Okay I do understand the need to make money, but what I do not understand is why dollars need to be converted back to pounds when I sell a stock, only for me to immediately convert them back to dollars again as I buy the next one. It seems so unnecessary that it’s diffiult To justify.
I’m simply going to stop trading us stocks now, unfortunately, or maybe go back to UK ones where I only have to pay the 0.5% stamp duty on the buy, and nothing on the sell.
I would have thought there’s as much if not more benefit in allowing people like me to leave our currency in dollars, as we’ll be trading very regularly and paying the £1 for the instant buy and another for the instant sell consistently.
But that’s just one mans opinion. If day trading is not what the platform is meant for, or is frowned upon or anything, I may have to just look elsewhere.
I think it would be difficult to have one size fits all. For transparency it may be good idea to offer paid services like multi currency account (assuming reg permitting as some others provide same). For some users this would be more beneficial.
A paid service offering this feature isn’t the worst idea. I’d rather pay a fee once or once per month than pay the 0.9% several times per day (which is how often i’d trade if not for the fee)
I trade a bit in my ISA, not really day trade, but I will buy and sell stocks if I can make a decent medium term profit rather than just hold everything forever. This will be easier with freetrade, as with HL the profit has to be big enough to justify both buy and sell commission
When Freetrade Alpha launches it will have cheaper transaction costs, free ISA and other benefits for around a tenner a month. I don’t think any details are sorted, but that’s the general idea and it’s planned for later this year.
I believe ISA’s have to be in pounds, which is a limitation. Not sure if you’re using an ISA?
At the moment I couldn’t find any other ISA provider with lesser FX fees, when I purchased GOOGL in iweb isa I was down by almost 2%. I know it pains but there is no other way.
For active traders with large deposits there are better options. For example on Interactive Brokers,
If account deposits are more than $20k then, there are no maintenance fees, you can keep money in USD or do whatever you want. and transaction fee is $1 per trade.
FT could have a cap total fees per year in thousands , and might attract mutli-million account holders? don’t know may be they are with better deals already!
I’m not disputing the exchange rate, it’s reasonable and fair when you think about it. My issue is with having to pay it over and over when i’m only using my currency to buy us stocks. I should have to pay the fee once to buy my dollars, and once more eventually when I want to withdraw.
Would love to see storing in dollars…but as you said there at least has to be euros anyway for Ireland et al
Edit: Would like to see the ability to store stocks in the currency that the stock is listed in. Pounds(£) for LSE, Dollar ($) for NYSE etc. Possibly another revenue stream for Freetrade in the form of currency conversion.
Storing in dollars would be awesome for US Stocks!
I think also when you buy a US Stock, knowing the dollar price as well as the GBP price you paid for the stock. Purely the information which is captured somewhere to be presented. When I put my stocks into a portfolio tool I have to put the dollar price, which I have no idea what it is, and assume it with a basic conversion.
As it is infact being converted to dollars to purchase, then knowing the dollar figure as well as the £ figure and then the 0.45% rate figure as individual figures would help.
, and might attract mutli-million account holders? don’t know may be they are with better deals already!