[ENTIRE US MARKET OPEN 🇺🇸✅] 1st February 2021: Expect disruptions to US buy/sell orders today - what we’re doing to keep everything running

Freetrade Chat 🔥
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The team has been working throughout the weekend to invent a technical solution following the unexpected decision last Friday by our FX provider’s bank to severely limit our order volume.

We will start to roll this solution out when the US market opens today.

What to expect and what we’re doing:

  • You will be able to place sell orders on all US stocks from 2:30 PM today, as normal. We do everything in our power, so we don’t have to prioritise orders, but if and when we have to, we’ll prioritise orders of people wanting to exit their positions.
  • We will enable buy orders on US stocks in phases. This means that buys on highly volatile stocks will be enabled only once we are confident in the integrity of the solution we are implementing. We’ll enable stocks by starting with most widely held ones, and we’ll enable stocks such as GME and AMC only once we are fully confident. That can take some time. We’ll keep you posted.
  • You are able to place a sell order on any US stock before market open, and it will execute in a batch at 3 PM as normal.
  • You are able to place a buy order on a small number of US stocks before market open. These are the same stocks that had buys enabled on Friday. We will batch execute buys that you place now later than normal, but within US market hours. There is a chance that your Basic Order to buy a US stock will get cancelled, if technical issues arise. buy If you have placed an order you have until 3pm to cancel this order.
  • We saw an extremely high amount of deposits coming from Apple/Google Pay. To continue running deposits as smoothly as possible, we had to decrease the lifetime limit to ÂŁ250. We may have to decrease it further, potentially switching it off temporarily. We kindly ask you to please use open banking. We are aiming to process deposits faster for you than the usual 2-4 business hours, targeting to do so every 30 minutes.

You can see the list of stocks available to trade below, and we’ll keep this list updated:

[Removed, all stocks available]

We are expecting potential market-level disruptions during the trading day including circuit breakers and rejected orders as a result of the extraordinary volatility that we have seen in recent weeks.

Our US trading partner informed us that due to the unprecedented market conditions, they may have to place temporary buy restrictions on stocks such as GME and AMC.

Please remember that there are additional risks associated with investing in such market conditions and that your capital is at risk.

We will update this thread with any new information.

UPDATE 1, 1:01 PM: We added a warning that Basic Orders to buy US stocks might get cancelled if technical issues arise.

UPDATE 1, 15:37 PM: All US stocks except those stocks in the media headlines ($GME, $AMC, $BB and $NOK) are available again. Give us more time. We’re working on it.

UPDATE 3 4:53 PM:

UPDATE 4 5:11 PM:

Please note our US trading partner is doing its best to keep buys going. They are assessing the ongoing buy volume, and they may have to temporarily shut down buys on AMC. We will keep you posted as always.

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We appreciate the update Viktor. Thanks to you and all the team for your hard work this weekend.

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It looks like restrictions from the US trading partner on GME and AMC are a given rather than a maybe. Let’s hope they let the people trade!

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I always think the minute they stop trading in anything you’re trying to control the outcome for personal gain… (not saying this is a FT thing it’s obvious a wider issue due to what’s going on) but let people just buy and sell. Big people loose they’ve obviously been to risky and not paid enough attention to the little guys.

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They are doing their best as well.

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Thanks for the update and your hard work.

I really hope that sell orders on all US stocks are kept flowing, even if that means restricting buying.

Cheers

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Hey @Viktor - is this new limit imposed by your FX partner a permanent restriction? If so, are you looking at more long term solutions on top of this work-around that you’ve been building over the weekend?

Edit - and obviously, keep up the great work! The excellent comms inspire real confidence and set you apart from the crowd.

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Hey @Viktor - Is this update going to be rolled out in the app?

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Thanks Viktor. Brilliant clear communication. Best of luck and well done to you and the team for all the hard work this weekend!!

Fingers crossed it works as planned. :crossed_fingers:t2::crossed_fingers:t2:

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It’s rolling in one minute.

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ETA on Tesla please?

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Excellent communication FT team - keep up the great work and keep the faith alive

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Will money settle in usual timeframes or should we expect disruption to the normal 2-3 days to settle?

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You know the US market doesn’t open until 2.30 pm?

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Thanks for the update, but this doesn’t resolve some business critical issues.

How can your vendor switch off FX business immediately and without notice?

Was FT aware that this was likely to happen?

If they were not aware, how can you enter into such a contract that allows unilateral withdrawal with no notice?

How do we investors get assurance that this won’t happen when we really need it. (eg market is breaking down) and we want to exit our risk?

And so on and so on. The updates on the work arounds are nice, but they don’t address the bigger issues.

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Great Work! I hope the GME stock will be added soon to please all new inwestors

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Thanks for the update and hard work from the team!

Also thank you for including PSTH :pray:

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This is an example of proper communication: you communicate transparently what you are doing, what will happen, how it affects the customer and the company. The difference with RH could not be bigger. I won’t be trading today but will keep an eye on the market. Exciting times.

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As soon as physically possible. We will update the spreadsheet. Tesla is rather widely held FWIW, so won’t be the last one - GME and AMC and their “peers” will be.

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