Today Orca realeased US stocks after a 6 month wait.
For now they have some sort of US stock specific GIA acct as a stop gap.
From what I understand they have a sliding scale on FX fees. I bought Ā£10 worth of $XOM to try it on launch day and got charged 0.75% FX.
I think the FX is sliding scale depending on the value of the trade
How can you find a list of stocks available? Wasnāt obvious when I tried to look for what they offer.
Retail investors lose out when brokers sell their orders, Dutch regulator warns
@grievyz Freetrade is against payment for order flow. There a number of moves to make the practice illegal. As the article says
"The practice is not banned outright across the EU. But tough rules on inducements and finding the best price for clients mean most market participants find payment for order flow difficult to implement.
Even so, a few national regulators, including Germanyās financial watchdog, interpret the rules differently. Brussels has proposed a formal ban to ensure the rules are enforced across the bloc."
Some companies such as Robinhood and Trade Republic are dependent on this practice. They would have to work out different ways of earning money if the practice was banned.
btw there are other forum posts which deal with this topic e.g.
Oh yeah Iām aware - I just posted this article for the communityās reading pleasure as it looks like the screws are tightening on some of FTās competitors
Ok fair enough.
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.
Excellent question and observation.
Trading 212 have started onboarding uk clients again. Going through the waitlist apparently.
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.
If I was Warren Iād hold Freetrade over T212.
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.
I hear 212 have only just started accepting new customers.
I think itāll be interesting to see how freetrade competes once they are back to full steam with new customer sign ups.
may be of interest
Iāve been using their app for a week or two now. New app icon today.
Itās clean and simple like youād expect but the social features donāt really work. Itās just a whole stream of XX sold YY for $123.
Youāre supposed to create chat groups but there is one big flaw - to other people your portfolio is interesting as your dreams. Nobody cares!
Your portfolio might be interesting to some. Iām happy to stand corrected bit doesnāt etoroās social aspect work a similar way?
I think social trading and copy trading in that form is likely less interesting to investors and more interesting to traders.
Just a guess
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.
Typo: one of those Macroās needs to be a Micro 