Feature request: ability to select to buy or sell by number of shares or cash amount

[Amina]

Thanks for clarifying this ! This is good to know

Will this only be an option for Freetrade plus ?

[adam]

@James2

Edit : Having [DEBUNKED] in thread title, doesn’t seem useful.
Also closing this thread as someone suggested, also doesn’t seem useful (as not everyone visiting this forum will know the answer to this question).

Agree the thread title is terrible. I think the most accurate (new) thread title would be “Feature request: ability to select to buy or sell by no of shares or cash amount”.

[adam]

@Amina

Will this only be an option for Freetrade plus ?

TBD, I’d encourage everyone to hold off judgement until they try the new buying and selling user flows. They look great and user testing feedback has been very positive.

I was just playing with the US limit order flows and I’m sure lots of our community members will be happy to know that US limit orders placed on the exchange order book can only be done in whole shares anyways (and that will be an option!)

[Jonny]

@adam

I was just playing with the US limit order flows

it’s in internal testing already?!

[Kierzy (Kieran Stuart)]

One thing that I find quite hard to do with FT atm is replicate my portfolio on 3rd party apps. I created a watchlist on the HL app which replicates my FT portfolio as that is also where my SIPP lives and it’s nice to have both in one view… unfortunately HL won’t let you have fractions of shares so it either rounds up or down… so now my view is not quite as accurate.

Yahoo finance does accept fractions though.

Another, and unrelated thing I guess, is that when I try to replicate my FT portfolio on the Yahoo Finance app (which is great for news and alerts and a net worth widget). I can’t see how much I spent in $$ on my US stocks, which is what yahoo finance expects as an input. This means that I just kinda guess, but then it doesn’t give me an accurate ROI report either.

2 ways to solve I think:
Short term:

• Show how much the average cost was in both USD (including the +.45%) and £ so that users can put their portfolios into other apps. You’d probably have to cache the $ cost at time of purchase due to currency fluctuations (I suspect you probably already have that data).
• Allow whole share buying at some point (probably less of an issue).

Long term: add widgets, news and research data to the stock information so that people don’t need to use other apps as much.

Regarding research… would it be possible to team up with Genuine Impact so that you can see their data but in your app… maybe would be a premium feature and you can share revenue or license cost with them. Feels like a match made in heaven to me…

[Raul (Ann Onymuz)]

@adam

I was just playing with the US limit order flows and I’m sure lots of our community members will be happy to know that US limit orders placed on the exchange order book can only be done in whole shares anyways (and that will be an option!)

So, if limit orders only work with whole shares, it necessarily follows that limit orders can’t be done with fractionals.

Why?

Is this a circumstancial choice made by Freetrade? If so, is this a first approach that will be changed later on?

Is this something no broker can deliver due to regulation?

I’d very much like limit orders with fractionals, regulations allowing it.

[Kierzy (Kieran Stuart)]

Foreign Exchange Rate Fee

Hey, just to clear this up as it has been communicated before but appreciate not everyone has read all our blogs etc. Prior to launching fractional shares, all US stock orders were routed to London Stock Exchange market makers. That’s the same way all UK orders are executed. The LSE market makers quote US stocks in GBP. Embedded within that quote is an FX conversion. The rate includes a 0.45% spread over the spot rate. It wasn’t very visible for users as we could only show the GBP price quoted…

Just saw that since fractional shares release, we now are showing average cost USD via the contract note… legends.

[adam]

@Raul

So, if limit orders only work with whole shares, it necessarily follows that limit orders can’t be done with fractionals.

What you’ll be able to do with fractionals is similar - execute a market order when the stock hits a certain price level you specify in advance.

[Raul (Ann Onymuz)]

@adam

What you’ll be able to do with fractionals is similar - execute a market order when the stock hits a certain price level you specify in advance.

i.e. limit orders are available for fractionals but they have a different name?, or can only be done with some tweaks specific to them?

I guess we gonna have a blog post about it when the time comes. A few weeks or months I suppose. I’ll keep an eye on the beta testing sign up form

[Antidev]

I’m not an expert on this but I think the difference is that a limit order is held on the exchange/market maker, whereas I guess with this fractional version FT facilitate this for you by holding your order until your price is reached. Then releasing it to the exchange as whole share or taking it from whatever left over fraction they have from a previous order.

All seems fair enough. Its probably not even possible to send a fractional order to the exchange, so it’s actually quite a useful feature FT are providing.

[Raul (Ann Onymuz)]

Cool.

I’m a complete ignorant. Hence I question

[Mani]

RE: US fractional shares: I think the app could be updated to display whole US shares to stay uniform with the rest but display the fractionals within the detailed card when you actually click on the stock? that could work??

OK, this might be a daft question but to hell with it… when (it is still happening right?) UK shares are available as fractions will our existing shares show in their fractional state? from what I understand there is a bit of rounding up / down when we currently buy UK stocks in the app… so that would mean our whole UK shares will suddenly show the fractional value we also own??.. right??

[Master-Sharefu (Stevie)]

@Mani

so that would mean our whole UK shares will suddenly show the fractional value we also own??

My thinking is that the rounding up or down when you buy UK stocks is done on the amount. So whatever amount you enter FT will let you buy the number of shares you can afford. Your amount is adjusted to the nearest full share cost.I doubt we currently own any fractions of UK stocks, but i may be wrong.
If we did get UK fractionals then it would start to show any fractional value from your next purchase.

[Mani]

What you’ve said makes sense to me… would be nice to get some formal confirmation from one of the teams though

[mj-investor]

Hi Mani,

Please see my screenshot it shows Intel which I bought before US fractionals came into play and also AMD which I bought before and after fractionals.

All the shares you own before fractions will look like Intel and the ones after will look like AMD

[don_quixote]

@adam

Giving the user an option to buy by no of shares or cash, and being able to sell by no of shares or cash, would be a new feature to the app. I think it is something you will see in the not too distant future though, along with more order types

This is it, end of this thread imo

[Mani]

Thanks @mj-investor, that makes it much clearer. I guess this will also be the case when they add the ability to buy fractional UK stocks too.