The investing app that hands the small holder something Wall Street usually keeps for itself: the data, and the vote.
Here is a thing you are not supposed to say about a free stock-trading app: nothing is free, and the way the free ones make money is a little strange. When you place a commission-free trade, your order is often sold to a high-speed trading firm that pays for the privilege of filling it. This is called payment for order flow, and it is perfectly legal, mostly fine, and also the reason the app is free. Separately, the shares you own can be lent out to short sellers, which is also legal and mostly fine, except that when your shares are on loan, the vote attached to them can wander off too.
Fennel, a New York investing app that launched to the public in November 2022, looked at all of this and made a decision that is either principled or contrarian or both: it would charge you money instead. A flat $4.99 a month. In exchange, it does not take payment for order flow. It does not lend out your securities. And because it does not lend out your securities, your shareholder vote stays with your shares, where you can actually use it.
That is the whole pitch, and it is a more interesting pitch than it first sounds. Most retail brokerages are built on the quiet premise that you will trade and then stop paying attention. Fennel is built on the opposite bet - that a meaningful number of people want to pay attention, specifically to how the companies they own behave, and that they will pay $4.99 a month for the tools to do it.
Those tools are the second half of the story. Inside the app, every stock comes wrapped in context: more than 200 ESG indicators covering carbon footprint, human-rights protections, shareholder rights and the rest, sitting next to 25-plus financial metrics like forward price-to-earnings, Beta and debt-to-equity. There is AI-flavored news sentiment. And there is a running feed of shareholder votes - past and upcoming - that you can follow the way you'd follow a sports score.
The company is a Certified B Corporation, which is a genuinely odd credential for a brokerage to hold, given that the industry it belongs to largely runs on the exact practices Fennel has declined. It was named to Fast Company's World's Most Innovative Companies list in 2023. And it was built, improbably, by a man who used to hunt for dark matter.
Buy and sell publicly listed stocks and ETFs commission-free, with no deposit minimums. The subscription, not your trades, pays the bills.
See how a company scores across 200+ ESG indicators - carbon footprint, shareholder rights, human-rights protections - right beside the ticker.
Track past and upcoming shareholder ballots, follow specific proposals, and watch how the outcome lands. Proxy season, in your pocket.
25+ financial metrics including forward P/E on consensus estimates, Beta and debt-to-equity for people who like to do their homework.
Real-time news on your stocks and sectors, with AI-powered sentiment analysis to gauge which way the mood is leaning.
A quick way to understand Fennel is by what it refuses. Most of the free-app playbook is off the table on purpose - which is the entire reason there is a monthly fee.
Figures reflect Fennel's stated policies and app features. Bar widths are illustrative.
Before Fennel, Daniel Naim was a physics PhD student researching dark matter - the invisible stuff that holds galaxies together and refuses to show up on any instrument. He grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, where he saw socioeconomic inequity up close. He was living in the Bay Area in September 2020, when California's wildfires turned the sky orange, and that was the moment he decided to change direction.
The idea he chased was less about trading than about voice. Shareholder voting, he argues, is one of the most powerful and least used tools in finance - a lever that institutional investors pull constantly and retail investors mostly forget they hold. Fennel is his attempt to hand that lever to everyone else. "Retail investors," as he puts it, "had to band together and use the system in order to change it."
Wouldn't it be great to live in a world where every company's mission was aligned with the values of their investors?Daniel Naim, Founder & CEO of Fennel
Reported seed funding closing November 2022, with a later tranche in 2023. Enough to build the team and stand up a full brokerage.
Co-founder of Acorns - the micro-investing app - among Fennel's backers. A useful vote of confidence from someone who has built retail fintech before.
Institutional backers alongside individual investors including Larry Sonsini, Preston Butcher and John Rundle.
A New York-headquartered company operating the brokerage as Fennel Financials LLC - an SEC-registered broker-dealer and member of FINRA and SIPC.
Prefer to watch rather than read? Start with the app itself and the company's own channels.
Website, socials, and the app stores - all in one place.
Profile compiled from public sources including Fennel's website and blog, BusinessWire, Crunchbase and press coverage. Figures are approximate where noted. Fennel Financials LLC is a member of FINRA & SIPC. This page is informational and not investment advice.