
Today’s investors have an ever-growing list of sites and services to choose from when deciding where to get their information, run screeners, chart their picks against technical indicators, balance their portfolios, and more.
This moomoo review is something that can help you figure out how moomoo compares to other trading platforms and whether it’s the best investing tool for your needs. It includes our first-hand experience and in-depth research, plus user feedback. It’s designed to take the guesswork out of finding a reliable, commission-free trading platform.
Moomoo is a multifunctional platform that allows for both trading and analysis. We’ll tell you how it works, what features it provides, whether it’s safe to use, and how much it costs. Keep reading our moomoo investing review to learn what you need to know to make an informed decision about moomoo.
What is Moomoo?
Moomoo is a digital trading platform that was founded by Leaf Hua Li in Silicon Valley in 2018. The founder wanted to create an investment tool that would eliminate some of the complexities found in other online brokerages and provide better support to users.
The SEC granted moomoo a trading license to operate in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Since 2018, it has expanded its operations to Singapore, Australia, Japan, Canada, and Malaysia. Its parent company is Futu Holdings Ltd, which is headquartered in Hong Kong and was also founded by Leaf Hua Li.
Moomoo users can buy and trade stocks, ETFs, REITs, and US Treasury bonds. Investments that aren’t available on moomoo include individual bonds, mutual funds, and cryptocurrencies.
Since its founding, moomoo has grown exponentially, winning awards and establishing itself as one of the most popular online brokerages, as you can see below.
How Does moomoo Work?
No moomoo review would be complete without a walkthrough of the platform.
So, let’s take a look at what using moomoo is actually like. For this example, we’re going to look up a stock (AAPL), take a quick look at its price and financial data, and buy a share.
Opening an Account
Opening a moomoo account is easy and requires only three steps.
- Open the moomoo app and click Get Started.
- Enter your personal information, which will include your name, address, proof of identification, and tax information.
- Confirm your financial information and acknowledge the Risk Disclosure.
Moomoo says that most accounts are approved within the same day, but there’s a disclaimer that it may take 1-3 business days. You’ll receive a notification when your account is approved.
Deposit & Withdrawal Process
Depositing funds into your moomoo account is easy. Just follow these steps.
- In the app, click Accounts > Transfers > Deposit
- Copy the account details on the page, and then use your personal banking website or app to complete the transfer.
WIthdrawals are just as easy.
- Open the app and click Trade > More > Withdraw
- Select your bank and enter the withdrawal amount
- Enter your receiving bank account information and upload the bank account voucher
- Enter your password and submit the withdrawal request.
It will take 1-3 business days for the withdrawn money to appear in your bank account.
Types of Accounts
Moomoo offers two basic account types for traders: cash and margin accounts. The former is best suited for beginning investors, while the latter involves borrowing money to make investments.
Moomoo doesn’t offer IRAs or any other type of retirement account, so if you’re looking for those, you’ll need to find them elsewhere.
Making a Trade on moomoo
A lot of moomoo trading reviews won’t show you how to execute a trade, but we’ve got you covered.
Step 1: Open up moomoo
Below you’ll see the dashboard of a sample account when logging on.
As you can see, the dashboard automatically includes portfolio information in the center, general account information on the left, and data that we’ve looked up previously on the right for a stock called Futu Holdings.
Our portfolio is missing something, though. How about a new stock?
Step 2: Look up the stock
Below, you’ll see the dashboard screen with the search function open and pointed toward AAPL.
There’s quite a long list of options, but the one we’re looking for is at the very top: Apple Inc. You know, the people who made the phone you’re probably using right now.
Step 3: Review the stock information
Now we’re on the default view that pops up when you navigate to AAPL’s page. It’s highly customizable—just about every bit of it can be tweaked, hidden, or expanded—and there’s a lot going on, so let’s break it down.
The middle of the screen shows AAPL’s price changes in intraday trading with a trend line to smooth things out. On the top right you’ll see some of AAPL’s historical price data, and below it you’ll see some of the bid/ask spreads from the trading day. Under that you’ll see the Level II data that shows multiple levels of bids/asks.
To the left of the Level II data is what we’re looking for: the trading interface. The price is fine, so we’re going to need to change the “Style” to “MKT Buy.” There are a lot of other options for buying and selling, though, including stuff like “Limit,” “Market,” and “Trailing Stop Limit”.
Here’s a closer look at the moomoo trading interface before we make the trade.
So congratulations (to us)! One share of AAPL. Billionaire status, here we come.
And that completes the walkthrough portion of this review.
Moomoo Trading Features & Tools
Moomoo is a feature-rich platform. Since no moomoo brokerage review would be complete without a list of features, here’s an overview of what you’ll find.
Platforms
First thing’s first: moomoo is available pretty much anywhere but in a browser, with the only exception being its paper trading feature. If you’re not comfortable using a mobile or desktop app for trading, then moomoo probably isn’t the right choice for you.
If you use moomoo on a desktop and feel like going all cyberpunk with it, the software supports up to 6 monitors at once. That’s 6 screens of charts, data, bid/asks, news feeds, or whatever else you want to have right in front of you.
Just make sure you have a computer with a powerful GPU, or at least a monster of a CPU, and plenty of RAM.
Markets
Moomoo users can trade all US stocks—exchange-listed and over-the-counter—ETFs, and options, plus a selection of American Depository Receipts, Hong Kong listed stocks, and Chinese A-shares.
All US-based trades are commission-free on moomoo, though there are some fees associated with international trades.
Market Data
You may be limited to trading stocks, ETFs, REITs, and US Treasuries on moomoo, but that doesn’t stop them from providing real-time data on a metric ton of other markets and asset classes.
Moomoo’s International Markets
If you want to check out international markets, for instance, you can click around and find data from these countries on moomoo:
- Canada
- Japan
- Australia
- Singapore
- Malaysia
It’s pretty cool to be able to have access to Hong Kong stocks as well as the New York Stock Exchange (and more) in one platform.
Moomoo’s Asset Classes
And that barely scratches the surface. You can also find up-to-date information on all kinds of different asset classes on moomoo, including:
- Cryptocurrencies
- Futures
- Foreign Exchange
- REITs
- Bonds
- Hong Kong Stocks & Warrants
- Options Trading
Keep in mind that while you can’t buy bonds or cryptocurrencies on moomoo, it’s still a valuable research tool for these asset classes.
Real-Time Data
Speaking of data, moomoo goes out of its way to provide its users with stock quotes and market movements in as close to real-time as possible. They proudly declare that they refresh the data from US markets (international markets have a time delay) every 0.03 seconds, which is pretty close to the fastest a 60Hz monitor can display the changes.
In addition to those ridiculously quick updates, moomoo also provides access to real-time Level II data with up to 60 levels of bids and asks. In case you don’t know, Level II data gives you a much deeper look into the scope of the bids and asks that determine the price of a stock.
If you mostly take longer-term positions and aren’t doing a lot of intraday trading, then moomoo Level II data probably won’t be that useful. If you’re a day trader who does a lot of intraday trading, on the other hand, it can be an invaluable tool for determining the demand for any given stock and predicting short-term price movements.
A lot of services only provide Level II data to paying subscribers, if at all, so moomoo providing it for free is low-key kind of a big deal.
The News Feed
Moomoo wants you to have all the news. Their news feed is long and diverse, with stories sourced from over 200 different publications. It’s not just a single news feed, either. If you click on any given stock, bond, ETF, market, etc, you can navigate to its individual news pane for a list of recent relevant stories collected in one place.
Personalized News for You
If you go to the main news tab on moomoo, you can also find all the news stories relevant to stocks/assets on your watchlist, plus an interactive calendar that’s automatically populated with all the important events coming up in the economy and in your stocks’ futures.
It’s just stuff like upcoming earnings announcements and new economic data like jobs numbers and such, but it’s still a nice little feature to have on moomoo.
The moomoo Community
If you’ve ever wanted to talk to complete strangers about investing without leaving your brokerage, now’s your chance. Moomoo’s chat room/social media-esque features let you access a number of different spaces for traders to hang out and talk.
You can chat, make friends, and start group chats with those friends if you so desire. Again, not a critical feature, but still pretty cool.
Chart-Topping Charts
Moomoo’s charts are not messing around. They have all the regular stuff like line graphs, candlesticks, multiple time frames, and market/stock comparisons, but they don’t stop there.
No, seriously. They go hard.
Are you into technical analysis? Like slapping indicators on graphs and fiddling with moving averages and Bollinger bands like some kind of fiscal Nostradamus? Well, you’re in luck.
Moomoo’s charts support a ton of different indicators—63 of them, to be exact—and you can apply, tweak, and compare as many of them as you want at a time. You can even change the colors of each indicator to help you make sense of the tangled web of lines and sticks that you know you want to make.
If you’re still learning how to chart, Moomoo’s paper trading may be a great way to practice risk free.
They Are Customizable Too
If those preset indicators aren’t enough for you, moomoo comes complete with a custom indicator trading tool. You can choose from any combination of the 190+ preset functions to make your very own prognosticating advanced tools for a truly bespoke digital tea leaf reading experience.
Oh, and you know how most charts just sort of sit there all static and whatnot? Moomoo does things a little differently. You can opt to make adjustments with all the little buttons on the sides of the charts, but that’s kid stuff. You want to open up the drawing menu and get all Beautiful Mind with it, don’t you?
Good news: moomoo has 38 different drawing tools for you to make your mark on any chart you please. You can draw your own trend lines, isolate and identify trends in certain time periods, and apply all of it against any technical indicators you want to apply on the chart alongside your own work.
Think of it like a digital whiteboard for you to work out your thoughts and spot interesting patterns from the comfort of your desk chair.
Extended Hours Trading
Moomoo offers extended trading hours, which are ideal for international traders or for people who just don’t have time to do their trading during normal hours.
In the United States, pre-market trades are allowed between 4:00 am and 9:30 am Eastern time.
After-hours trading is allowed from 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm Eastern time.
All told, that means you’ll get nine and half extra hours of trading time every day!
Alternative Chart/Data Stuff
This is a quick section devoted to the trading tools that didn’t fit neatly in the other categories.
Short Sale Volume: A set of charts that show short sale volumes, which gives you a visual representation of short signals, short interest, daily short volume, and other short-related data.
Institutional Holdings: Charts that, when data is available, show a visual representation of aggregated institutional holdings and provide some analysis.
Company Valuations: Charts and datasets that let you use PB, PE, and PS models to evaluate stocks and their valuations. Also lets you graph against historical data.
Financial Reports: Give you a way to evaluate earnings reports and financial reports using charts, graphs, and key indicators like revenue and past growth rates.
Moomoo Fees & Pricing
As we’ve already noted, moomoo is a commission-free trading platform. For the uninitiated, we must note that commission free doesn’t necessarily mean fee free. Here’s how the fees break down.
Trade/Service | Fee |
Annual fee | N/A |
Inactivity fee | N/A |
Index options | $0.50 per contract |
Margin rate | 6.8% |
American Depository Receipts | $0.01 to $0.05 per share |
ACAT transfers (transfers to another brokerage) | $75.00 |
Broker-assisted trades | $10.00 |
The takeaway here is that while moomoo isn’t totally free, it is less expensive than most other digital brokerages.
Is Moomoo Legit?
If this rare combination of trading capabilities and top-notch data sounds too good to be true, you might be wondering:
Is moomoo legit? Is moomoo safe?
Moomoo is heavily regulated and its deposits are insured, so we can say with confidence that yes, moomoo is safe.
Like most other legitimate investment platforms, moomoo is a member of FINRA and SIPC and is regulated by the SEC. These things all indicate that moomoo is a legitimate broker and safe to use.
We should note here that membership in the SIPC means that there’s insurance in place in the event that your brokerage, in this case moomoo, fails. Your assets are insured up to a maximum of $500,000, which includes $250,000 in claims for cash. However, you should keep in mind that the SIPC won’t protect you if you lose money due to a decline in stock prices.
Most users report that while there’s a learning curve to fully take advantage of moomoo’s features, the app is trustworthy and responds well to customer queries.
Is Moomoo a Good Brokerage?
Let’s answer the most pressing question: Is moomoo a good brokerage? We say it is.
As we’ve already noted, moomoo is a member of FINRA and the SIPC, and it’s regulated by the SEC. You should never trust your money or investments with a company that isn’t.
Moomoo’s interface does have a bit of a learning curve, but it’s still a good choice for beginners and experienced investors alike. Those with experience can benefit from Level II data and advanced charting, while even beginners can make their first trade with just a few clicks.
Moomoo’s app gets solid reviews online.
- Google Play: 4.5 out of 5 stars
- Trustpilot: 3.2 stars out of 5 stars
- Apple Store: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Reviewers praise moomoo’s interface, although some note that it may be less than ideal for beginners. They also like moomoo’s live support but wish they would add a phone support option for complex issues.
The primary complaints have to do with the time it takes to deposit and withdraw funds, with some users reporting longer wait times than the parameters listed on moomoo’s website.
FAQs
Is moomoo safe for beginners?
Yes, we believe moomoo is safe for beginners. Make sure to read the Terms of Service completely before you make your first trade.
Is moomoo legit?
Yes, moomoo is a legit brokerage. The company is a member of FINRA and the SIPC and regulated by the SEC. The SEC aggressively pursues violations, imposing fines and in some cases, even shutting down trading. That hasn’t happened to moomoo.
How much does moomoo charge?
Moomoo offers commission-free trading. In most cases, it’s totally free to buy and sell stocks, ETFs, REITs, and US treasuries on moomoo. There are small fees for things like index options, but in almost every case, moomoo’s fees are lower than those of their competitors.
Does moomoo offer crypto trading?
No, at this time moomoo doesn’t offer crypto trading.