The 45 pips charge on every transaction is too high for 2020. I understand the need to make some return, but losing almost 1% on each trade is egregious.
FT should allow us to maintain either USD cash to trade with or cut the fee to a reasonable amount.
Imagine how I feel paying the 1% FX fee when trading in my AJ Bell LISA. Also ISA balances are legally only allowed to be held in GBP so any USD cash feature would only apply to a GIA account.
For reference in my IB account I can trade in USD at 1.36545 / 1.36550. That is 0.5 pips spread in any size. FT spread is at least 90 times larger on each leg.
This is pure profit for FT, not transaction costs.
What am I paying monthly fees for? I thought that was their source of revenue.
Im not saying that they shouldn’t charge, just that it should be a more reasonable amount given how liquid this market is and that we are paying fees anyway.
I think the fee is fine. Cheaper than most. You can’t expect FT to charge nothing for trades and give almost free FX. Also they should not be as cheap as some of the day trade companies which offer CFD’s etc as this isn’t their business model. No one is forcing you to use it.