Dough.com Review: Now Defunct

Note: On October 29, 2021, Dough shut down.  It is no longer a trading platform.  This article remains published as a historical artifact.

Dough is an investment app founded in 2018 by Victor Jones, who was the former director of trading and operations at T.D. Ameritrade.

In his first post on the Dough blog, Victor lays out his manifesto by pointing out the that 160 million Americans play the lottery but only 54 million invest.

He also points out that we’ll spend five and a half years of our lives, on average, on social media but spend hardly any time investing for the future, and so his goal with Dough is to be the “tall, good-looking, 140-plus-IQ” investing app.

Jones wants to have at least one million Dough users by 2023.

So that’s a lofty goal, but how does Dough measure up?

In this Dough.com review, I’ll tell you how Dough works, its pros and cons, who it’s good for, and who it’s not good for.

Dough Review Video

Dough App Overview

The Dough interface is actually pretty simple.

You can follow along starting at the 1:23 mark in my Dough Review Video.

Dough Home Screen

When you open the app you are greeted by the home screen, which basically has a chart of your portfolio’s performance.

Above that you see your account balance, how your account performed the previous day, and how much cash you have available to trade.

If you have any free stock rewards from referrals you’ll see that underneath the chart, and then if you scroll down to the bottom of the home screen,  you’ll see the stocks you’ve invested in.

Note that the stocks you see in this image are not recommendations; they are simply the free stocks I have been given from Dough.

Buying a Stock in Dough

To buy a stock in Dough, you click the magnifying glass in the upper right, search for a stock symbol, click it, and then at the bottom click Buy, put your limit price, the number of shares, when the order is good until (canceled or end of day), and then at the bottom of the screen you swipe right to complete your purchase.

Dough Newsfeed

If you were to click the magnifying glass and not type a symbol at the top, you will see the Dough newsfeed.

This newsfeed shows you your recently-searched securities at the top, and under “What’s Moving” you see stocks with big prices increases or decreases today.

There are also a lot of links to Dough’s YouTube videos.  You can click one of the videos and watch it in the app.

Dough Settings

If you go back to the home screen and click the hamburger menu in the upper left, you’ll see the basic other functionalities in Dough.

Here’s where you can transfer funds to move cash in and out of Dough.

History is just your account history.  You can see your transfers, stock purchases, and sales.

Documents is where your monthly statements, trade confirmations, and tax documents live.

Support has an FAQ as well as a support chat function.

In settings, you can change if you want it in dark mode which is the default or light mode or light mode when the market is open and dark mode when it’s closed.

There are also some other options for more advanced trading features, including Dough Premium.

Dough Premium

Dough Premium is basically margin trading, which basically means borrowing funds from Dough to buy even more stock than you could buy just with the cash you have.

You become eligible for this once your account balance reaches two thousand dollars or above, and at that point you have two-to-one buying power.

Margin rates range from five percent to eight percent depending on how much you borrow.

Keep in mind that investing carries inherent risks, and borrowing to invest simply amplifies those risks as well as of course your potential for reward.

Dough Pros and Cons

Let’s just go over some pros and cons quickly as we wrap up this Dough.com review.

Dough Pros

1. Dough is free.  But like I mentioned above, that’s pretty much standard fare these days.
2. The interface is simple and easy-to-use.  Dough doesn’t weigh you down with a ton of bells and whistles, but on the other hand some might find it too simple, as I’ll discuss in the cons.
3. Dough has no minimum balance.
4. You get a free stock for joining.

Dough Cons

1. IRAs are not supported at this time.  The only kind of account you can open at Dough is currently a taxable brokerage account.
2. Dough has no desktop version.  I know some people they for whatever reason just like to do their investing on desktop, so if that’s you, Dough may not be the app for you.  You can’t even open up an account on desktop at this time.
3. Dough offers limited market data and research tools. If you’re accustomed to other platforms that have stock screeners, fund screeners, and in-the-moment stock data for your watchlist all there on your computer screen, then unfortunately you won’t find that at Dough.  Part of this is due to the fact that Dough currently has no desktop version, as mentioned previously in this list.

Dough Summary

So at the end of the day, if you’re just looking for a basic trading app — you don’t need all the charts, you don’t need all the bells and whistles, and you want a free stock — Dough gets the job done.

Probably the closest competitors to Dough in terms of similarities are Webull and Robinhood, and if I’m being honest, Dough is simply not as robust as Webull.

And unlike both Webull and Robinhood, Dough doesn’t offer desktop trading.

That said, I know there are people out there who don’t like Robinhood because of recent negative publicity and there are people who kind of shy away from Webull because it has Chinese ownership.

So if you have basic trading needs and you don’t want to feed the Webull and Robinhood machines — or you just want to support the little guy here — then sure, create a Dough account, get that free stock, make a deposit into Dough, and start investing.