Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
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The stock trading app Webull has launched a new referral promotion which is offering six free stocks when referring two new users that go on to deposit $100. Those free stocks are worth $12-$1,400 each, so at a minimum you should receive $72 worth of free stocks if you can refer a couple of people.
The Deal
- Refer two new users to Webull who make an initial deposit of at least $100 within 30 days of signing up & get six free stocks.
- Our referral links:
Key Terms
- Offer valid April 17, 2020 to May 11, 2020.
Quick Thoughts
Webull’s standard referral program offers two free stocks per new user, so this limited time promotion means you’ll earn an additional two free stocks after referring two people.
As mentioned earlier, each free stock will be worth $12-$1,400. That means that you should earn at least $72 in free stock when referring two people, although it might be slightly less than that.
The reason why is that when I’ve earned free stocks, they’ve sometimes been worth marginally less than the minimum threshold listed by Webull. For example, I’ve received “$12 stocks” that ended up having an estimated value on the day they were credited of $11.81, $11.67, $11.91, etc. Having said that, I’ve received some stocks that were worth more than $12. Nothing anywhere near close to the $1,400 upper limit, but $13.27, $13.62, $19.05, etc.
The reason why there’s this price difference is because of how Webull obtains the stocks. From their terms and conditions:
These reward stocks will be distributed from Webull’s inventory of settled shares held specifically for this promotion. When the stocks were purchased, Webull made sure they were above the price range we promised. Due to market fluctuation, some stock values may drop from the time we made the purchase. Please understand that we do not control over the fluctuation of the market.
From what I can tell, the person you refer will receive one free stock worth $12-$1,400 when making that initial deposit of $100. It’s worth making sure your friends/family are aware that the initial deposit has to be at least $100; they can’t deposit $50 and then $50 within the promotion period – it has to be at least $100 for that initial amount.
The nice thing about this promotion is that they don’t have to actually invest the $100 in any stocks, mutual funds, etc. Instead, they can just deposit the $100 and have it sitting there as cash, so there’s no risk of that deposit going down due to market fluctuations unless they do actually choose to invest it.
It’s also important to be aware that you’ll need to actually claim your free stocks once they’re available. To do that, tap the menu button in the bottom-right corner of the app, then tap ‘My Free Stock’. If you have free stocks you can claim, you’ll see it listed at the top of the screen and you’ll tap ‘Get’. You have to tap ‘Get’ for each of the free stocks. The free stocks have to be claimed within 30 days of them being awarded, so it might be worth setting up a reminder to check that section of the app if you think you’ll generate any referrals from family and friends. This is the same for the free stock that your friend/family member will receive, so let them know that they’ll have to actively claim their free stock too once they’ve deposited the $100.
Those stocks are then awarded five to seven trading days after they’ve been claimed, so you won’t see your invested amount increase until about a week later.
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[…] ran a similar promotion recently which offered three free stocks per referral, but that only required that you make two successful […]
They advertise giving you a free stock “between $2.50 to $250.00 upon account opening.
What I ended up with is a stock at around $2.00.
Then they explained to me that ‘it has just gone down’.
I asked them if they know the meaning of the word “between” …
In other words: The usual way to immediately erode all integrity.
It’s probably just my own naivitee, hoping that maybe … just maybe …
there are new finance companies shifting gear, away from greed,
and towards honest collaboration with customers.
I told them in no uncertain terms … not going to help, of course …
So … We can all surmise what to count on when they advertise anoter free stock “between $12.00 to $1200 after depositing your first $100.00 into your new Webull account …
Yeah, Stephen covered this in the post with a couple of paragraphs and a quote from the Webull terms explaining why that happens sometimes. We’ve each gotten some stocks just below and some just above the range. I did a deposit bonus a while back where I deposited $10K to get 20 free shares that were supposed to be between $12-$1400. A bunch of them were worth $11.60-$11.80 when I got them. It was free money as I didn’t intend to invest the $10K anyway. A couple of weeks later, both were trading over $13. Today, one is in the $6.XX range and the other is in the $8.XX range. The market fluctuates and obviously whatever they give you is something they purchased before the moment when you claimed it, so there’s a chance it’ll be higher or lower. Especially with the volatility of the market today, there’s always the chance that shares could end up being worth a little less (or maybe a little more if you’re lucky and catch it on the upswing).
If you’re interested in a more definitive / exact bonus, I’d recommend bank account bonuses. I’ve done a bunch of those over the past six months as well and they’re great for a reliable bonus. The fun of the brokerage bonuses (to me) is that they can become more valuable more quickly over time. I’d never buy a share of Snapchat, but since I’ve got a few that I picked up for free, I’ll have fun watching the price and if it goes up enough maybe I’ll sell it. That’s not for everyone, but I enjoy it.
Thanks Nick. I admire your relaxed view re Webull. I think ti’s just downright ‘cheap’ to advertise that we’ll get a free stock between whatever, and then have it be right at the very low end, and this happening always. I don’t get how a company can be so sutpidly self-sabotaging … I do get the bank and credit card bonuses … at least they are honest.
I beg to differ. I referred 2 people and I received 4 shares of stock. Three were Levi Strauss valued from $11.20 to $12.43, slightly under the $14 promised. I also received one share of NVDA valued at $298, but when I got it the actual price was $310. So the prices can go either up or down.
How is this a good deal except for the bloggers getting paid or referrals to push this?
Everybody else will be left with a fractional share or shares of about $50 that will cost 75-100$ to consolidate somewhere else like It’s not like there are achs for stocks that move them freely. This brokerage won’t answer the phone! What inexperienced investor needs that?
Not allowing referrals
Questionable ethics from these bloggers pushing this.
First, let me be clear: We’re not “pushing” anything with any of our Quick Deals. We alert readers to deals, big and small, to let you know of opportunities available. Some may be of interest to you, others won’t. To each his own in terms of which deals make sense for each reader. If this one isn’t for you, that’s fine. Maybe you’ll be more interested in one of the other four or five deals we post each day (most of which have no referral / affiliate offers).
In terms of our ethics, I encourage you to read Frequent Miler for a while if you’re new and to join our Facebook group and/or ask around. I think you’ll find that most in the blogging / reader community will vouch for the ethics of Frequent Miler. Sure, Stephen and I have referral links for this deal. We also write about plenty of deals where we have no referral links.
In terms of how this can be a good deal for anyone other than bloggers, it’s pretty easy: I recently referred my wife and one other person. That meant I got 6 free shares today because of this promotion. I got Levi Strauss, which was trading at about $12.50 per share when I got it this morning, so that’s $75 in stock for sharing the deal with my wife and one other person (and she got a share of something that was like $3 when she signed up and a share of American Airlines after depositing $100 — essentially a 13% bonus on her $100 deposit).
If Levi returns to the $20+ per share that it was before everything tanked because of COVID-19, my bonus for referring her and one friend would be worth about $120. I also recently got a share of American Airlines, which is right now trading at a bit over ten bucks a share but will likely eventually return to $25 or $30 per share. Right now is a great time to pick up free shares since prices are so low — there’s a decent shot of getting something that will be worth quite a bit more in a year or two. Again, as a bonus for depositing just a hundred bucks, that’s not bad. We write about Amex Offers all the time where you have to *spend* a hundred bucks to get ten or fifteen bucks back. Getting ten or fifteen bucks without having to spend a dime (since you don’t need to invest the $100) seems like an even better deal to me.
And that’s why I’ll encourage my wife to refer her sister and one of her friends to do this, too. It only requires a $100 deposit to trigger the bonus, so if her sister and one other friend are willing to deposit $100 in Webull, they’ll each get their ten or twelve or fifteen bucks in stock and maybe she can pick up $75 in stock. Then each of them can refer a spouse and someone else for the same. It’s very low-hanging fruit and two referrals is a pretty low threshold that doesn’t really require being a blogger to attain.
In terms of getting that money back out of Webull, brokerages run promos where they’ll cover your transfer fees all the time. I saw a comment from someone at DoC yesterday noting that one of the major brokerages (I think they said Fidelity, but I could be mis-remembering which) has always reimbursed the fees on request for them — they said it isn’t advertised but they’ve always done it (YMMV, but it’s always worth asking if you’ve got an established relationship with a brokerage). Alternatively, sell the free stock and ACH the proceeds to your bank (no fee for ACH withdrawals). In my case, since there is no fee to keep the Webull account and no inactivity fee, I’ll just leave it there to grow. It doesn’t matter to me that it’s separate from my other investments.
In terms of answering the phone, I have no idea about Webull there. I have low expectations for customer service all around these days, so I wouldn’t be surprised to find that their customer service stinks. I’ve been investing with Webull, Robinhood, and SoFi since last year (and my IRA with a separate brokerage) and have never had to contact customer service for any of them, but I’d assume that most of them stink equally in that regard. That’s not to apologize for poor service — it’s just that given the nature of free trades and no product that I’m directly paying for, I would have low service expectations. If I were looking to invest millions, I’d probably look to a different type of brokerage.
With regards to not allowing referral links, we don’t allow people to post referral links on any of our posts at Frequent Miler. That’s for several reasons, a few of which are:
-Any comment with a link gets caught in our spam filter and requires manual approval. We have our site set up that way so that the thousands and thousands of links for free pills or explicit websites that plague any Internet forum do not automatically post and endanger readers with potential viruses and/or bury actual discussion of our posts.
-We do not want to drown out discussion with referral links. If we allowed referral links, not only would it require manually processing them one at a time here but it would also mean that comments like this one — a legitimate point of discussion for you to have brought up — would get buried somewhere down the page in a sea of referral links and people who see this post in the future will miss out on the benefit of discussion like this. The purpose of having reader comments on this site is to enable this type of discussion / interaction and give people a forum to ask and answer questions. We want this type of discussion to be easily possible.
We do sometimes set up referral threads in our Facebook group. I don’t think we have for this deal yet, but now that we’re discussing it I think I’ll do that at some point later today. That enables us to set up a single dedicated thread where we can keep all of the links in one place without drowning out discussion of the deal, so we have done that from time to time in the past.
I would otherwise encourage you to share your referral link with your social circle. Between your Facebook, Twitter, emails to family members or friends, co-workers, etc, you may find it easier than expected to find two people interested and considering the low level of effort required to trigger the bonuses it may well be worth it. I wrote a post a while back about why low-hanging fruit like this is worth picking — if you’re going to do the math as to whether it makes more sense to earn 3x ThankYou points on dining with the $95 Citi Premier or you should spend $250 on the Amex Gold for 4x or the CSR is really a better deal at 3x since you can transfer to Hyatt (and many of us in this hobby are interested in precisely those kind of calculations), you should also go after an easy $75 sign up bonus for depositing $100 and referring two people when you can. I think the reward is easy enough to be worth it for many people. You may disagree, and that’s fine. Hopefully you’ll find some other deal that’s worth your time on a different day.
Hopefully that adds some clarity for you.
Can we leave referral links here?
I’m afraid not, but thank you for asking first 🙂
I’ve had terrible experience with webull referrals and not getting the referral stock. And customer support is non existent
Limited Time Offer for new sign ups:
“Open an account, get first free stock between $2.5-$250. Make your initial deposit of $100 or more and get a second stock valued between $12-$1400.”
Excellent, that’s an even better deal for the person being referred as they get that initial stock for signing up. Thanks for the heads up – I’ll add that to the post.