Venus and Serena have been signed up as âbrand ambassadorsâ & investors in Shares.
âBlown awayâ
IE : paid lots of cash that sheâll say anythingâŠ
havent people woken up from âcelebâ advertising and th obvious falsehoods that is instantgram bullshit?
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Also o find Shares is the Tik-Tok-ification of stock market investing.
Sure if someone prefers a few animated GIFs and âcouldnât resist at this priceâ then sure, you do you!
I feel Shares is a little too un-serious for me to take seriously. I have 2 open positions on there
While I get the idea of social investing, I find it to be more akin to something like Tik Tok rather then an app that ultimately sells financial instruments.
While Iâm not someone who prefer my investment social commentary to be overly serious, I do prefer some level of actual discussion as to why, for example someone might be choosing to do something like expand a position etc.
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Which shares? 
I think they might have an issue with their name. Since I donât think theyâre every make the top result when searching âsharesâ brings up the definition of a share, HL, and invetopedia with the definition of a share
I just wanted to give my experience with my new broker in Belgium as FT is still not available here. After looking for a long time, I decided to go for KBC Bolero, it is the online broker of a legacy bank and not a challenger like FT would be. I chose them because as a Belgian bank, they automatically hold all applicable taxes so you donât have to deal with the IRS.
The tariffs are higher but I am willing to pay them. The features are good:
- taxes being taken care off (with Mexem, t212, degiro, âŠ) I have do that myself
- detailed information: when I was using FT, I had to resort to Yahoo Finance. Having everything in one place makes it easier. The information is also clearer, especially the dividend information seems more up to date
- cost simulation: it tells you how much your holding has to increase in value to make a profit after costs.
- multi-currency account: I actually did not know this and bough US stocks with my euro account. But itâs good for the future.
- Many markets: almost all European exchanges, US and Canada. If you want to venture further out, you can order by phone.
- More products: although I donât use them yet: options, turbos and sprinters, obligations. You have to do some webinars before you are allowed to trade these products.
Disadvantages
- higher costs. But just like the GIA with FT, you only pay for trades. There is no monthly fee. If you donât trade daily, I think the higher prices are worth it.
- ETFs are not all available because the US holder has not provided documentation. FT has more ETFs available
it is clear that Bolero is a very different product than FT. I would have loved to stay with FT after my move but I did not want to wait longer. FT was a good intro in investing but I think if you become a bit more experienced, a more detailed platform is better, even if you do not trade everyday. We donât have ISAs in Belgium so you have to file taxes but the bank takes care of it so it is a hassle less to think about.
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Thanks for this. Lots of good information that I hope product management at Freetrade will consider.
Two points in your disadvantages section:
(a) With Freetrade even in a UK GIA there is no cost to trade (there is a FX cost where the transaction is not in ÂŁ). But I agree with you if you are suggesting this is just semantics as there is a cost to the user to trade even if it is FX.
(b) The comment you made about ânot provided documentationâ is true for all brokers in the UK as well as EU. The point is that a fund needs to be UCITS compliant to be made available to retail customers.
Personally I wish you a lot of success in Belgium ⊠and take care (and with luck we may see you back with Freetrade one day)
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Plumâs new crowdfunding round has gone live in private mode on Crowdcube.
Itâs a convertible round, 20% discount with a valuation cap of ÂŁ200M, default longstop (6 months) valuation of ÂŁ150M.
Can you paste the link please.
Hi, the crowdcube link to the plum raise is
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Taken this screenshot from the pich deck of Plum on Crowdcube (Freetrade is also mentioned). It seems they were one of the first one to land in Europe.
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Plum is burning ÂŁ5 million every 5 weeks,Iâll say no more??
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Looks like Lightyearâs platform will include UK & EU stocks and etfâs soon - they are performing some account changes to support it.
âIn preparation for adding UK and EU stocks and ETFs, we wanted to let you know that your existing Lightyear multi-currency account details are about to change.â
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I see that they are expecting to make an EBITDA loss of ÂŁ10.1 million for 2022 according to their pitch deck. Which works out at a loss of around ÂŁ1million every 5 weeks. Is this what you meant @MohammedMohammed?
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I have asked Plum on three separate occasions what their burn rate is and they wonât respond.
I would also like to add that I donât see Plum as a competitor to Freetrade and I actually think Plum are going to sink!
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Also Moneybox launched the option to buy US shares on their app:
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I mean only rly useful for less liquid stocks, but still a nice feature