Beginner’s Guide to NISA and Online Brokerages 2026 — Start Building Wealth with Small, Long-Term, Diversified Investing

Once you grasp NISA’s “two allowances,” you won’t get lost

NISA is a national program that makes the gains from your investments tax-free. Normally, when you profit from stocks or investment trusts (funds), roughly 20% is withheld as tax. For example, on a ¥100,000 gain you keep only about ¥80,000. If the same gain happens inside a NISA account, that tax is zero. The longer you invest, the more this “20%” gap snowballs.

The NISA that was renewed in 2024 greatly expanded the annual investment allowance and removed the time limit on how long you can hold assets tax-free. Structurally, it is a two-tier setup of the “Tsumitate Investment Allowance” and the “Growth Investment Allowance”, and once you understand how these two differ in character, it quickly becomes clear how you should use them.

You can use these two allowances both in the same year. A common combination is, for example, “monthly recurring purchases of investment trusts in the Tsumitate allowance, and the occasional individual stock or high-dividend ETF that catches your eye in the Growth allowance.” That said, what a beginner should start with is, overwhelmingly, the Tsumitate Investment Allowance. If you set up automatic monthly purchases of a low-cost investment trust here, you can basically leave it alone afterward. The specific annual limits and the lifetime tax-free ceiling may be revised, so be sure to check the latest figures on the official pages of the Financial Services Agency or your brokerage.

In areas you don’t know well, “not researching” is also an option

This article sums up how beginners should choose in a few words, “wide, cheap, and large,” because there is a way to set things up that won’t go badly wrong even if you don’t work out the details. If you try to understand everything before deciding, you usually never start. So the idea is to start with a safe setup first and look into the details when you need to.

The same trade-off works for shopping.If you have no particular attachment to a category, settle for the standard item, the standard grade, or a mid-range model. If you research, you can find something slightly better or slightly cheaper, but it is not unusual for a purchase to be one where the time spent researching and the mental energy spent deliberating outweigh that difference. You get to choose where to spend your time.

Conversely, you can concentrate your research time only on the areas you care about. If you try to choose everything carefully, you tend to end up doing everything half-heartedly. Having one safe default answer lets you avoid bringing indecision into the process, and you can put that effort into the purchases you really want to be particular about (→ How to tell when a standard product is enough).

Why NISA is now basically opened at an “online brokerage”

A NISA account can be held at only one financial institution per person. You can open one at a bank, but banks handle a limited number of investment trusts and tend to steer you toward high-cost products. Online brokerages are popular with beginners today because they combine the following three points.

• A far larger selection: Each company offers a wide range even among products eligible for the Tsumitate allowance, and the popular low-cost funds can be bought at almost every one. At a bank you may be able to choose from only a few to a dozen or so.
• Small, automatic, and easy to keep up: Setting up automatic monthly purchases from ¥100 a month, paid by credit card, takes just a few minutes. You don’t forget to buy, and you don’t need to log in every month.
• Points work twice: Credit card recurring purchases earn points, and some brokerages also give points based on your holding balance. You can also use “point investing,” putting points you have collected from everyday shopping into your investments.

Put the other way, when choosing an online brokerage, you can assume you can open an account anywhere, and the criteria narrow down to ① low fund costs (the trust fee) ② points returned on credit card recurring purchases ③ compatibility with the points ecosystem you normally use ④ how easy the app is to use. The next section looks concretely at how the major companies differ in character.

How the major online brokerages differ — choose by ecosystem

You can open accounts at several brokerages, but a NISA account can be at only one company. That is exactly why choosing by “which points you collect every day” is the way you are least likely to regret it. Here is a summary of where the representative companies stand.

For example, if your everyday shopping is mainly on Rakuten Ichiba, choose Rakuten Securities; if you use Ponta or au PAY, choose au Kabucom Securities; if you hold a Sumitomo Mitsui Card and collect V Points, choose SBI Securities. Choosing in line with your daily life like this means fewer missed points. The return rate on credit card recurring purchases changes with the card’s tier and with revisions, so check the current figures on each company’s and card’s official site.

How to choose an investment trust — beginners: “wide, cheap, large”

What you buy with the Tsumitate allowance is an investment trust (fund). An investment trust pools money from many people, manages it together, and diversifies automatically for you, like an assortment pack. There are thousands of them, but a beginner doesn’t have many points to check. An easy way to remember is “wide, cheap, large”.

① Is it widely diversified?

A product concentrated in one country or a few companies’ stocks sinks hard if that target stumbles. The standard picks for beginners are index-type funds: “all-world equity” funds that diversify across stocks around the world, or “US equity” funds (such as those tracking the S&P500) that invest broadly in major US companies. Types that track well-known stock indexes you hear about in the news have the advantage of transparent contents and price moves that are easy to understand.

② Is it cheap? (trust fee)

Investment trusts carry a cost called the “trust fee,” which is deducted the whole time you hold them. A fee of around 0.1% a year versus around 1% a year makes a big difference in what you end up with over the long term. Among products that track the same index, the contents are nearly identical but the costs often differ, so the rule is to choose the one with the lower trust fee among similar products.

③ Is it large? (net assets)

“Net assets” shows how much money has gathered in that fund. A fund that is extremely small or keeps shrinking year after year risks having its management discontinued (early redemption). One that is large and whose net assets keep rising is a reassuring sign that many people have chosen it.

The actual flow from opening an account to starting recurring purchases

Many people brace themselves, thinking “this sounds difficult,” but with an online brokerage’s NISA recurring investing, the actual time spent is under an hour in total if you have a smartphone. Here are the steps, along with the points where people tend to get stuck.

1. Apply for a brokerage account and a NISA account at the same timeApply through the app or site of the brokerage you chose by ecosystem. A general account and a NISA account can be opened together. If you have a My Number card, identity verification can be completed online, which makes it fast.
2. Wait for the NISA review to finishBecause the government checks the “one account per person” rule for NISA, opening can take from a few days to a few weeks. Even if the general account opens first, purchases under the NISA allowance have to wait until the review is complete. Don’t rush; just wait.
3. Set up credit card recurring purchasesWhen you register a credit card for payment, you earn points according to the amount you invest. So that you don’t miss out on the points, consider registering a card before choosing to pay from a cash account.
4. Choose a fund in the “Tsumitate Investment Allowance” and set up monthly purchasesChoose a low-cost index-type fund that meets “wide, cheap, large” and set up automatic purchases at an amount that isn’t a strain. You can start from ¥100 a month.
5. After that, basically leave it aloneOnce it’s set up, it buys automatically every month. You don’t need to watch the price moves every day. Reviewing your purchase amount and balance once or twice a year is enough.

The biggest waste here is opening an account and leaving it without setting up recurring purchases. The goal of opening an account is to get as far as “setting up your first automatic purchase.” A small amount is fine, so get the setup done.

How much each month? Deciding an amount you can keep up

The amount of the recurring purchase is what beginners worry about most. In short, “an amount, out of money you don’t plan to use for several years, that doesn’t strain your household budget” is everything. Investing too much leads to anxiety when the market falls and to quitting partway. An amount you can’t sustain is meaningless, however sound the reasoning.

• First secure an emergency fund: Several months of living expenses to prepare for job loss or sudden costs should be held in cash, not invested. This is the foundation.
• Manage money you’ll need soon separately: Money you plan to use within one to two years (a down payment on a home, tuition, car inspection, and so on) should not go into investments whose prices move.
• Use an amount that’s manageable from the remaining spare money: Keep it within a range where you can say “my life wouldn’t be shaken even if this went to zero.” Starting small is fine.
• Increase it once you’re used to it: After half a year to a year, once you’re used to price moves, adjust by increasing it only in bonus months or adding the amount of a raise. There is no need to aim for the upper limit from the start.

If you keep buying steadily even while the market is falling, you can buy more units when prices are low, and your average purchase price gets smoothed out (so-called dollar-cost averaging). This is a big advantage of recurring investing: you don’t have to guess “when to buy.” That is exactly why not stopping when prices fall is the key to recurring investing.

For those afraid of losses — how to live with risk

The most important thing in investing is not “growing your money” but “being able to keep going.” If you get scared by price moves and quit partway, you can’t make use of NISA’s strengths of long-term, diversified, recurring investing at all. Holding the following attitudes will help you stay calm even when the market is rough.

• There is no principal guarantee: You can lose money when prices fall. That is why money you need in the short term should not be put in from the start.
• Don’t sell in a panic over price moves: If you get scared and cash out when prices fall, you only lock in the loss. In many cases the best move is simply to keep holding.
• See a drop as a “bargain sale”: If you keep buying regularly, a falling market is also a chance to stock up on units cheaply.
• Ease the swings with diversification and time: The more you spread across regions, assets, and timing of purchases, the gentler the peaks and valleys of price moves become.

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