Investment platforms: where to buy investment vehicles or assets

Once you know which assets you want to buy and how to do it, what remains is deciding where to do it, on which platform.

This is where who executes the trades and, above all, who makes the decisions comes into play.

First, here is the outline so you can get your bearings, and then I explain each platform, also adding the corresponding links:

1. Banks
   • Assets:
     • Funds (often expensive).
     • Structured products.
   • Decision and control:
     • You choose the product, but management is usually delegated.
2. Brokers
   • Assets:
     • Stocks.
     • ETFs.
     • Funds.
     • Bonds.
   • Decision and control:
     • You decide what to buy yourself.
3. Roboadvisors
   • Assets:
     • Automated portfolios (based on ETFs)
   • Decision and control:
     • An algorithm automatically builds and manages the portfolio.
4. Exchanges (crypto)
   • Assets:
     • Bitcoin
     • Ethereum
     • Solana
     • Stablecoin
     • Others
   • Decision and control:
     • Centralized exchange: yours, but without self-custody of the funds.
     • Decentralized exchange: fully yours, including self-custody.

This article is the fourth in the series in which I explain why you need to invest, how, and where, so you learn the essentials even if you are starting from zero:

1. Investing from scratch: where to invest your money.
2. Types of assets you can invest in depending on their role in the portfolio.
3. How to buy assets: investment vehicles.
4. Investment platforms: where to buy investment vehicles or assets. (This is the one you are reading).
5. Investment risks and protections.
6. My investment system.
7. Wealth: how to grow it, protect it and pass it on.

#1. Banks (traditional banks or neobanks)

Banks are the best-known intermediaries offering access to investment products, but they are not the only ones.

They are usually convenient, but often more expensive than other options. In that sense, a new wave of banks has appeared in recent years. These are neobanks, institutions that use lower fees as their main argument against traditional banking.

At banking institutions you can contract or buy these assets:

• Interest-bearing accounts.
• Deposits.
• Pension plan.
• Funds (generally actively managed, although also indexed).
• Other structured and more complex products.

If we talk about control, you choose the product -often influenced by your account manager- but the management itself is usually delegated to the institution.

In my case, although I explain it in more depth in the article on my investment system, here are the links to the banks I use (affiliate link if they have one):

BBVA: my usual bank. If you want a little gift when signing up, here is my friend code: 10B20011121F4C

Bankinter: this is where I have my interest-bearing account at 2%.

Wise: dollar liquidity. Just in case.

#2. Brokers

Brokers are platforms where you buy and sell assets. For enabling this buying and selling, the broker takes a more or less small fee for each transaction made by its users.

Within these platforms you can access many types of assets:

• Stocks.
• ETFs.
• Funds
• Bonds.

The control over what you invest in and when you do it is completely yours. That said, you can also invest in products managed by third parties, such as active or index funds.

The ones I use:

MyInvestor: portfolio and funds.

Degiro: ETFs.

XTB: stocks.

#3. Roboadvisors

This curious name -roboadvisors- refers to automated managers. 

When you hire them, they usually ask you a series of questions and, based on your answers, assign you a risk profile.

From there, the system (an algorithm) builds and manages a portfolio for you, usually based on ETFs and/or funds, with more or less exposure to fixed income or equities and more or less diversified across sectors and markets. 

It is a very simple way to invest without making life complicated and, in fact, it is the one I recommend to most people who are starting out.

Mine:

Indexa: the main one. Very happy with them.

MyInvestor: it appears here again.

#4. Exchanges

Exchanges are platforms for buying cryptocurrencies. 

The typical ones are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and stablecoins such as USDT and USDC, although of course there are many more altcoins and even memecoins, with an extremely high risk of ending up losing all their value.

Here, control varies depending on the type of exchange:

• In centralized exchanges you choose what to buy and when, but you are not the custodian of the asset until you send it to your own wallet (your “crypto IBAN”).
• In decentralized exchanges, in addition to deciding what to buy and when, you manage the custody of your assets yourself, so control of your investment is one hundred percent yours.

Mine are only decentralized, such as Uniswap and Hyperliquid.

Conclusions

The key difference between these intermediaries is who decides:

• In a broker, you decide.
• In a roboadvisor, an algorithm decides.
• In a bank, you choose the product, but management is usually delegated.
• In crypto, in many cases, the responsibility is completely yours.

So, I would like you to keep this idea:

When you invest, there are four layers you must be clear about: who executes, who decides, what you are actually buying and how. That is:

• Intermediaries (where you execute):
• Traditional bank.
• Broker.
• Crypto exchange.
• Managers (who decides):
• Active manager (funds).
• Roboadvisor.
• You yourself.
• Assets (what you actually buy or sign up for):
• Stocks.
• Bonds.
• Real estate.
• Crypto.
• Investment vehicles (how you buy them):
• Interest-bearing accounts.
• Deposits.
• Pension plans.
• ETFs.
• Funds.

Read the outline again and get it into your head, because it matters if your mental map is to be correct and help you make proper decisions.

Next steps

If you want to go a little further, I invite you to continue with the next article in the series:

1. Investing from scratch: where to invest your money.
2. Types of assets you can invest in depending on their role in the portfolio.
3. How to buy assets: investment vehicles.
4. Investment platforms: where to buy investment vehicles or assets. (This is the one you are reading).
5. Investment risks and protections.
6. My investment system.
7. Wealth: how to grow it, protect it and pass it on.