I donât think they can offer it (see notes above about restrictions on holdings in ISAs), but you are allowed to have two ISAs open at once, youâre just not allowed to contribute to more than one of the same type in the same tax year.
So options for freetrade seem to be:
Continue as they are and charge 0.45% to everyone on every transaction
Try to get the FX fees lower now that they are on their own platform (0.1% seems optimistic, they have to make money somehow)
Offer currency accounts (which they need anyway for expanding to other countries) - but this would not cover ISAs, only GIAs
Would be nice to hear what their long term plans are on this, even if they donât plan changes in the short term.
Of course. As a user you want the lowest possible fees. But FT need to strike a balance - their closest competitors in the market they are competing in such as HL have much higher fees. Therefore it makes no sense for FT to give away too much margin.
Ft started with one model and you have the Fremium with them.
If you trade ETF on here is cheaper than Vanguard 0.15% here is 0%
If you trade ETF on HL or Fidelity or inderaxtive Investors they have a high cost and no fractional shares.
If you compare with 212 which have introduced a series of fees lately. FT is more stable and more rilaiable.
So we are more than happy to pay the 0.45% fee or stick to 0 cost ETF in GBP.
You can also go to Etoro which have a better FX and 5 dollars on each withdraw.
As per above gbp/usd resistance at 1.4 seems to be to strong and the trend might be changing going back to 1.3 so you will buy less
You can get iShares all world heged.
Or you can spread the cost on multiplecplatformsâŠ
Pay for service is better than free and no service.
Perhaps a good balance is in the increase in the base of regular payers of the Plus account, which could be achieved with a more attractive exchange rate, I believe.
I think the debate is important. The community is the voice of customers and Iâm sure the FT is aware of that. Besides, I believe we all want to see Freetrade very well because it is to whom we entrust our investments, so I do not think anyone is thinking that way.
So youâre then creating a system where for some users FT will do better with that new pricing and for other users FT will do worse - depends on usage. Iâm sure FT are always modelling different options for things like this but ultimately keeping it simple is a strength.
Not really.
Users have the liberty to choose from the available options. The consequences that result from the choice made is exclusive property of the chooser.
There are good returns to be found in UK stocks, I have FTSE 100 stocks that have more than doubled. Donât write them off just because the FTSE 100 itself has been largely flat. With dividends reinvested returns arenât that bad even for the FTSE 100. (although FTSE hasnât done quite as good as US stocks the US indexes have been largely pumped up by about 5 really big companies)
I donât write them off, personally Iâm probably over-invested in UK stocks compared to US and certainly have been in the past, but the indexes clearly have diverged in performance (comparing say FTSE 100 to S&P 500 over the last 30 years there is a huge difference). Individual stocks of course the performance varies and the UK has been somewhat underpriced IMO due to Brexit and pandemic fears together.
It can certainly be argued that US indexes are overpriced right now (at all time highs, and as you point out just a few tech stocks making up 20% ish of the index), but the historical performance is clear even if we might be nearing a correction in US indexes.
