Hi @Clairejay,
Thanks for raising this. We’ve started looking into UK fractional trades, however, it’s too early yet to provide you with an exact launch date. Watch this space for more updates to come soon!
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It’s not on the current slate of jobs they’re working on. I can’t speak for the FT team but the European roll out looks like their clear project. From a growth / revenue stand point fractional UK stocks are ‘nice to have’ while the European launch is critical.
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I’m sure I’m not the only one keeping their fingers crossed for this to happen soon. I’m aware that the European expansion is top of the to do list, but is UK fractional shares somewhere close to the top of the to do list.
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They said in an AMA they had to build an entire new product for this, with the potential to then sell to other brokers. I think the job is far more complicated than US where they work through Drivewealth.
Wonder if EU shares would be fractional, depnding on how that works?
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EU fractionals would be a good addition. And maybe some Nikkei whilst we’re at it
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I’m still hoping for fractional U.K. shares.
It’s mainly for the higher value ETF’s like EQQQ.
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Is there a rough estimates date when this could be worked on?
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Any word on this?
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I’ve been toying with the idea of buying some LTI but the £1,000+ unit cost puts me off because I couldn’t add to it monthly. Generally, there are not that many UK stocks with such a high unit cost but it would be great to have fractional UK shares – after all Freetrade aims to make investing accessible.
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I think uk fractional shares would be a great feature as it would allow people to put an exact figure in each company. ie £10 or £100 pounds in each.
I would imagine fractional uk shares would also make the pie feature possible like some of the other brokers do.
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100% agree!!! UK fractional and pies would be a HUGE win for casual investors and others alike. It really would be such a huge benefit and should have been a higher priority in my view. Even if only given as an incentive to buy plus and locking it in there.
Nothing would be better for me than being able to essentially set up my own ETF and not have to think of what full price shares fit into my monthly deposit.
Well, that and auto invest of dividends which would need fractional UK to be meaningful.
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Yeah that’s a great point!
You could for example make your own ftse 100 etf , however you could remove any stocks that you feel are overvalued/ unethical etc.
It would be interesting to have several pies, ie dividend stocks, growth stocks, uk stocks, us stocks - enabling you to compare the performance of each and spot current trends in the markets.
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Kind of. ETFs get the proportions correct. You can’t leave the self constructed basket alone if you want to mimic an index - you will have to regularly interfere i.e. daily.
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I didn’t mean to mimic, I meant to make your own where you can add a company or take out as you please. And as Cal35 says if you feel like you don’t want one for any reason you can move it out.
The potential for customer satisfaction is massive. I know I would invest much more on the FT platform with this method and if another did this well/better, then I would seriously consider moving all there.
SIPP having this option would almost certainly make me consider going to another company and closing down my FT, as to me no drawdown options or movement on it and the fractional options are very important.
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I do this with another broker. I’ve got a Fundsmith pie which I invest a set amount in weekly. Everything’s automated, dividends are reinvested and it cuts out the fund’s 1% fee which is great.
Performance has been broadly the same. I update the allocations twice a year in line with the fund’s annual/semi-annual reports and try to avoid rebalancing.
However, as @bitflip points out, it’s far from a perfect solution and some intervention is required.
To replicate an index closely, for example, you’d need to regularly rebalance. FX fees, stamp duty, spread etc can then eat into any savings.
There’s also an opportunity cost to keeping track of everything. For instance, it’s probably not worth the hassle to create a Ftse 100 pie because you can pick up an ETF for 0.07%.
I agree that this is something that FT should prioritise though.
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Sorry I may not have worded my response very well.
I would not actually want an index tracker fund, but I would like to have something similar so that I can cherry pick which stocks I want within a particular index (for example I may only choose 50 stocks from the ftse 100 within my own ftse 100 pie).
This way you may be able to outperform the market rather than follow it, 
.
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I understand what you mean … and what you say is more than reasonable. When I said mimic I was referring to the person after you who commented. He said something about his “own ftse100 etf”. I get what you are saying you set up your fund and your money quietly and invisibly distributes itself. Makes imminent sense for some one who wants to do that.
(I wouldn’t call it an ETF though … because it isn’t an Exchange tradeable fund)
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Ok. But the point is that is that the FTSE100 is the FTSE100 it is fully defined, changing the stocks in it by definition means you are not creating “your own FTSE100”. You are creating your own super duper fund - and that’s fine.
Good luck.
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Haha yeah I will have to think of a fund name, I hope it’s super duper 
.
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