The only benefit of a basic order are that you can queue it up when the market is closed. Itās essentially a scheduled instant order.
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But a scheduled instant order for the end of the next trading day? Correct?
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I think basic orders are at 3pm every day.
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Hi all,
Just recently got into investing and Iām loving it so far. Iāve started with a couple of
ETFs (VWRL, ISF & VHYL) for a mixture mainly of US/UK spread, which Iām happy with so far. 2 questions, 1st do you think Iāve chosen right? If not any recommendations? Secondly, whatās the easiest way balance a portfolio? My initial plan is 60/30/10 respectively. How do I go about doing this is?
My plan is 5-10 years, have enough saved for a house in a LISA and have a few K as a safety net, but looking to invest Ā£200 a month.
Sorry for been such a noob,
Many thanks
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Hi, the ETF youāve chosen are fairly safe with little risks in my opinion. However the ISF stock for me personally is not something I would choose (this is entirely my point of view please do your own research). The reason why I would not choose it, is due to the historical records of the FTSE 100 growth which has stagnated and hasnāt seen much growth when compared to the FTSE 250 or the S&P500. Other than that your 60/30/10 seems fine with me, seems risk averse if that is what youāre going for.
And again please do your own research take my opinion of the FTSE 100 as a grain of salt, this is not an advice I am stating my own point of view. Hope this helps!
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i agree with this. Besides home bias, there is no reason why one would weight the UK higher than is already included in a world tracker.
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Hi everyone, I have another beginners question. Iāve been reading about when to take profits and there seems to be some agreement that a gain of 20-25 percent might be a good time to sell and move on.
Iāve had some beginners luck and two of my holdings were up 20 percent which made me think maybe I should sell them for a modest gain and move on. However Iām torn because I think these companies are very strong and maybe I should continue to pound cost average and keep buying shares in them.
I know this is a hot topic and would love to her some views on this ā20-25 percent gains ruleā.
Sorry if this has been asked before but as someone who is new to trading, and finds this app fascinating: How often do people usually check the app to monitor their current portfolio value? Is this weekly, daily, multiple times in a day? Or does it vary?
At the moment as I am new I am looking at the app probably every hour or so, however I am currently on furlough and have little else to do, and spend the time flicking between discussions on the forum to the stock on the app to help understand the language and opinions being used regarding certain stocks.
Once covid blows up, so during normal periods, how often do you check the app? And what is it youāre taking note of?
Thanks!
Hi Aimee, fellow beginner investor here just sharing my experience here on Freetrade so far.
Iāve also had what youād call beginners luck because i began investing in February and March when everything seemed to be on sale. So in recent weeks iāve had a couple of stocks gain exponentially, over 20-25% in some cases. As i gain more insight in the stock market iāve begun to formulate what id like my portfolio to look like, whereas in the beginning it was quite random - hence my little brush with Aston Martin. I bought the stock at above Ā£4 and its now worth 65p!!
I say that to say this, my investment strategy now is to invest in companies with strong fundamentals that i believe in, -for the long term, so in that case iād continue to hold those shares and pound cost average in future. To quote PpcIan those are my āride or die stocksā. The more experienced Freetraders on here would be better equipped to explain the best way to diversify your portfolio and limit risk.
So with that in mind the ā20-25 percent gains ruleā is a good method if youāre inclined to follow it and control your exposure to risk.
However, with some of the stocks i made decent gains on i was torn on whether to sell and move on, take the profit out, or hold. Eventually what i did was take an equal amount to my initial investment out and deployed it to my preferred stocks while still holding a position in the other company but with none of my actual investment at risk. This is particularly easy to do with fractional shares on US stocks but you can still apply the same principle to UK shares, youād just have to sell a certain number of full shares. Iāve also done this with some of my preferred shares when i felt that they appeared to be overpriced, not at any specific percentage but just a gain that i thought was unsustainable. As i slowly build my portfolio iāve also got rid of certain stocks that i bought in the early days if they had good gains and deployed that cash elsewhere too.
At this moment in time i donāt have the experience and definitely cant afford to try and time/game the market for gains and move on to the next opportunity and so on but i still do try and expose myself to a little bit of risk with amounts iām comfortable with, thatās really where i see the 20-25 percent rule working well. In my case its difficult to use that rule because as i said i started buying some of them in March at prices i now realise were heavily discounted so even if they have gained more than 20% they are still not at the levels they were in February! As a result i have stocks that are gaining 35% (GGP), 90% (OCDO), 99% (RTN) 
and so on. I had one share in Beyond Meat that gained over 100% and made me just over Ā£50, at 20% it would have been more like Ā£16.
Its a mixed bag and these three are my best performing stocks atm, the only regret i have is not buying way more that i did instead of the few pounds i put into each one, but thatās what i could afford at the time and probably was also how much i was willing to (risk?) invest at the time. Now imagine if iād come out at 20-25%, id be losing all the gains that have continued to grow as the stock market inexplicably continues to rise despite the economy being at a standstill for 2 months and a global pandemic that is still very much a threat still around.
So you can use the gains rule as a guiding principle to investing but i believe a lot of research and DD is required because then you can make more informed decisions with regards to selling or continuing to hold your shares.
If i ever have the liquidity to take on a bit more risk i would definitely use the 20 -25% gains rule but for the rest of my investments, its ride or die till the end and i will keep on investing more into them bit by bit even if they gain more than 20%.
Sorry this answer ended up being so long but i just wanted to share my own experience and thoughts with other beginners out there so i hope it helps 
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Thank you so much for sharing your experience, itās really helpful and insightful! Itās given me some reassurance and a lot of food for thought. The longer the reply, the better. On a random aside I absolutely love Ocado!
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This morning while the price was moving downward I did attempted to buy some Greencore shares. However, even if I typed in more then the buy price should have been the attempt been refused every time I tried to submit my order.
The price was somewhat of 1.86 and letās say I put Ā£5 in, screen confirmed it will be 2 shares. Bounced. So I did try Ā£5.50 but that bounced even though the priced of the share dropped.
Is there a reason I was unsuccessful? How you guys buy when the price moves quite quickly?
Did I just make a classic beginners mistake? I just bought into an All World tracker fund which is mostly (but not completely) made up of US companiesā¦I also have an S&P 500 tracker. The top holdings are different but am I essentially buying the American market twice?
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@aimee Quick answer: yes.
Which global fund was it? The all world trackers are heavily weighted to the US as they are the biggest market. I think both VWRL and IWDG are about 60% weighted towards the US, so they will naturally include holdings that are also found in your S&P 500 tracker.
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Hey @Gaz92 thanks for letting me know, thatās very helpful. It was a high div fund with the ticker VHYL. I think it is also weighted about 60% or so towards the US.
Thereās more info about VHYL here: Vanguard Asset Management | Personal Investing in the UK
Only 39% are US companies, so thereās less duplication than I first thought (comparing to a āstandardā All World tracker).
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Thatās great news!
Am I right in thinking that when I buy shares of an american company, traded in an american stock market, it will be accounted for in the UK imports; and, incidentally, when I receive a dividend payment from that very same company, that will be accounted for as a UK export? Will it be registered, in aggregate with millions of other similar operations hence anonymised, in the balance of payments statement?
It would be recognised in the financial accounts, as you have purchased a foreign asset, rather than as an import/export in the current account.
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Yes. And you can open an ISA account every tax year up to Ā£20K per year 
@Freetrade_Team Is there any way I can put a āstop lossā on any of my buy or sell trades using the app? TIA =)