First time buying shares can anyone explain why the share price is 17p on here but looking at the stock exchange and the company the share price is £17. I’m so confused.
Probably you’re not looking at the same “currency”.
Prices in Freetrade are always in GBP (and of course the real-time shows the share price in the actual currency).
Prices on the LSE are either denominated in GBP (what we’re used to) or GBX (pence). Typically, almost everything is in GBX, for me only VUSA and VGOV are in GBP and all my other shares are in GBX.
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Also, as a warning… If the share price is that low, do more research on the company to check the liquidity, as you might well find the bid-ask spread is very large. Also, setting up limit bids on Freetrade can only be done to £0.01 granularity, which will make them pretty much useless for this stock, so you’ll have to just rely on market orders. For stocks with low liquidity, this can cause nasty surprises…
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Thanks for the reply the company is helium one global It’s still saying price 17p but £17 on stock exchange
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Ahh right so it’s pence not pound I get it now not sure I’m going to be any good at this.
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Lesson one of many! 
(Welcome to the wonderful world of investing!)
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It is a very easy mistake and very common when people first see so don’t beat yourself up 
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Don’t beat yourself up over this. Seriously. As much as I like some of Freetrade’s decisions very much, I do think this one was a mistake. They decided to show things in GBP in the app, instead of the GBX (pennies) which is the industry standard. This was done to make things less confusing for users. What they’ve actually done is confused new users like yourself. It is a shame and I wish they’d at least give us the option to view prices in the way others display them.
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Helpful comment!
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Thank you Mike. It’s always nice to have ones contributions noticed.
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I was confused. How come the LSE uses GBX in this day and age?! 
As far as I can understand, pence are fractions of the unit £, the same way cents are fractions of $ and €
Why is the LSE in the XIX century?!
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I suspect the use of GBX is a holdover from pre-decimalisation (in 1971). In pre-decimal times, it would have been much simpler for stockbrokers to do calculations if everything was in pence. Imagine calculating a commission of 4% on ÂŁ2 3s 7d (ÂŁ2.18 in new money)! And old habits (and systems) die hard.
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???
What on earth is this?! Fractions?! Shillings?!
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Like in a Dickens novel, but in real life!
Surely overdue a visit from the spirit of future xmas is
LOl, don’t worry I did the exact same thing as you when I started. Took me a while to figure it out.
Thats 523 pennies, so the commission is 21 pennies or 1s 9d
what is 1s? 1 shilling?
what is 1d?
how many d in 1s?
how many s in 1d? - I feel this would be a fraction, so don’t bother calculating if it is
how many s in 1 penny?
This looks so confusing
ÂŁ s d are pounds, shillings and pence. 12 pence in a shilling, and 20 shillings or 240 pence in a pound.
No wonder they used pence to price stocks.
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