and is likely only suitable for high net worth individuals. The whole point of the MarketRiders managed service is to save you from the need for costly investment advisors.

Another option is to use a robo-advisor that’s also a brokerage platform. Options include Betterment, Wealthfront, M1 Finance, and Acorns. These platforms differ in their exact features, but they generally offer similar tools to MarketRiders to help you build a low-cost retirement portfolio. Notably, they can automatically rebalance your portfolio over time, so you can truly set it and forget it. All of these personal finance services are cheaper than MarketRiders, so they’re worth checking out before you sign up for MarketRiders.

Pros

• Diversified portfolio based on low-fee ETFs
• Simple portfolio rebalancing tools
• Alerts when portfolio becomes unbalanced
• Performance tracking by asset class
• Simple, understandable layout

Cons

• Most tools can be had for free with an IRA or 401(k) brokerage account
• Not integrated with brokerages to buy and sell portfolio assets (requires manual work)