Originally Posted by jags86

Regarding performance, a “moderate” allocation of 60-70% equities isn’t benchmarked to a portfolio that is comprised of 100% SP500. I deposited $5500 into the Morgan Stanley Access Investing account on the “aggressive” allocation on 9/11/20. Their aggressive allocation is 80% global equities, 20% fixed income. A relevant benchmark to this allocation isn’t the SP500, it’s more like something like Vanguards Life Strategy Aggressive Growth fund which is also 80% global equities, 20% fixed income. Between 9/11/20 and 7/30/21, my Access Investing account grew from $5500 to $6891.49. Vanguard Life Strategy Aggressive Growth fund would have grown to $6,860.32. So, the Access Investing account slightly beat an appropriate benchmark after fees. FWIW, a portfolio of 100% SP500 fund would have grown to about $7,330.

Now, the next part of your comment about trading options, etc. is completely silly. Most people are going into this account eyes open — they are taking $30k they normally would have kept cash and depositing it into Morgan Stanley. If you are withdrawing $30k from your investments and depositing it into this account then…yea you’re likely to be doing something stupid. In my case, I swapped $30k that was earning 0.50%…over an 11 month period about $140 of interest…for $550 and I happened to pick up just shy of $1400 of returns. I’ll pick up an additional $550 in a few months when the next engagement bonus posts.

Now, if you’re asking me if this is something I would put a lot of money in? No, I wouldn’t, because my actual portfolio has a different asset allocation that I couldn’t mimic in this account, and I certainly wouldn’t want to pay an extra 0.17% fee on a substantial sum of money.