A strong year for US Financials sector?
(JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, ishares S&P 500 Financials Sector USD (Acc)
Just putting that insight out there to ease the pain of this Freetrade announcement.
I were one of the FT investors who lost faith in the talent of the management and sold privately 100% of my holding even with it being a bit of hassle back in the hype days.
What done it for me was having my isa with FT in 2021 but not having access to buy into BAE as it was not on the platform and the shares were trading at an incredible price, so I purchased through AJ Bell at the time and then went on to sell all positions in summer 2021 on FT.
I think a story like this solidifies the theory that for the UK you should be an owner rather than an outsider. Do the hard work yourself for the benefit of reaping the higher rewards.
I really thought there were some well deserving FT millionaires on here Pretty lame as (most of you) are awesome people.
Anyway as I mentioned above, the US Financials sector looks positioned for 2025 - 2029.
I highly doubt there is a case for Consumer Duty here… founders and shareholders have to look out for shareholders and in this case 75% of shareholders are happy with the sale price…
RH also aren’t even offering an ISA right now (which I’ve seen claims that they’re planning on to despite all of their holdings being $), so yeah not the best platform for UK right now, unless you’re into margin investing.
The amount owed to A Ordinary and B Investment shareholders is an estimate. The exact proceeds you will receive depend on, amongst other things, the total transaction costs, which are paid from the total consideration.
Translation: £1.19 is the best you can hope for, but will be less.
Haha also does this mean that we ordinary shareholders are footing all the costs, the VCs etc don’t have to pay anything?
Yep, and not to mention that Crowdcube like other trading platforms warns you before you put any money down which is all they can really do.
I did however see one person managing to clear back a ridiculous amount of losses from Trading212 once via the Ombudsman which was a ludicrous case despite Trading212 doing everything it reasonably could, but that really is a ridiculous anomaly that is unlikely to happen again.
I’m honestly happy with T212. Yes there may be some justified criticisms as there are with any platform, and for some reason T212 has a stupid amount of fear mongering on Reddit, but otherwise T212 really is what FT should have been and is continuing to improve even if it is a bit slow (e.g. SIPPs are finally supposed to be coming out this year at last).
Wow… After investing 3 separate times since 2019 I’m coming out with a loss (Even after EIS is taken in to account). That’s me jumping ship to 212 then
I invested in Rounds 2, 3, and 4, achieving a 3.6x return, including EIS benefits. In hindsight, I should have exited in the secondary offer a few years ago when the share price offered was more than three times higher. Looking back, I was also right to call out the inflated valuations from 2020 onwards. At the end of the day, Freetrade is just another discount broker in a highly competitive market with clear winners and losers.
For early investors, this was a mediocre but acceptable outcome. However, the most important takeaway is that crowdfunding often feels like a fool’s game. Crowd investors tend to be either the company’s target market or a last-resort funding source—and in both cases, they’re frequently taken for a ride
18 months ago they crowdfunded at a valuation of £225m / £2.60 share price. They’ve grown and reached profitability since and now sell at a valuation of £160m / £1.19 share price? Make it make sense
In case you want to understand more as to why Viktor is very happy happy with this deal that brings him 15x return on all of his life savings at the moment of 2016 and seeing he worked at Google and other companies for a while it probably not nothing. I also imagine if he stays on he will be well compensated for further growing a company that is now growing naturally and via inertia - sold at the exact right moment before it actually started making money and starting to scale big.
I also guess it’s one thing to invest in successful start-ups and another to actually build one or turn one around.
“Basically, the platform takes care of everything. So I invested in the very first crowdfunding round of Monzo and Revolut, which both of them turned out to be great investments, but nothing is as big as my investment in Freetrade, which was my third investment that summer, in summer 2016. I saw the pitch and I had the same feeling again like this, this has to exist. I wanted to open my ISO. Then I arrived in the UK, I ended up with a suboptimal solution, eight pounds per transaction. So I was like, What can I do to make this happen? So I looked across my bank accounts in Ireland, Hong Kong, I put all the money I had at the time, and I invested everything in Freetrade.”
I’ve said this before, crowdfunding is basically paying the salaries of the founders until they can get a preferential exit for them only and not the investors.
Pretty lame as (most of you) are awesome people.