Weāll enable limit orders are stop losses when Plus officially launches. Right now you are enjoying a preview, and youāre not paying!
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Iām not 100% sure about this, but I donāt think anyone is being charged until the 1st of October. Presumably, the Plus features go active at around that time. I signed up on Friday and was charged 77 pence. That was refunded fairly quickly and I recall seeing a screen saying Iād be charged on the 1st of October. Iād like the new features before then, but the release date is still not official and I donāt believe that the list of features for Plus is yet complete.
Edit: Viktor beat me to it, by seconds!
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Sorry to be a debby downer but I have to say that iām seriously dissapointed by the way stocks have been paywalled.
When Plus was announced, I thought it would be game-changing stock additions that would be paywalled (e.g. stocks that even HL donāt offer - certain Indian, Swiss, HK stocks, etc), but fairly bog-standard stocks are being paywalled even (e.g. Fossil Group, WD 40, Lindsell Train IT, Octopus Renewables, Halfords, etc). WD-40 for instance is a small cap, but does not meet the risk profile (i.e. itās a cash generative, staple/consumer defensive business) of a typical small cap, so Iām not sure ārestrictingā access to it can be justified the way some have said.
To be clear, I absolutely respect that freetrade have to make money - to this end, I think ISAs, SIPPs, etc absolutely justify a fee (SIPP fees can be steep, even with vanguard). But paywalling stocks? And fairly big names at that? That is so off-putting to me, especially when there are competitors offering the exact same shares for free, iād be surprised if people donāt just switch - iām increasingly tempted to do so.
Would be nice to know if anyone else feels the same way, iām baffled because I feel somewhat alone in my thinking.
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Thanks for the reply Viktor - that is reassuring to know -and that you are listening!
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212? Are there any others? Iāll be honest Iām not 100% sure how long that will last. I know they make all of their money from CFD trading but Iām not completely convinced itās a long term option.
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I think to FT the majority of their customers are still to join, and when they do, they donāt want awkward questions like āwhy is X free while Y is paywalled?ā Much easier to say X is in the AIM 100 while Y is not. Donāt forget there will be stocks leaving free every quarter, so theyāll have this awkward situation regularly. Hopefully they envisage times when theyāll move whole markets to free and keep adding new ones to plus (like you said Indian etc) but that takes months of planning, not short term.
I do reckon they could do with giving us a few months free access to plus, similar to the ISA, just to get it great. I didnāt mind the constant reminders that it would cost eventually, gave me time to decide. Depends if they can afford that I guess.
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Absolutely correct there is only so long you can keep dishing out this service for free.
I feel the same way. I understand the need for clarity but for current investors it is really a nasty move. Halfords was a popular stock during the first months of the pandemic so that is an example of making your product offering less interesting. If this is going to happen every quarter as stocks move in/out the AIM 100, it will be very confusing. I would keep the UK and US market free, and paywall other markets. That seems a better porposition than changing the product every quarter. Itās not a restaurant menu.
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We feel we found a way to make the division impartial and logical. If any of those ābog-standardā stocks make it out of the FTSE AIM All-Share and into the main indices, we will make them free of course.
Equally, we added stocks that are hard to find on other providers, and we will add small caps not even on the AIM All-Share index (examples include Okyo, Novacyt).
Longer-term, youāll find stocks from overseas, such as Hong Kong stocks, and we appreciate thatās when you might consider a Plus membership.
We always planned to monetise through what was the Alpha concept, which became Plus. Commission-free trading isnāt a loss-leading customer land grab for us, itās the core of our business that weāre building to last.
It might not be the right time for you, but keep an eye out as we build out this subscription plan!
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As an investor that thought of Freetrade as a concept before I realised someone else had the idea I always was happy to pay for a service. Just not rip off amounts.
You canāt get a world class service for free. Someone has to pay. Competitors either charge a fortune or entice people in and 70% of people with accounts loose money. Yes you can go there and maybe you wont be tempted by leveraging options and shorts. However, HL doesnāt offer that and they charge Ā£12 to buy and another Ā£12 to sell plus % on various holdings. There has to be a middle line.
As an investor who has parted with many thousands to FT hoping for a great return one day, but also because I want it to succeed in giving free trade for the many. But I also donāt want it to go bust. I am sure we all agree we donāt want that and any complications that could bring. So we need to realise that the line has to be drawn somewhere and it is always going to be hard.
FT need to really make this Plus absolutely irresistible. Iām sure they will.
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Do we have to keep going over this re 212 - they were already making money from share lending earlier this year (and presumably something from cash deposits?) and have said the invest side of things will be self sustaining this year.
I get that people donāt like CFDs (I donāt either but there are plenty of things I donāt like eg tobacco) but the moralising about 212 gets quite tiresome.
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I wasnāt moralising anything
I think this is a happy solution - we used to pay Ā£1 for instant orders and I wouldnāt mind paying Ā£1 to top up my soon to be paywalled stocks.
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What is tiresome is people judging based on a forum post somewhere.
Their UK 12/19 accounts are showing a net loss and consolidated accounts, with the Bulgarian entity included are still not available while we are approaching the end of Septemberā¦
It is also easy to show a positive gross margin while your marketing expenses/R&D/Salairies/etc. are still being subsidized by milking CFD clients. What exactly do you mean by the self sustaining business? (Positive gross margin? Positive EBITDA? Positive net income? etc.) Can you provide numbers supporting the self sustained invest part of the business? Otherwise, it seems like joining any modern ponzy scheme and claiming that everyone should be joining based on your good returns over the past months.
May be I am wrong but, please, donāt make this kind of claims without any numbers.
NKLA (Nikola) has said many things over the past years publicly! Not even in a community forum but in a press recognized worldwide. Check the recent changes to the stock price and the recent letter from the CEOā¦ Show us the numbers, please 
(edited Tom Cruiseās quote)
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That is frankly ridiculous. As I said you may not like CFDs but comparisons to Ponzi schemes and other frauds are ludicrous/childish.
You are right that we donāt have the hard evidence to support that 212s investment activity will be self sustaining but at the moment they donāt have to make any such claim. It is hardly a central pillar of their marketingā¦
I hope you apply the same ethical/critical standards for all your investmentsā¦
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Nothing about ethics. Show the numbers, please, or stop posting claims without hard evidence.
No intention to be rude and any form of competition is great.
And yes people get into investing with CFDs without understanding the numbers and the business model behind the CFD brokerage business losing their hard earned money/familyās capital etc.
Tell these people that they are ridiculous. So, staying by my comparison, sorry.
I get what you are saying, but a typical user isnāt going to be worrying about that, they are just going to choose FT / 212 based on the product offering and price
I mean I agree with you but this is literally on a thread where FT are selling access to trade small-cap AIM stocks, you could replace CFDs with gold prospectors or whatever and it still scans.
Sure, you can probably blow up your account a bit faster using 212ās CFDs or RHās options but FT is still getting casino-adjacent and any moral high ground isnāt particularly elevated in my eyes.
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As I explained your comparison is nonsense and if you think it helps against competition then you really donāt get it. You claim nothing about ethics or morality and then exactly make claims based on morality of CFDs. Weāre literally making a judgement that CFDs are significantly worse way for people to lose money (whilst discussing which illiquid or higher risk shares people can access) - how is that not about ethics or moralising?
Shouting that people should show hard evidence that they have already admitted doesnāt currently exist in the public domain doesnāt really get us anywhere. If it makes you feel better (again) you are right there is no hard evidence that 212s investment business is self sustaining - that is as self evident as saying that FT is burning through cash.
I didnāt say people losing money is ridiculous - I said your post/comparison is ridiculous.
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Thanks for your opinion. Hope you did not take my comment personally. My comparison was ethics related, my questions were all quantitative.
Letās discuss facts, numbers and think about solutions. Everything else is secondary
To me your post above without any numbers to support is ridiculous, sorry.
In my opinion, CFDs are worse than illiquid or volatile stocks because you can lose more than you started with due to leverage. There are ways to control your losses and risk with CFDs, but the consequences of misunderstanding, getting greedy, or other mistakes can be very serious.
This thread is getting super off topic 
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