Anyone have a Merrill Edge account?

[DolphinPilot]

I had to rollover my 401k to a Merrill account. I have had my investments in cash ever since. I swear this is the most cumbersome fking site to use for researching and finding investments. I'm just looking for a mutual fund, like a "set it and forget it" kind of deal. The site is such a pain in the ass to research options that I'm at a point of exhaustion. With Vanguard I can find a good looking fund in about 2 minutes. With this it shows me a grocery list of garbage muni bond funds when I ask for mutual funds, and none of them are close to their index.

Any recommendations for mutual funds?

[RobParks2M]

Do they not offer index funds?

[SouthDakotaBrah]

I do use Merrill. One important aspect to Merrill that makes it more financially advantageous to use than other brokerages is that your Merrill account balance affects your Bank of America Preferred Rewards status... so you can store your money in Merrill and get BoA Preferred Rewards (aka the best cash rewards credit card on the market + zero ATM fees anywhere).

Merrill is really useful for analyzing individual companies because you get CFRA reports for every stock. Tons of very organized research and financial statements for every company without having to worry about legitimacy of numbers. I can look up literally any company and within seconds open their CFRA report and have a digestible summary of what the company is, what their growth prospects look like, how they're valued, etc. this aspect combined with the BoA Preferred Rewards makes Merrill very useful

The only downside to Merrill is that buying and selling options requires a $0.60 fee per contract

I started using Merrill initially for BoA Preferred Rewards, but now that I'm used to it I can do research on a list of companies insanely quickly with it

[DolphinPilot]

Do they not offer index funds?

They do but if you browse a list of funds you get about 77 options, cumbersome as fukc having to research each of them individually. Can't even right-click->open in new tab, so you can view 10 or so. They even have a few funds with a one-star Morningstar view (lol...?)

I do use Merrill. One important aspect to Merrill that makes it more financially advantageous to use than other brokerages is that your Merrill account balance affects your Bank of America Preferred Rewards status... so you can store your money in Merrill and get BoA Preferred Rewards (aka the best cash rewards credit card on the market + zero ATM fees anywhere).

Merrill is really useful for analyzing individual companies because you get CFRA reports for every stock. Tons of very organized research and financial statements for every company without having to worry about legitimacy of numbers. I can look up literally any company and within seconds open their CFRA report and have a digestible summary of what the company is, what their growth prospects look like, how they're valued, etc. this aspect combined with the BoA Preferred Rewards makes Merrill very useful

The only downside to Merrill is that buying and selling options requires a $0.60 fee per contract

I started using Merrill initially for BoA Preferred Rewards, but now that I'm used to it I can do research on a list of companies insanely quickly with it

well damn, maybe I'm just not used to the site.

not aware of the BoA card, may have to look into.