Diamond NestEgg

Up To 8.73% APY: Top Brokerage & High Yield Savings Accounts From Morgan Stanley E-Trade

Diamond NestEgg Season 2 Episode 58

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0:00 | 14:46

An up to 8.73% APY cash bonus with a new brokerage account from Morgan Stanley’s E-Trade vs a cash bonus of up to $10,000, and what about a 4.00% HYSA locked-in for six months? Let's go through the top Morgan Stanley E-Trade bonus offers right now for new brokerage and high-yield savings accounts. 

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An up to 8.73% APY cash bonus with a new brokerage account from Morgan Stanley's ETrade versus a cash bonus of up to $10,000. What are the top Morgan Stanley E-Trade bonus offers right now for new brokerage and high yield savings accounts? Hello, Diamond Nestic Members, Super Savers and Course fans. I hope you're healthy and well. So, as some of you may recall, back in March we shared two very attractive high yield savings account cash bonus offers with you as one of our VIP Investment Club members wanted us to compare the two to see which was better. One was from Morgan Stanley's E-Trade for up to $2,000, which translated into an up to 15.92% APY equivalent cash bonus. And the other attractive offer was from Markets by Goldman Sachs for up to $1,500, which translated into an up to 9.73% APY equivalent cash bonus. Both offers look so compelling that Marcus and I decided to check them out for ourselves. Now for us, it was the first time testing out cash bonus offers like these with both Morgan Stanley's E-Trade and Markets by Goldman Sachs. And it seemed that it was also the first time for some of you. So we thought we would circle back with an update, especially since it appears that Morgan Stanley's E-Trade has some new bonus offers running right now at the time of this taping on June 4th, 2026. So with that in mind, here are the three topics I'll be covering in today's video. 1. Which firm has already paid out their cash bonus offer and how easy or complicated was the whole process? 2. How attractive is the cash bonus offer that Morgan Stanley's ETrade is currently running for their brokerage account? And three, how can you lock in 4% APY on your high yield savings for the next six months with e-Trade and get paid a cash bonus for doing so? Let's dive in now, folks. Which firm has already paid out their cash bonus offer and how easy or complicated was the whole process? Let's start with Morgan Stanley's E-Trade, because well, they already paid out the cash bonus this past week. As a reminder, the e-Trade offer from March included a boosted 3.75% APY for six months, plus up to $2,000 in cash bonus with the opening of a new premium savings account. The account opening process was fairly painless for us as we already had an e-Trade retirement account, and per the instructions, we deposited our net new funds within 30 days of account opening, towards the end of that 30-day period, in fact, and then left the money in the account untouched for the required 45-day maintenance period. According to the original e-Trade documentation, after these requirements are satisfied, Morgan Stanley E-Trade will deposit the bonus within 30 days following the end of the 45-day maintenance period. In real life, we were even positively surprised as we received our cash bonus two weeks earlier than expected, about 15 days following the end of the 45-day maintenance period. We got the email from e-Trade just this past week that the cash bonus had been credited to our account. So that was good news. For the Marcus by Goldman Sachs offer, we have not received our cash bonus yet because rather than a 45-day maintenance period like E-Trade, their cash bonus offer required a 90-day maintenance period. And yes, we did find out about the e-Trade offer after we had already transferred funds into Marcus. Otherwise, we probably would have diverted more funds to E-Trade given the shortener maintenance period and higher effective interest rates. That said, we have bought a promotional CD from Marcus before and everything worked as planned that time. So we're not really expecting any hiccups this time around either. And by the way, if you like to keep a close eye on your money, just as we do, Marcus's platform has this little feature that when you log into your account, you can click on View Bonus Tracker here. And this nicely organized screen pops up with the exact date that you need to fund your account by, how long you need to keep your money in there to qualify for the cash bonus, as well as by when you will get your cash bonus paid out to you. With eTrade, there's no bonus tracker. You do get a few email reminders to deposit money into your account during the funding period, and an email once the cash bonus has been deposited into your account. But in between those two checkpoints, you pretty much have to do the date calculations yourself to see where you are in the process. Not a big deal, but just a bit more mental math. So, for Diamond Nestec members and regulars who've been curious about how these cash bonus offers worked out for us in the end, everything has gone as planned for me and Marcus so far, and we might even be tempted to try one of the next attractive bonus offers that we're about to share with you, bringing us nicely to the next part of today's discussion. How attractive is the cash bonus offer that Morgan Stanley's eTrade is currently running for their brokerage account? So it seems that e-Trade is keen on new customer acquisition at the moment. They have two other promotions running at the current time. Neither appears to be as attractive as the one from March, but they are still competitive in the current environment. And for those of you who are simply parking your cash in a money market fund with your existing broker, e-Trade's brokerage account offer may be particularly interesting because you may be able to earn your cash bonus while parking your cash in VUSXX, Vanguard's Treasury Money Market Fund. VUSXX is where we typically park our dry powder at e-Trade. It has a seven-day SEC yield of 3.6% at the time of this taping on June 4th, 2026. And in 2025, 100% of the ordinary dividends paid out from VUSXX were from US government obligations, meaning exempt from state and local taxes. So for e-Trade's brokerage account offer, you can get up to $10,000 for a limited time using promo code OFFRE26. This offer is valid for new e-trade clients opening one new eligible brokerage, meaning non-retirement account by June 30th, 2026, and fund it within 60 days of account opening with $1,000 or more of new funds or securities. And if we scroll down, we can see that the higher the deposit amount, the higher the cash credit you will earn. But it's also not that straightforward overall after you've done the full math, as we're about to do for you. Do note that in the calculations that we're about to share with you, we assume that you invest your deposit amount in a money market fund or other near cash fund, namely VUSXX for deposits over $3,000 and SGOV for the lower tiers. Remember, this is a brokerage account, and you have the option to invest your deposit into money market funds or other securities instead of just leaving it sitting there in cash, often earning nothing or very close to nothing. You should also know that e-Trade does not have an automatic money market cash sweep, meaning it does not have a default money market fund where it will automatically sweep your excess cash into, like Fidelity and Vanguard do. So if you do leave your deposit sitting in your new e-Trade brokerage account and you don't invest it, you will earn practically nothing beyond the cash bonus. But again, let's assume for today's calculations that you invest your deposit amount in your new e-trade brokerage account into a money market fund or other near cash fund, as we mentioned earlier, VUSXX for deposits over $3,000 and SGOV for the lower tiers. SGOV has a 30-day SEC yield of 3.55% at the time of this taping on June 4th, 2026. So slightly lower than VUSXX and in 2025, 95.14% of the ordinary dividends paid out from SGOV were from US government obligations. So also slightly lower than VUSXX. So let's take a closer look at this bonus offer now. In this column, you have the minimum deposit amount. In this column, you have the cash credit. And in this column, you have the potential APY over the 12-month holding period. If you deposit a minimum of $1,000, you get a cash credit of $50. That's a potential APY of 8.73% overall over the 12-month period. Deposit a minimum of $20,000 and you get a cash credit of $300. That's a potential APY of 5.15%. Deposit a minimum of $100,000 and you get a cash credit of $600. That's a potential APY of 4.22%. Deposit a minimum of $5 million and you get a cash credit of $10,000. That is a potential APY of 3.81%. So you can see that while the cash bonus amounts go up, your effective interest rate over one year goes down. In relative terms, you get the best potential APY of 8.73% with the smallest deposit of $1,000. Maybe eTrade really wants to attract smaller accounts this time and not just the bigger fish, so to speak. Keep in mind that these numbers that I just showed you are for illustrative purposes only. We use the 7-day SEC yield for VUSXX and the 30-day SEC yield for SGOV. But remember that this is not locked in. Past performance is not indicative of future results or outcomes. So if this sounds like something you might want to move forward with, here's how it works. The first step is to open a new eligible e-Trade brokerage account by June 30th, 2026. The second step is to enter the promo code OFFER26 when opening the new account. The promo code can be used only once for one account. This promo code is very important. If you do not enter the correct promo code during the account opening process, you will not get this offer. And the third step is to fund your new account within 60 calendar days of account opening. And once these steps have been completed, the rewards will be paid within seven business days following the expiration of the 60-day period. Now, as I often say on this channel, always read the fine print because when you scroll all the way down to the footnotes, you'll also see that new funds or securities deposited into the account must not only be from outside of e-Trade, they must also remain in the new e-trade account minus any trading losses for a minimum of 12 months after the 60-day funding period. Otherwise, your cash credits, meaning your cash bonus, may be surrendered. I've linked this e-Trade page below for you. Be sure to read through the FAQs and footnotes to make sure that you understand all the terms and conditions. And as always, if you'd like to be the first to know about the best rates and bonuses like the ones we've been discussing today, and to see how other like-minded savers and investors are building out their portfolio right now, come on over and join our VIP Investment Club, where these conversations are happening every day. Visit our website at www.diamondesic.com and click on this yellow private VIP Investment Club button to join us today. I've linked everything below this video for you as well. And let's move on now to the next part of today's discussion. For those of you who are more interested in high yield savings rather than brokerage offers. How can you lock in 4% APY on your high yield savings for the next six months with eTrade and get paid a cash bonus for doing so? So this is the second offer that e-Trade is currently running. And this one is again for their premium savings account. You can earn a boosted 4% APY for six months plus a $250 cash bonus with a new premium savings account. After the six months are over, you'll earn their base rate, which is currently 3.25%. Let's click on Learn How for more details. And that will take us to this screen. Let's scroll down and we see that the first step is to open a new premium savings account on eTrade.com by June 9th, 2026, using promo code SPRING26. The second step is to add funds to earn a boosted 4% APY for six months. Plus, you'll earn a cash bonus when you deposit at least $20,000 of qualifying new money within the first 30 days of account opening. Again, that's this $250 that e-Trade mentions up here. And the third step is that you have to maintain your balance for 45 additional days after the 30-day funding period ends to earn your cash bonus. And after all these requirements here have been satisfied, e-Trade will deposit the bonus amount of $250 within 30 days following the end of the 45-day maintenance period. So, similar timelines to their premium savings account offer that we shared with you earlier this year and that we tested ourselves. And because I know these two questions will come up, please do note that with this offer, you lock in the fixed boosted rate of 4% for six months from the date you open the account, regardless of what happens with the standard rate. And each customer is limited to a lifetime maximum of two new premium savings account cash bonus offers. Alright, Diamond Estic Member Super Savers and Course fans, as always, if you enjoyed this video and want to continue the conversations with me, Marcus, and our VIP members, whether about the best market rates, ETFs, and other potential income and growth opportunities, then come on over and join our VIP investment club. I've linked everything below this video for you. We look forward to welcoming you to a growing member community and see you again very soon with more brand new wealth-building content for your financial journey.