Freetrade is Out šŸ”„ Share your first thoughts once you get access!

I enjoyed every minute, a great first experience, works a treat but transferring cash into the account seems to be a bit hit or miss at times needs consistency.
Looking forward to more shares getting added with finger poised.

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Have to say impressed. Everything is so simple - and from sending money from my Starling account to Freetrade, balance lit up in under an hour.

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Sent my draft feedback a short while ago, this is the rest of the early :memo: :

  1. Elegant and accessible. The decision to go with Ā£s over pence is vindicated, but now basic orders should be the default setting. Further, buyers should also be able to simply choose the number of shares just like sellers so that when you input a number of shares the app should auto-populate the amount figure
  2. Cosmetically, add: linked bank logos; custom account profile pics; Freetradeā€™s ā€˜Own itā€™ tagline while launching app; night/dark mode and landscape view for graphs
  3. Exclude cash from portfolio total and improve graph axes for securities
  4. Discover could get messy as more securities are added. Improve search functionality with the ability to filter by asset class, price, geography, etc.
  5. Push Notifications are needed for top ups and order execution
  6. Some KIDs are not launching but this is being worked on Iā€™m reassured. More info like factsheets would be great too
  7. Possibly an (emergency) web interface would be reassuring later down the line & a Freetrade Widget
  8. Freetrade will be undoubtedly be scalable for the mass market once US securities are added in coming iterations and even more so once ISAs are available
  9. Finally, given all the great feedback itā€™ll be interesting how you balance making Freetrade Basic better without it being so good that it leaves not enough incentive to upgrade to Alpha

P.S. Props to the team for democratising investing & executing Adamā€™s vision. It really is quite special/surreal to not only begin an investment journey on this platform, but also to own a small piece of it :fire:

19 Likes

Breaking news - im officialy in the app !
So far I like the design of the app , still cannot say much about the portfolio graph since I dont have one yet :smiley:
The deposit feature is not so straightforward , but its quite usual for stockbrokers to have this type of topping up.
If you can implement an in app deposit you would be one step ahead of alot of your peers.
I dont like the graphs of the stocks - when you press max for example it doesnt give you any time period which makes the graph a bit useles.You cant see from which year it starts and you are kind of in the dark about that , im sure this will be fixed soon as its not so hard to put a timeframe on the bottom im sure.
Other than that a place for your dividend next to the activity or in the activity tab would be very handy.Robinhoos have this feature where they show all the dividends received.
More to come tomorrow after I receive my deposit in the app and get my first batch of stocks.
Keep the good work guys im sure this is only the very begining and there is alot more to come.

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User #93. Iā€™ll try to keep this as brief as possible while still being thorough, understand the team will have a lot of feedback to sift through. My first thoughts echo a lot of the other early testers, the appā€™s UI is very intuitive, and has a lot of potential. Very impressed overall on first glance. For feedback, hereā€™s my 2 cents:

Portfolio Tab:

  1. The user details in the top right, would probably be better placed on the ā€˜accountā€™ tab.
  2. The portfolio % +/- is a good change from the 1st version, would be good to allow users to view on a monthly and daily time frame also, which you already have in the investments part just below it.
  3. When clicking into the investments part of this, there appears to be no daily time frame data loading. Also, the individual gain/loss could be clearer in terms of including commissions/showing them clearly.

Discover Tab:

  1. Already mentioned, but the ability to have watchlists/favourites would be helpful.
  2. Also drop-down menuā€™s which designate the categories. GBP stocks, GBP ETFā€™s, US stocks, $ ETFā€™s for example.

Activity Tab:

Nothing to add so far.

account Tab:

Am aware this was already voted on, so I may be in the minority. But would be good to see value of open positions as well as the various cash values, and a grand total of the whole, cash and positions included. TD Ameritrades thinkorswim has this on mobile app.

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User #120 checking inā€¦

So firstly, as an Android user Iā€™ve had to resort to using my wifeā€™s iPhone which means itā€™s taken me a few days to make my first purchase. Iā€™ve also not had ages to play with the app but like everyone else my initial impressions are itā€™s amazing, and way further along than Iā€™d been expecting (I would struggle to convince any of the developers at my work that animations were necessary for an ā€˜MVPā€™, but they look lovely!)

Just a few +1s from me on comments weā€™ve already seen:

  • Having to wait 15hrs or so for my first deposit to clear was a little painful so Iā€™d definitely invest time on bringing this down. This was obviously made worse by only being able to use the app in the evenings. (edit: To clarify this was because I made the deposit at 7pm on Thursday and as I understand it theyā€™ll only clear in working hours, in my case Friday morning)

  • Would be great to be able to queue-up orders before payment has cleared.

  • This one could just be me, but am I right in thinking you canā€™t just specify a # of shares to purchase? If so, this feels like a bit of a must-have, particularly when purchasing small amounts.

All in all though, itā€™s looking amazing, my trades went through perfectly and itā€™s a great sign for things to come. Just waiting for ISAs and Android now :stuck_out_tongue:

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User #139 reporting for duty.
All good so far. No issues, agree with the feedback others have given.

Did the whole process while overseas.

Found that the scheduled trade time was reported in my present time zone which is as you expect I suppose but may need clarifying eg put in brackets (LSE close). Didnā€™t bother me.

No issue with setting up account, I just take a screenshot of required bank details anyway and app switch. Have to do it for other apps too so used to it.

New portfolio view is better.

Could it include a separate entry for residual cash?

At the moment it has to be inferred from total portfolio value and value of stocks. It would be good to scroll down and see total value of stocks, then cash, even better if split between available and pending.

Can we edit our profile photos? And then presumably you would see it in the chat like we can see your images.

Thanks - itā€™s great, looking forward to spending some time queueing up some buys.

P.s. not once required pin post setup, always touchID.

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Great job team. #106 on boarded smoothly. A lot of the same comments as above but first thoughtsā€¦

The message somethings gone wrong someone will contact you shortly isnā€™t the best introduction. What aboutā€¦thanks for your details were now just checking your profile with Mi6 to ensure you are who you say you areā€¦

As a share investing app I see my portfolio as the shares I own and would like to see the returns on my share portfolio. The cash is funds available to invest. Maybe splitting portfolio graph to show invested and cash holdings?

Bank set up was a flaf flocking between screens but now itā€™s set up no problem. Ideally want to get to a stage where you can click fund within app, but easy enough to transfer from banking app.

Watch list would be great. Iā€™ve seen others highlight other platforms. Iā€™m sure you have down research and have access to these platforms. If not shout and I can share screen shoots.

Live pricing on the discovery and daily movement would be great. And the ability to sort by biggest loses or winners on the day

Have tested bulk, live trade and bulk selling and all worked well. There were some issues with the portfolio showing both my the shares being purchased and the cash I was going to settle with overstating position. It would be useful building on comment above that you could see the cash available to invest (cash less committed order)

Great work!

Any way to remove a Cancelled transaction from the top of your activity feed?

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I have email confirmations with access to the live app. However, I am an android junkie. Any news on when I can use this, or do I go buy an iPhone ?

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Coming right up :grin:

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Youā€™d have to buy the iPhone for now - treat yourself, itā€™s worth it :wink:

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:thinking: Why do the cancelled :bat: ( British Tobacco ) share count show 3 while rejected shows 0?

And for bonus points what happens when you remove cancelled/rejected entries?

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You donā€™t see them anymore :thinking:

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Breaks my mental model of Activity Feeds, guess I can ignore the remove buttonā€¦

Itā€™s a bit of a quirk but the reason is that the cancelled was actually a placed order but as the rejected order was rejected it doesnā€™t have a number of shares.

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Another successfully onboarded and trading user. :grinning:

Have to start by saying in general the experience is great. The app feels well crafted, and definitely like itā€™s delivered by a team that prioritises doing things properly over doing things quickly. Bravo!

The only component I have any real feedback on is the Profile tab. I echo most of the points made by Kenny earlier in the thread, so rather than repeat him you can read those here.

Iā€™d say that for the app to be really sticky the Portfolio tab has to do a better job of showing a userā€™s current assets (investments, available funds) and how that value has changed. Whatā€™s their net position, how well are they doing.

My preference would be to see the total of my purchases at the top, then the + or - modifier for portfolio performance, then any remaining available cash, and a total.

You could then use the graph view to drill down into those numbers in specific timeframes, or click on a specific investment to see how that compares to your portfolio as a whole.

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Thanks wondering would you want to know how many you requested in case you want to request them again?

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Fair point, Iā€™m hoping that youā€™d still be able to tap into the rejected order & see how many shares you tried to buy, since you can at the moment. If not, thatā€™s worth considering.

Weā€™ll find out soon :slight_smile:

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:+1: v422 shows the share count for failed orders

Leaving it thereā€¦ as I feel like Iā€™m hijacking this thread :blush:

1 Like