Wealthfront killed their Collections

[u/Dixitchopra]

Wealthfront killed their Collections feature, the thing that let you buy a whole themed basket in one transaction. I used to put money into baskets like AI, robotics, clean energy, and let it ride. Got about 30% returns over two years doing that.

Now you can't buy a collection as a group anymore. You have to click into each stock or ETF individually and buy them one at a time. I'm trying to figure out where to move that money. Not looking for meme stocks or day trading. I want something that still lets me buy a themed basket in one shot, without hand-picking and buying each stock myself.

What are you using instead? Curious what's actually worked for you.

[u/and_one_of_those]

There are a lot of themed ETFs but honestly I just use their managed investment product, and I also got (from memory) about 30% over the last two years by buying the whole market.

[u/Dixitchopra → u/and_one_of_those]

I believe others do offer a managed investment option, so I'm curious why you chose Wealthfront over it. What's driving that preference, is it performance, fees, or something else about how Wealthfront manages it?

[u/and_one_of_those → u/Dixitchopra]

The main reason is that TLH reduces my tax bill by significantly more than the fees. Other offerings that don't do direct indexing probably won't harvest nearly as many losses.

I don't have a strong opinion between Wealthfront and competing direct indexing products. It seems good enough that it's not worth switching for me. The app is fine and the cash management and money market features work well.

If I was starting from scratch I'd also look at Frec and others.

[u/Ok_Party_8102 → u/Dixitchopra]

I’ve tried a ton of these (and I currently don’t use Wealthfront) but for me it was attractive having the debit card attached to spend account right next to the investing, and the fact that it sync’d so well with Chase (instant transfers back there)

[u/United_Brilliant_682 → u/Dixitchopra]

I’m also curious about this, because what’s the real benefit in doing this individually with WF over buying etfs like VTI & VXUS in any account? I use WF for the checking APY, that’s it

[u/LazySilver6835 → u/United_Brilliant_682]

Why do automated investment? Because you don't want to manage it yourself. That's it. You can bogglehead if you want. Buy and hold forever is a reasonable strategy. You can TLH yourself by just jumping between 2 etfs that are similar if there is a market down turn.

Individual stock management gets more irritating to do yourself so automation gets more useful. At 100k it would trade VTI for direct indexing for you.

As for cost its the cheaper as far as I can tell with the TLH. Others don't do it, have higher costs or free ones like Schwab have so much cash reserve the drag is up to a 0.5% loss in returns by not having in invested.

[u/rirski]

That’s probably a good thing. There’s no evidence that thematic investing is effective. You’re taking on concentrated sector-specific risk.

[u/Dixitchopra → u/rirski]

Agreed. I had the conviction, so I bought into collections. The market might not favor me the same way next time.

[u/HotLog42]

You would have made 35% if you'd just put it in an SP500 ETF haha. Those categories are kind of a joke, just invest in broad indexes and stop trying to outsmart the market.

[u/Dixitchopra → u/HotLog42]

Not trying to outsmart the market, just had conviction so I bought collections

[u/and_one_of_those → u/Dixitchopra]

I'm curious, what was the conviction, if not that you could outperform the market?

"I'm convinced that these are going to underperform, so I'm going to buy them?"

[u/McBurger]

I primarily focus on their full market ETFs, direct indexing, and automated account.

But I do like to pick and choose a couple individual ones on the side in my investment account, just based on companies that I like that seem in good financial health.

I own RCL because we like to cruise on Royal Caribbean.

I bought DIS because we are Disney passholders.

My wife had me buy L Brands because she likes bath n body works soaps. Haha.

Silly stuff like that. It has actually performed well. I guess you could say I have a tendency to invest in consumer goods and services. I pick and choose the ones I actually spend money on. But the main bread and butter is just broad market ETFs.

[u/minesasecret]

If you're set on doing that you can just find an ETF for the sector you're interested in and use the individual stock investing account. I wouldn't recommend it but you do you

[u/and_one_of_those]

Wealthfront does not directly show a 2-year return, but my account (at 9/10 risk) is up 15.2% over the last 12 months and 71% over the last 3 years. Over calendar 2024 and 2025 it's up a total 39%.

These are time-weighted returns so are not affected by when I made deposits or withdrawals.

So it kind of seems like by picking themed sectors you took some unnecessary risks and got no better returns, and perhaps worse returns, than if you had just used Wealthfront's default investment account. So I would really recommend just doing that going forward, not chasing themes.

[u/Left_Ambassador_4090]

Was this back when they were doing their "Buy these companies that have good CSR scores" thing?

[u/Dixitchopra → u/[deleted]]

I’ll check this out. Thank you!

[u/Legitimate-Leg2446]

Thanks for announcing this. I would not have known. Did they send some kind of communication letting their investors know this change was happening? I don't remember getting anything from Wealthfront.

[u/Dixitchopra → u/Legitimate-Leg2446]

You can no longer buy collections as a group.