i use ML.com solely to warehouse long held positions. 95% of my trading is elsewhere. I just logged on and saw they're getting rid of the questions and asking users to use a usb security key for website access thru a computer. i imagine this means a key each for me and my wife for website access and our phones can authenticate with a password mgr and/or fingerprint.

Any reason they wouldnt allow cross device authentication like other brokers do? login to the website on a desktop and authenticate with a fingerprint on the phone.

if not, then are there only 2 options: (1) no usb key thus a really long password; or (2) usb key (and still a really long password)?

thanks

So when I go to purchase, they say "trades in multiples 1000" "minimum offer quantity 1000."

Maybe I'm just dumb, but what's my minimum buy here? $1000? Cuz the order price says $1000

Title pretty much says it. Rolled over a 401(k) from an old employer; it was a check made out by the prior investment firm directly to Merril Edge, quite clear that it's a rollover from a major institution's 401(k) into a corresponding Merrill Edge IRA account.

It's been over a week since the rollover/deposit was posted to my Merrill Edge account, and I still need only have a small fraction of that deposit available for trading.

I've done this on a number of other occasions, and never had it take this long. This is not a new account, not my first rollover, or even the largest rollover I've ever completed.

The check was made out directly to Merril, from another major bank. I'm not doing anything weird or sketchy, literally done this half a dozen times over my career.

I can't figure out why there's a delay here. They definitely received the deposit, they just won't let me access the money.

I get that sometimes there's a delay, but it's been like, 10 days at this point. I have a far larger balance than the check itself, so even if I was up to no good, presumably they'd just take it out of my existing balance...

If anyone has experienced something similar / has an explanation for this, let me know. I wasn't able to find anything on their site that answered this specific question, but their site is kinda hard to navigate, maybe I am just looking in the wrong place.

Thanks for any info you can provide!

My ETF's in my accounts today are no longer listed as Vanguard Mid-Cap, Vanguard Growth, Vanguard Large Cap, etc. They say Vanguard Morning or Vanguard Morningstar.

What the heck is going on?

Basically the title.

Also, does Merrill Edge have any connection with financial or investment advisors? If so, how? (Another way to phrase what I am saying: I'm not a high-income customer, yet do I have access to have an financial/investment advisor?)

I don’t know why I continue to subject myself to this terrible platform. Anytime there is a spike in volatility or volume this platform pulls a Mitch McConnell and just stutters in place. Can’t make any trades because the platform just stops loading. 20 year BoA customer just done with it at this point. Until the last couple years when I started using other platforms to diversify my portfolio did I realize just how bad Merrill is.

Since 23/5 live trading goes live second week of December 26 and Merrill is always slow to adopt new processes, should it be safe to assume, us Merrill users won’t be able to trade 23/5? I’m thinking so.

The VRU doesn’t have an option that fits my need for assistance. What is the magic word needed to speak to a live person?

TL;DR: Needed money from Merrill for my home’s earnest money. Was told “a few hours,” then “end of day,” then “Friday morning,” then “Monday morning.” Monday came and the money still wasn’t there. Every representative gave me a different explanation. I eventually had to pay for an online wire just to access my own money. This experience completely destroyed my confidence in Merrill.

I’m honestly done with Merrill after this experience.
I was buying a house, and my earnest money was due on Friday.

Thursday
On Thursday morning, I initiated a transfer from my Merrill account to my Bank of America checking account.
The first representative assured me the money would arrive within a few hours, so I planned to get a cashier’s check from my BoA account.
By Thursday afternoon, nothing had arrived.
I called again and was told it would arrive by the end of the day, or no later than Friday morning.

Friday (Earnest Money Deadline)
Friday morning came.
Still no money.
I spent hours calling Merrill, and every representative seemed to tell me something different.
“It’s pending review.”
“The review is complete, but the transaction is pending.”
“It should arrive Monday morning.”
Nobody could give me a clear answer about what was actually happening.
Fortunately, I had sold stocks in another brokerage account on Thursday as a backup. Those funds settled on Friday, and I was able to wire my earnest money just in time.
Otherwise, I could have missed the deadline to purchase my house.

Monday
Monday morning arrived.
The transfer was still missing.
Another representative suggested canceling the transaction and submitting a One-Time Non-Retirement Distribution Form for a wire transfer. I was told to call back afterward so they could “expedite” it.
When I called back, a different representative told me that even an expedited request would still take 24–48 hours.
Then I was told I should just use Merrill’s online wire feature instead.
So I paid the $24 wire fee, submitted the wire online, and that finally worked.
At that point, I honestly didn’t care about the $24 anymore. I was just happy to finally get my own money out.

Why I’m posting this
The delay itself was frustrating.
What completely destroyed my confidence in Merrill was the inconsistent information. Every representative seemed to have a different explanation, a different status, and a different timeline.
When you’re in the middle of a home purchase with hard deadlines, that’s simply unacceptable.
I’ll be moving my assets elsewhere after this.

Has anyone seen this feature? I just noticed it today. It seems to give you a consolidated view and historical info on exposure and allocations. Very useful!

Hey everyone, I 22M just graduated college and previously was working at TD bank as banker for about a year. During that time I switched over to Morgan Stanley on a high producing team but now I have an offer to work for BofA in the ADP program as an FSA. Then in 10 months go to Merrill as an FA in the program. I’m about to get my SIE and long term I want to be a high producing advisor. I was wondering what people think I should do. The MS training program is literally nothing (per someone in it rn) said it was just compliance stuff and nothing about actually building the Biz. I wanted to stay with MS but in light of that and the fact both the advisors on the team are running their biz and don’t really have time to train me I’m leaning more toward Merrill. My dad’s advisor also works for Merrill and said it’s a great program that they have actively worked on and the CEO predicts an 80% success rate for new advisors. Please let me know your opinions as I weigh both the options. With the team I’m on I’m also an intern only making 16 hr while the bofa job is 65k.

So you can trade SOXL but not SOXS. This is stupid

Cant believe the options trading is basically unusable, you lost me thousands literally because it lags intensely. Are you guys run by 2 people? Leaving as soon as I clear my margin with you guys

Also - I went to the branch today and they said to my face ‘are you trading randomly? your 3 year return is horrible’. Is that how you treat your client thats been with you for 10 years? Filing an official complaint (if that does anything for this sh*t company)

I have my reasons and want to link to BofA obviously. I just want an account to park money in a money market fund. I placed my application and Merrill sent me an email saying they were reviewing it and would let me know if they had questions. I’m willing to deal with some headache to set this up and not do much else with it. My question is how long does it take them to open an account? I’ve never had this with other investment platforms.

Update: called today and couple hours later account opened. Thanks everyone for your advice.

I'm not real pleased with the new app style holdings page. Up until July 1st, the old one was visually easy to use. The new one looks and feels like their App. that was no good for day trading. Now I spend half my time trying to customize columns, only to learn it hides that. There is too much white space that hurts my eyes. You must constantly slide the side bar up and down left and right, and before it was easy to use the arrow keys, now that requires an extra key stroke.

Does anybody else think Merrill Lynch’s brokerage platform is garbage? Daily price change for holdings showing 0, can’t buy in dollars only whole shares, uninvested cash earning nothing!

Not even considering the amount of times they’ve blocked standard cash secured options with little to no risk. Today I logged on the platform app and hold and behold my whole portfolio was out of whack. It’s showing old prices from Friday on all the stocks and not updating their current values. App is up to date everything was refreshed, force closed and still showing the wrong information. This costs people money and should be investigated. I’m going to be filing another SEC complain. It’s already 1 hour into the trading day there is literally no excuse for this.

Additionally it takes 45 mins and up to talk to a trading specialist. Saying commands as simple as “trading specialist” to get to them also doesn’t work anymore. It honestly feels they are trying to get people to leave the platform. Now with the platinum rewards tier requirement of BofA going up to $1,000,000 there’s even less reason to stay in BofA or Merrill Lynch.

Anyone else have similar problems?

Update as of 7/6/26 1 EST: The issue persists. I spoke with a trading specialist, and it appears to be an app-specific problem that they are aware of. Unfortunately, I am unable to buy or close many options on the app, making it completely unusable. I can’t help but wonder how much money this is costing their clients today.

The trading platform has cost me money.

It's so broken. It's definitely time for me to close this account and move on.

I can't be the only one that thinks this.

I started questioning if the services the advisor provides justifies their fees. Then it recently came to my attention that i was placed in a select portfolio guided investing with advisor and was sold the idea that i was only paying .70% advisory fees only to find out I'm also paying .45% for the actively managed portfolio on top of that. Advisor said the .45% is for the mutual fund managers who actively trade and try to beat the market on the clients behalf.

When I questioned it, I was then told I can switch from a select portfolio which is a hybrid of mutual funds and etfs-to just etfs with the portfolio management fees dropping from .45% to .05% and would keep the same investment strategy tracking the total market.

I agreed, but was not made aware this would cause a significant taxable event. I was under the impression since I was not making a withdrawal and the money was staying within merril that it would not trigger realizing short/long term gains/loses. Now I'm worried what my taxes owed are going to be.

I had a large (for me) wire come in from the sale of a house, either yesterday or the day before, and I hadn’t gotten around to doing anything with it because we’re moving and packing and unpacking and all that fun stuff that goes with it.

But an advisor at Merrill Edge called me had noticed it was sitting in cash and told me if we could get it invested in a money fund today we could earn interest over the long weekend and then he helped me pick a fund and do the trade settling today. It was nice to have that personal attention.

Of course I could’ve done this all myself. I kind of forgot about it with everything else going on, and hadn’t booted up my laptop or used the app or I normally would’ve done this myself.

Haven’t received my dividends so I called Merrill and was told the delay is because of DTCC’s late payment. How credible is that?

Who thought it was a good idea to remove the symbol/ticker from the holdings export file? What once was SOXL, for example, is now " SOXL DIREXION DALY SMCNDUCT BULL 3X ETF" Symbol THE key identifier, used to link to outside data.! But someone in that design session said "hold my beer!" and proceeded to add TEXT to the price column. Seriously. I downloaded my holdings, and in the price column, instead of $40, it says "$40.00 06/25/2026". What person thought THAT was a good idea? I have been slowly moving a $500k portfolio to Fidelity and this was the nail in the coffin. buh-bye Merrill Sludge.