Hi all. I have been with Freetrade as a plus customer for 6 months now after moving from II. There is a lot to like about the features on the platform and obviously the cost effectiveness is a fantastic appeal.
That said, my biggest frustration is the available investment universe. I have seen very little progress with new stocks and ETFs being added and made available (I am particularly interested in the latter). I am green with envy when I see the rate of change and breadth of ETF coverage in my wifes ISA with InvestEngine.
Is there a sticky / dashboard / roadmap / tracker of some kind that articulates both: what criteria is required for a stock or ETF to be added, and, what stock and ETF additions are currently work in progress?
Totally agree. Freetrade just needs to have the same universe of trades as HL and I would drop HL in a heartbeat. Sometimes you just need to get the basics right to increase AUM. Every time I trade on HL it hurts me to think about the transaction cost.
Yeah, exactly @Spongey - funky add on’s are great but the core offering needs to progress meaningfully too. I have seen so little movement on new ETFs in particular being added to the Freetrade universe that it is starting to irritate. As a consequence I find myself compromising my investment decisions.
Bump on my unanswered questions here…… any chance someone can offer some guidance?
The new FreeTrade plans really suit me. The only thing that continues to stop me committing more to FreeTrade is the lack of progress with new ETFs being added.
Hey @acamp and @NeilB . I appreciate the team will have a million priorities to juggle and adding my ETFs discussed above will not necessarily feature too highly on that list. However, it would be really helpful if there was a method to understand and track the status of requests for new instruments.
This Google form was brought to my attention via another thread - not sure if its still actively used internally or not. Either way I have submitted all the ETFs discussed in my above post.
I really like the idea of moving my families SIPPs to Freetrade but I can’t do that if I am not confident my available investment universe isn’t going to be overly restricted for anything beyond the short term. I see lots of chat on the forum about individual stocks being added but very little about any progress with ETFs.
This is a fair point. The process for adding securities has long been unsatisfactory and it’s important because it costs FT customers.
A wider choice of ETFs would be welcome. I think FT perhaps over simplifies things sometimes, eg offer a few gold ETCs and consider it job done, at the cost of investor choice.
What if I want to buy SGLP? It’s a £12bn ETF so it’s frustrating to find it’s not available by default.
I’m also considering opening a position in a long-duration UK gov’t bond fund but I don’t hold out much hope of FT adding GLTL anytime soon as it’s relatively niche and unlikely to attract many votes.
@java One way to gauge the likelihood of an ETF being added is to look at average volume. FT avoids adding less liquid securities because customers could wind up being unable to buy or sell promptly.
I’d hazard a guess that FGQD and GGRG could be added, maybe PSRW too, but I’d be surprised if JPLG or GOGB meets FT’s threshold.
It would be great to get further clarification on the criteria, eg an ETF must be at least £Xm in size and have an average volume of X, to help manage expectations.
Hey both - we were working on some content for a few dozen new ETFs this week (watch this space) and we got the list of the remaining c. 600 London listed ones and will move through this with our brokerage team to add what we can - which should be a good number!
It might have been discussed before… (maybe there’s a blog post? ) can you share what goes into making decisions on adding stocks and why we might see some but not others. I assume its not just down to popularity
There’s a range of factors that vary depending on the market. In London one of the main factors tends to be liquidity and the execution quality we can expect on instruments (we work with a lot more market makers now to help reduce the issues here).
Hey @acamp@NeilB . Just a polite little poke on this one. I wondered how things were progressing with the additional ETFs you were hoping to add to Freetrade imminently?
Hello @acamp and @NeilB. Prompted by the interest from @sach in one of the ETFs listed above, I would be keen to hear if you had any updates on the theme of this thread.
You mentioned a month ago you were very close to adding a few dozen ETFs and had plans to plot out the work for circa 600 other London listed ETFs. Are you in a position to reveal how this is progressing?
This thread remains relevant. Good to know plans for expanding the range of vehicles available. There are still some ETF gaps - bond funds (esp active), cash alternatives, things like physical carbon trackers. In terms of trusts, some key ones like Oakley, Literacy Capital, Riverstone.
