With the major market downturns, yesterday and again today (4/3/25-4/4/25), many readers who have done brokerage bonuses are left worrying that their balances have dropped below the tiers necessary to keep the bonus.
For example, if they needed to hold $100k and within the 6 month period the market drops to $90k, do they lose the bonus? (Or course there are broader concerns here as well, we’re just focusing now on the bonus angles.)
I wanted to go through some of the top brokerage bonuses and see if they make it clear in the terms, but didn’t have the time. I figured it worth a post for people to discuss and hopefully let us know what they find.
I’ll just write some generalities and readers can feel free to discuss more specifics in the comments. I’ll try updating the post with more specifics as well.
- It’s very common for brokerage bonuses to stipulate clearly that market downturns will not affect your bonus. For example, if you meet $100k bonus tier and then the market goes down to $90k, you’ll keep the bonus.
- The caveat here is that you didn’t transfer out any funds. Example, if you met the $100k bonus tier and the market went up to $110k and you sold $10k. Sometime later the remaining $100k went down to $90k, you might have an issue.
- Some brokerage bonuses are a percentage, not a tier. Those bonuses are less risky since the worst you can lose is the percentage, it’s not a risk of jumping down a tier. But again, typically I believe you won’t lose anything provided that you have not moved investments out.
- A reader pointed out that the Wells Fargo $2,5000 bonus is less secure since that bonus is not really a brokerage bonus, it’s an assets bonus of cash or investments. And so I’m less certain that they’ll allow for market dips not to count. There are likely other similar bonuses which are like that as well. Again, I did not have a chance to comb through the terms on the specific bonuses.
- Another angle to consider is brokerages like Merrill and U.S. Bank who offer extra rewards and perks for customers who have $100k invested with them. If the market drops you might lose those perks. With Merrill you don’t lose it right away. With U.S. Bank it’s a 90 day average.
