Freetrade Roadmap: Reloaded

Eventually this doesn’t work either, it doesn’t sate the beast. Again Monzo is a good model for seeing this in action. See Monzo+, see cheque imaging, see cash deposits, see merchant enrichment, see chat support, see phone support, see investor update emails.

Especially as the business grows and staff get busier it becomes near impossible to keep expectations in check and grounded in reality. No-one, even Monzo, a company founded in community, can afford the sort of engagements members desire.

In theory your model is 100% correct, however when tested against these factors, it just doesn’t scale.

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I am not an investor myself at Freetrade but I guess the frustration may have come from mostly investors not users. For an user, the company has the liberty to miss and even be silent on missing a roadmap target. Whereas for an investor, if the company misses a target, it should explain why. Think about if Tesla misses its delivery target, it should at least give some explanation. Just my 2 cents.

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Without wanting to be overly pedantic, isn’t the give away in the first letter of ETA? Don’t want to have to spell it out, but, yes it does not stand for hard deadline.

I get the frustration, whether we’re investors or clients, it’s always appreciated when we’re looped in to progress or lack thereof but the dynamics of this business; product, market, competition, position as a growing start up, means a) :freetrade: has to prioritise b) they aren’t always going to get it right for everyone but do cut them a little slack.

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Just checked the road map and saw Reits in Isa within the active development section, i know where i’m opening my next isa! :slight_smile:

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:popcorn:

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Not really sure where to write this, but there are three things that really bug me and they should be pretty easy to implement.

First one is that you cannot see your individual stock holdings as % of your portfolio. You can see by sector, you can see by asset class, but not by the stocks themselves.

Second is that you cannot see your purchase price in USD. It was in USD when first started, but then it moved to GBP and it has been staying like this. Very odd to me and quite impractical for US shares.

Third one is that I just really want to see my graph takeaway the sum add-ons, so it doesn’t look like a ladder. Not really sure how hard is that to implement, but don’t think it would be harder than a lot of things you managed to ship so far.

Not saying that to whine, but more of a constructive feedback. It’s not that even those functions are in any way essential, but it would be a nice little addition in the future.

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Also see this thread: Small tweak suggestions

I am both an investor and user. Hence, I am chomping at the bit to open a :freetrade: SIPP then transfer in my old one for which I am paying crazily “incumbent” fee level. Also, I am quite frustrated with overly enthusiastic communication/PR monopolising all the attention on back end infrastructure, mostly for the future benefits of :freetrade: engineers and devs, because let’s face it, nothing much has changed for users or investors.

Indeed, free instant trades
for “investors”, whom :freetrade: say is the main target market, but saving £1/trade is no game changer for investors on 3-4 trades/year and was not going to be a major earner anyway in light of competitive offers and pressures from Revolut and RobinHood. Markets access, products, functionalities and account types now matter the most for :freetrade:. Consequently, the better the “markets access, products, functionalities and account types”, the more clients will join/trade/invest and the bigger the top line will be for :freetrade:. Thus, both users’ and investors’ goals are aligned here and differentiating/opposing theirs goals misses the point as both will be satisfied through the same means:

  • markets access (which exchanges we have access too)
  • products (number of stocks, other instruments, non-listed primary equity issuance from Seedrs/Crowdcube, etc.)
  • account types (SIPP, all types of ISAs)
  • functionalities (limit orders, stop loss orders, multi-currency accounts, brokerage/crowdfunding accounts aggregator + integration with all share certificates in 1 place, integration with SeedLegals ,etc.)

Now you might say, nothing has come yet from the “platform” but much will and you “ain’t seen nothing yet”. Indeed, I ain’t as on the roadmap except missed ETAs, I can see no change, no new features, no communication whatsoever. Let’s wait and see what big “reveal” we might get on 18th March “Freetrade 2020 and beyond”. I suspect no one at :freetrade: will say anything until then because of what they have chosen to announce that will make me come back on this thread and make amends. I can’t wait :slight_smile:

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Blessed be this attitude and spirit :+1: :innocent:

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Timescales on roadmaps from established companies should be treated with extreme caution let alone start-ups. Unforeseen operational issues blow them out the water every time.

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Question to FreeTrade

Order Cost Preview - Before confirming buy or sell orders, are there plans to upgrade the service to show actual live previews of the cost to the investor, before confirming?

This is an important question to find an answer to before I begin to start using the service. Thank you.

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Feel free to vote for this idea here: [Feature Request 🔧] Order Confirmation Screen

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This does not need a vote, over 100,000 users will want to know the price they are buying or selling for.

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Not for me - the market doesn’t freeze while you’re making up your mind so I want the best price available at time of purchase - not an old price ( from say ) 15 seconds ago.

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Yeah I’m not particularly bothered about this either to be honest.

I’ve voted for it all the same.

The way it works on interactive investor seems to be that the trade only completes if the price you is equal to or better than the quoted trade price. i.e. Sometimes it includes a message that they “improved the price by £x amount” if they managed to get a lower price for the buy (or a higher price for a sale).

I don’t mind the Freetrade approach, but I do get a bit nervous at time like this where the prices are very volatile. I like to know the price I am paying before hitting the buy/sell button.

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It makes sense right? ‘Order processed at the shown amount or better’.

Not, ‘Order processed at a weird gnarly amount’.

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Limit orders are already on the roadmap and will largely make this whole thing a non-issue. It’s all just UI design then.

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Hi Viktor, as promised in the zoom call, roadmap update please.

Hey Alban, as discussed on the Zoom call, the roadmap will be revamped when we’ll have made progress on fractionals. We’re getting there fast and we foresee 100% of our user base having fractionals this week. It’s coming!

Check this discussion about what the community thinks about the level of detail and direction:

https://community.freetrade.io/t/better-use-of-the-roadmap-please/19830/9

Let’s continue the discussion there.

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