I know this probably has been commented on elsewhere but i’m posting this anyway!
It’s pretty basic functionality to offer the user a bid/ask price and give the user a short period of time to confirm the offer. I’ve had a couple of situations where I have been quoted a price on FT and then the actual purchase price was about 5% higher. I wouldn’t have accepted that spread given the choice and it screwed up my DCA on a couple of holdings.
I understand about the spread. I understand that FT finds the mid point and secures the best price at any given moment.
Ultimately the user should have the final decision over whether the “best price” is good enough!
How are you suppose to trade properly if you don’t have transparency or control over the price you’re paying?!
This is such obvious fundamental functionality, i’m surprised i’m even having to write this.
Please consider, it would enormously improve the FT UX!
Just to mention, you were never quoted a price since freetrade doesn’t offer quotes. Which as you point out by making this thread it would be a great idea for them to offer quotes.
No new broker offers quotes that I’m aware of. It would be good to have a list of who does offer them, in only aware of HL as I’ve used them before.
It’s not a UX feature. Freetrade would have to build a backend system to offer quotes in the first place, and I would imagine they may have to make agreements with market makers to actually uphold those quotes for a certain time period. That’s a not a simple task.
It would certainly put Freetrade way out ahead of the new brokers. I wonder what technical requirements need to be met to have something like this.
IG has “At Quote” and “On Exchange” does that mean there’s likely a difference in price from quote to direct exchange trades? or are At quotes similar to using market makers who accept a delay in accepting or rejecting a price?
To clarify - when I say FT has “quoted” a price, I obviously mean the market price. I fully understand this is indicative and then FT will secure the “best price” available at that time. My point is that unless users are offered FT’s “best price” with the option of accepting/declining it, buying and selling on FT is sometimes a bit of a shot in the dark.
Would it be possible to confirm the actual purchase price before purchase? I have just made a purchase that was 6% higher than I was expecting to pay. If I could have reviewed the actual purchase price I would have not bought those shares.
Practically, if you’re using a market order, no. This price is instantaneously decided at the point of the trade, and once the trade has taken place you can’t undo it.
If you want to guarantee a best price, you need to use limit orders which is a plus feature.
A market order just matches your order with any outstanding orders it can at that time. If it’s a high volume stock, you’ll get the same price as everyone else. If it’s a very low volume stock, you’ll just be paired up with any suitable limit order, which could be substantially different to the last trade price.
Also, don’t forget that the bid/ask spread can mean some stock the price is quite different to the estimated price, which is the midpoint of the last trade, delayed by 15 minutes.
That’s not possible on freetrade. They give you a current price indication but execute the order by sending it to the market and get the best price for you there.
But you can use limit orders on freetrade plus for illiquid stocks that might have a large spread.
How would you propose FT manage to keep that price/quote for when you answer yes or no? Stocks move up and down quickly and everyone won’t be sat waiting instantly. I would imagine this would cause many problems for FT when buying shares in large numbers.
Often things that are good cost money to implement would you be happy if Freetrade became A bit More expensive trade? You could just use limit functions.
Yes but if you do that for 1 thing you must for all the things people want or are you saying just the thing you want? Just look at other places with many different charges that you need a maths degree to understand costs and that IS NOT what we want FT to become surely.
I think there is a cost to the 15 second quote thing that HL do. I think they get a quote from a market maker, but it’s not free and the cost is passed on to the customer in the commission.
I might be wrong on that, but I’m sure I read it somewhere
would you be happy if Freetrade became A bit More expensive trade? You could just use limit functions.