its getting super competitive. Moneybox is entering in the space as well
https://www.moneyboxapp.com/jobs/investment-operations-manager-us-dealing
ps https://shares.io today has a better ranking than Freetrade in the App Store
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.
Thereās a feature request for it, and at one point an employee was working on it in their spare time but has since left. Thereās been radio silence since. I think most of the resources have been on share lending, opening in Europe, and presumably crypto
Looks like lightyear have done good work there
If Lightyear get this feature smoothly rolled out without issues first the optics here will be awful. This is such a new start up to be showing tangible engineering developments other companies have requested for years
Lightyear have recently lauched limit orders aswell.
Freetrade are being put to shame by the competition. If they donāt up there game they will be left for dead.
Stock increased to 3,000 plus too they are pulling out all the stops here.
I downloaded lightyear to check it out a couple of months ago. IMO whilst there are some big holes in freetrade it feels miles ahead to me. Thatās not to say they canāt get caught but at the time lightyear only had a handful of well known US stocks and nothing else. I feel like there are a ton of new apps that are offering access to fractional US shares and nothing else. Freetrade does have way more than that going for it.
IMO Sharesies is the best of the new low cost brokers in terms of service and platform but thatās not accessible in the uk.
Now if someone would offer something similar with access to the UK markets that would be really tempting for me.
If Freetrade start prioritising crypto over all the other requests that have been listed on this platform Iām out.
To be fair, itās easier to go 3x in 5 weeks when you have a small set of Securities to begin with. Itās also easier to look like you are developing aggresively earlier on when there are still big chunks of work to get through.
Anyway, all the competitors are getting some of the functionality members of this community have requested. For example
- Lightyear with their attractive fx fees and data exports.
- InvestEngine with their Portfolio Pies/Pots/Buckets and unified ETF Lookāthrough ( see companies and sectors youāre invested in ). Plus, their hands-off, set-and-forget functionality.
But they are also missing key features, for example
- Lightyear have no ISAs or SIPPs
- InvestEngine has no SIPPs or Instant trades, although the latter is a bit mooted because they are going for long-term ETF investing
The pricing of neo brokers is worrying as in most cases it seems too cheap to be substainable but I suppose you can move away, even if most donāt offer in-specie transfers which might prove costly.
At some point youād expect some consolidation in this space. For now, itās a good time to be a customer I suppose. Also a a good time to be the companies providing shovels like RiskSave Technologies Ltd, and Currency Cloud Limited.
Back to Freetrade. You can request your dividends ( and possibly transaction ) history through support. Maybe the manual requests are managable so they are solving the things that are not for now.
limited traction so far for Lightyearā¦ They are out from the top 200 fintech appā¦
Iāve only noticed a two week period when Freetrade wasnāt in the top 200. This was after they launched, cleared the waitlist down and had their first 10,000 customers. After this itās always been comfortably in the finance charts.
I looked into lightyear awhile back but they only had several hundred stocks so i gave them a miss. With their recent updates and plans to add UK/ European stock plus ETFs in the next 2 to 3 months they will become more competitive to freetrade and trading 212 for GIA.
Invest engine looks good for people wanting etfs only although i aint looked into them much.
If I were FreeTradeās competition I would be an FT forum member and would have noticed how many times financial reporting had been requested, and made it a priority for my platform!
I am surprised FreeTrade have not yet implemented it, but any competition moving faster will give FT a nudge.
I got one as well. Is it worth signing up, āto see what the fuss is aboutā?
I kind of understand where freetrade are coming from. They have a MVP and (as far as i can tell) are prioritising building revenue. Share lending and opening in other countries clearly fits that bill.
Reports donāt make money.
Personally I think freetrade have gone past the point where the mvp wasnāt to minimal. Now itās lagging behind in what are essentially basic features every platform needs (not they their easy to implement).
At some point they have to switch focus or higher more devs. The way the climate is just now for developers, Iām guessing we donāt see major quality of life features until after the European launch. Thatās just my thoughts though Iāve no inside knowledge of their plans
I like to, thereās no harm in having another gia. Itās More out of curiosity than anything to see what else is, or will be on offer. not actively looking to move anywhere 