Does anyone know which Freetrade co-founder back Koia? Canāt see it on crunchbase.
The co-founder who got fired and went to Revolut:
Early backers of Koia include Monzo co-founder Gary Dolman and Freetrade co-founder Andre Mohamed, who didnāt take part in the latest round.
From an earlier article:
I donāt see Chip as a competitor to Freetrade,but I do like the Co-founder of Chip Simon Rabin
Interactive Investor (ii) are reducing some of their trading fees.
Their pricing strategy remains, in my opinion, totally ridiculous. You need to decide āwhat kind of investor you areā i.e. To choose the most cost effective plan you need to know in advance how many trades you will make in a month and what type of shares you are going to buy (Investment Trusts, US, Other Foreign Markets etc). It just seems to be setup to confuse their customers.
That from 1 September 2022, we are making some changes to our pricing.
In Investor and Pension Builder plans, and for customers who are Friends and Family members, the charge for UK and US trades will reduce from Ā£7.99 to Ā£5.99.
Customers in iiās Investor service plan will continue to get their first trade free each month. Customers in iiās Super Investor plan will continue to get their first two free trades each month. From 1 September the expiry date on these free monthly trades will move from 90 days to 31 days.
For customers on Super Investor service plan, we are reducing the cost of non-US international shares from Ā£9.99 to Ā£5.99 per trade. UK and US trade costs will remain Ā£3.99.
Free monthly regular investing across all of iiās plans remains unchanged for funds, ETFs, investment trusts and popular UK shares and ii continues to not charge any exit fees.
They continue to have number of special offers: https://www.ii.co.uk/special-offers. Competition is good.
This is a surprising statement to me. iiās fees are relatively straightforward and are a fixed fee structure. I donāt see it as particularly confusing. A higher fee gets you cheaper trading
Agree competition is good, and iiās trading fee reduction is likely a response to the growing number of low cost brokers.
For ii, one plan gives you two trading credits, a lower cost plan gives you one trading credit (which now expire in 1 month rather the previous 3 months). To choose the best value plan, you need to know how many times you might trade in a month and what types of equities you are likely to buy. Just my opinion, but I donāt like this approach.
Edit: Their special offers look decent though.
And if you are a regular investor (i.e. pound cost averaging is your thing) then there arenāt any trading fees at all.
Good point - thatās reasonable value for investors taking that approach.
I have seen that Trading 212 are going to have invited their entire waitlist to open an account by the end of September.
As I see 212 as freetraders biggest competitor in the UK, freetrade needs to deliver on upgrades.
There is no way in the world I would ever use T212
Genuine question, why?
I use both. Overall, both are very good at disrupting the market. What am I missing?
Thanks for the reply.
I donāt see the transparency on who holds/owns the shares as being that different between the two. Share lending seems to complicate the terms of both.
Why would IB not do that? But Clearstream and Drivewealth would? Whatās the difference?
I canāt really comment on Trading 212 as they havenāt been able to onboard me for about a year. I was interested to open an account (with a very small amount of cash) just to have a poke around and compare it with Freetrade but alas it seems impossible. Iām pretty happy with Freetrade anyway but it would have been nice to have a peek over enemy lines.
Iāve recently opened a GIA with IBKR. Due to its complicated pricing model, I hadnāt realised just how cheap it can be until now. To buy $5,000 worth of a US stock, for example, will cost me $2.35 or 0.05%.
IBKRās definitely in the running for next yearās Isa subscription. It might take me until April to get my head around how to use its similarly complicated platform though!
Yeah this is a good price. Just remember the ISA has a Ā£3 minimum activity fee as well so you need to make trades up to at least Ā£3 or be charged the difference anyway. Still works out quite cheap as long as your not making European trades
While it is more expensive for European trades, it still seems to be competitive at 0.05% with a ā¬1.25 minimum. I canāt seem to find currency conversion costs from GBP to EUR listed on the IBKR website. I think itās the same 0.002% with a $2 minimum but Iām not certain ā anyone able to confirm this?
Couldnāt agree more,I have being saying that for 4 years!