Trading 212 is free I have bought several stocks where I have seen an immediate upside which may even suggest the exchange rate is in favour of the investor and not the platform. I did start at free trade but your costs are to high and not free
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Trading 212 definitely charge FX fees, fairly average ones. They make their money on the spread, which freetrade donāt. Noone does this for free 
https://brokerchooser.com/compare-brokerage
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Indeed. The difference between Freetrade and 212 isnāt fees, itās transparency, and Freetrade is winning hands down.
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The amount of CFD platforms out there. With so many players in that space, business must be really good
PS: in order to conceal my emotional stance on the subject I shall refrain to post an emoji or a gif
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ācosts are too highā - 0.45% is nothing. If youāre putting Ā£1k into stocks and making little enough back for Ā£4.50 to mean anything, then you are doing something wrong.
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Wow thatās an arrogant and foolish reply.
Itās call free trade if you think Ā£4.50 is free you are simply 
Replying 
.
Can I borrow a Ā£4 as it wonāt cost you.
Have a nice day
Jim
yes, itās called free trade because the trade is free.
the fx conversion is not free, but is small enough that it shouldnāt matter.
Why reply to argue ?
Are you bored ?
Lets recap and look back at my original post where I stated I saw an immediate upside on 212 when investing.
Now Adam and Kierzy replyās where seen to be smart and helpful, highlighting spreads and transparency.
Your reply was how we could spend a grand and be thankful we only paid Ā£4.50 in costs.
Great minds like Jack Boogle (INDEX = FUNDS) and Warrant buffet: no introduction needed hate fees and would not pay Ā£4.50 to invest a grand.
Question: does the gain/loss figure show the value of your portfolio as it is? Or as is minus the 0.45% fee on American stocks youāll be charged when you need to exchange back?
I think it should be the latter as itās an unavoidable fee.
Some people are avoiding ETFs because they donāt want to pay management fee of 0.3-0.5% per year and you are saying that we shouldnāt worry about paying 1%? Thatās Ā£100 every time you move 10 grands.
To the best of my knowledge this is something you will not be paying with Revolut for example, although Iād be happy to be proven wrong:
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I donāt know about trading but for transfers Revolut charge 0.5% after youāve gone over the Ā£1k monthly limit (on weekdays, more on weekends). Iāve found the Premium account (at Ā£6.99/month) worthwhile just to get unlimited 0% FX commission on transfers.
I think 0.45% is not unreasonable for the FT basic account but Iād really like to see 0% FX commission in the FT Plus tier. I think this in itself would make it worth the Ā£9.99/month for anyone with a larger portfolio of US stocks.
There is an underserved market of ISA holders who invest in US stocks whoāve had to put up with paying FX commissions (0.5% - 1.5%) on both sides of the trade (multi-currency accounts donāt help since we canāt hold USD inside the ISA wrapper). Paying a fixed fee per month would be worth it for many of them (especially given theyāre probably already paying custody fees). @adam something to consider for the Plus account.
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Definitely. I think it makes sense to compare top products i.e. Revolut Metal vs FT Plus assuming both are 10gbp/mo
The way we show FX rates on the contract note is meant to transparently show the FX rate you got versus the prevailing interbank FX rate. Unless you are a Barclays or JP Morgan, actually getting the interbank rate generally isnāt possible.
Some brokers are more opaque in how they present FX rates, so unless the FX markup is measured against the same benchmark the comparisons can be misleading. Eg calling the mid-market rate the ārealā exchange rate is false. That would be a āfakeā rate and the provider would be subsidising the cost for marketing/customer acquisition purposes.
When you buy a US stock on Freetrade, that order is being routed to the US, executed in USD, so we need to convert your GBP to USD and physically send it to the US before the trade settles on T+2. The conversion and transfer incurs a cost for us, so offering unlimited interbank rate conversions would imply unlimited costs for us. Weād take a loss on every US trade, which would need to be made up in some other way.
That said, there is some flexibility in setting the FX rate we provide to customers. A better rate for Plus customers is an interesting idea.
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Hi @adam, thanks for engaging with the idea. Youāre right that there will always be some cost to the conversion and transfer. And also that some brokers will either subsidise this cost or hide it within the spread.
One broker that doesnāt is Interactive Brokers so I think they can serve as a useful benchmark for comparison. They provide access to interbank dealers (e.g. JPM) and effectively charge $2 per FX transaction (itās actually 0.002% with a $2 minimum but I donāt do trades over a $100k 
). To be fair, the quoted spreads get wider than interbank by a few bps for odd-lot FX orders (under $25k). IBKR doesnāt offer an ISA (as well as not really targeting the same type of customer as FT) which is why I think thereās an opportunity here.
What I would like is no or minimal commission added by FT - but still pass on your costs. Only in the Plus account, of course. 
I recently bought and sold Ā£10k (well, Ā£9900)
of AMZN and paying Ā£90 commission is painful. I would happily pay a monthly fee to get that down to a few quid.
Edit: One option could be to cap the FX commission at e.g. Ā£5 (assuming your cost model allows that).
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Thanks for the feedback, Pete. It is true weāve optimised most things for a customer that usually places relatively small trades, so something for us to consider more is how that translates for customers with larger portfolio sizes (without making the pricing structure complicated). I think IBKR has a minimum portfolio size of Ā£5k or Ā£10k, for example.
Weāre also conscious that whatever the pricing is, we wouldnāt want to earn less revenue (on average) when customers upgrade to a Plus account, otherwise I donāt think it would align our business interests with making Plus the best it can be.
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Agree with Jayp84, however II only allows multi-currency in their trading accounts, not in ISA. Thus, you still need to convert currencies twice to buy and sell. The difference is II currency charge is huge, something like from 1.5% to 0.5% depending on the size of the transaction. For retail investors, most likely you are in the bracket of 1.5%, practically, losing 3% on each investment.
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