I think Freetradeās challenges lie primarily elsewhere. Payment for order flow is not itās biggest problem and in any case even if it is outlawed ā¦ it will be months if not years before it happens. The competition in this space is heating up - which I think is good for Freetrade because IMO the competition will make help Freetrade becoming an even better business.
I have the view that Freetradeās growth in Europe (inc. UK) also relates to culture. The US has a wider group of people and a longer period of time in which share trading and even merely owning shares has become the norm. The US could be regarded as at one end of the trading spectrum. The UK is a middle ground compared to much of continental Europe - but still in the UK Freetradeās growth is dependent on convincing people who have never traded to believe that it is in their interests to own shares and it is easy to do so.
I agree, the culture issue as you described might mean that customer acquisition costs are higher in EU compared to UK / US simply because their residents will require a larger incentive to plunge into a new activity. This could be in the form of higher sign up benefits or even just education spend.
At the same time Iām also wondering what is the lifetime value of a EU customer vs a UK customer. Are they subscription junkies or pay-when-they-use types, or whatever other characteristic which matters to FTās business model. Basically, taken together with acquisition costs, Iām wondering if they are able to deliver long term profitability as lucrative as a US / UK customer.
Warren Buffet said that his favourite holding period for a quality company is forever. I imagine Freetrade is a stronger, better company than T212 given the experience of the last year, T212 clearly cannot cope with a quickly changing environment and they make their money at the expense of their customers.
Free trade hasent added a single stock request of mine, and I requested a few. And some of them had loads of vote. Trading 212 ticker list is beyond next level compared to free trade. Free trade lack too many things.
There appears to me 3 levels at which to view a portfolio.
Macro - Allocation based on country or sector. This is interesting for boggle heads and long term investing.
Mid level - Your portfolio choices
Macro Micro - Company specific discussion, strengths weaknesses. When this community at its best lots of voices share what they know and have learned on specific stock discussion thread.
For me the any interest lies in the macro and micro but not between. An interest in the narrow Venn diagram of my portfolio is very unlikely. Youād need to be interested in
APPLE, GOOGLE, MICROSOFT - so far so easy - AIRBNB, BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY, LLOYDS, REDROW - getting fairly narrow now - LEMONADE, GLADSTONE CAPITAL & SMT.
This doesnāt take into account the potential resentment felt when someone copies / takes a recommendation from friends. A friend of mine has copied my position in Lemonade, without me knowing, and is now fairly disappointed because his time frame is very different to mine.
Lightyear now allow the exporting of the transaction history directly from the app into pdf or xls format.
I could really do with this functionality from Freetrade, rather than having to maintain my own xls for GIA trades.
