It would be amazing if you could set a pool of your money to follow/mimic a portfolio of another user who has agreed (perhaps a âtipsterâ or perhaps just a friend who you think will do better than you). The moment they make a trade all the money following them would also make the same trade. This has never been possible before because charges and commissions would make it unfeasible.
This could do away with dreaded fund management charges as there are thousands of people who are at least as good as professional fund managers who would delight at the prospect of helping others for free.
You could have a searchable list of âopenâ portfolios so users can decide whose they want to follow based on their average returns, user trust rating, type of companies the portfolio is holding and has traded in the past, length of time the portfolio has been going etc.
It seems like the Team is not quite for this. As if your friend fails, you may fall apart (and blame Freetrade for it potentially). The other issue could be if you donât have as significant funds as your friend. Or if you want to keep at least one of the securities because you really like it, but your friend sells it. Or what if your friend has a life-changing event and will liquidate the entire portfolio?
It would be better to improve the core features than jumping into something that can be potentially reputation-damaging.
This is just for a pool of your money. I wanted to avoid calling it a pot but basically a pot of your money to follow another portfolio.
So if my Freetrade account has ÂŁ1000 in it I could have ÂŁ900 put in whatever companies I choose and then ÂŁ100 following Vladâs portfolio. The trades would not be matched by value but by percentage. So if your portfolio was ÂŁ1,000,000 and you just sold ÂŁ100,000 of Microsoft then my following pot would only sell ÂŁ10 of Microsoft.
Maybe the halfway house would be showing you that your friend has 10% in X, 8% in Y, and just now sold all of his Z, and so on (an idea that has been suggested elsewhere, and is how Openfolio does (or did?) it).
Youâd need to make a manual effort to replicate your friendâs portfolio in your pot of 100, and this effort would force your decision to be considered: does it align with your goals? Whyâs your friend sold everything? Etc.
For instance, you know your friendâs User ID (e.g. Adam is #1)
You follow that userâs portfolio
He gets a notification that âthis guy wants to follow your portfolio. Do you agree? Yes/Noâ
Then you can see that persons asset allocation based on the % (not ÂŁ) and have a feed of their subsequent transactions.
If you wish, you may replicate those manually.
Sounds not too bad on paper but I just cannot imagine it being anywhere on the roadmap given more core things that must be implemented (ISA, US, SIPPs, Android, Crypto, Integration with other fintech providers, API, EU expansion). And the share of users requiring such feature would be next to negligent compared to other global things listed above, so you may not expect those shortly (i.e. for years in the worst case scenario) anyway.
Maybe @Viktor, if not too busy, could rap up how far on the roadmap this could be settled.
I like the idea of being able to make your own portfolio public if you choose to. Maybe even a basic performance analysis. Some people out there enjoy being in the public eye and even helping beginners. It doesnât necessarily have to be a âcopy me and make a million next weekâ solution.
Iâd love to follow someone trades. I read it was said if you followed Warren Buffett buys I think within a week and sold them within a month of his moves youâd be pretty close to his % gains. Iâd like to have my % portfolio public and stats and would like to be able to see others who want theirs public. Doesnt need to be an auto copy feature
It may be nice as a point of interest, but itâs also quite dangerous, so I donât think Freetrade should implement it. Even if not intended, the risk is too great that if someone finds a public profile of someone who has a really high gain, they might think âthis person is good at picking stocks, Iâll copy themâ. Not everyone understands itâs likely to just be luck their gain is high, and their luck could run out at any moment.
Itâs a great idea, it is fundamentally like eToro, where you can copy trades, you donâe need the same value of portfolio, but based on %. You can also choose to copy open trades (trades held before you followed) or just new trades from the follow date onwards.
Itâll be a great incentive for those being followed to, to maybe get reduced fees or no fees like instant orders or isa costs once they hit a certain amount of followers. This would encourage them to be ethical as well.