Rakuten Trade

Rakuten Trade is a brokerage-style trading company for people who want to buy and sell shares rather than sit inside a full-service bank. By our assessment, its main strength is obvious: it brings stock trading into a more direct, app-and-platform form, which is exactly what many retail investors want. The trade-off is just as clear, because a brokerage is still a brokerage — markets move, fees matter, and the user is expected to understand what they are doing. In practice, that means charts, order tickets, watchlists, and the constant feeling that timing matters. Against traditional brokers it sounds more approachable, while against casual investing apps it is more serious and more market-facing. Rakuten Trade sits in the middle ground where active retail investors usually look first, and the account-opening and compliance side still asks for patience.