I spent 14 years building FX derivatives system in investment banks(including Barclays) I would be curious to understand who was the genius who decided to throttle clients like FT who, in the big scheme of things, are insignificant in terms of volume. A FX cash system can handle an obscene amount of orders and deal with bursts and peaks.
I would understand if this was the day after Brexit or US election or some sort of systemic event, but weāre talking about people placing orders in an app, pushing buttons. Maybe 20-30k orders/hour ? That is nothing.
I bet that, in a million years, nobody from FT would have thought that at some point they will have their FX orders throttled.
People say FT should have redundant FX conversion service, but how about the FX conversion service(CurrencyCloud) have a pool of liquidity providers besides Barclays ? That is very poor indeed.
Update: If the provider is Currency Cloud, weāre talking about a company which is valued at half-billion bucks, raised $80M from Visa recently and cannot handle such a normal increase in FX orders for their clients. I say normal, because weāre talking about humans placing orders not systems trading high frequency algorithms. What a s**tshow !
Disclaimer: I am doing a lot of guesswork here and assumptions as I donāt have any inside information about what actually happened.
January subscription free for the new plus members is such a good move! Keep them happy, show them what freetrafe is actually about, and maybe loads will stay. Sacrifice a short term windfall for longer term growth. Big fan! Show them what enjoyable investing is all about, freetrade!
āWell played Freetrade Some of the comments and complaints here and on other threads are absolutely embarrassing. Iād be frightened to think what their reactions would be if something serious actually happened in their lifeā¦ā
Cannot believe how fragile and how quick people are to destroy / attack people today
An idea for @Ian@Viktor@adam .
If indeed the limitation is on the number of FX orders that can be sent to Currency Cloud, maybe you could do some sort of aggregation on the FT side. Taking into account weāre talking about orders with relatively small notional and in one currency pair(USDGBP), queue and pool the FX orders in the FT backend every 5-10 minutes interval and submit them as a single order to Currency Cloud.
Thereās not much point focusing on numbers over the next little while as the fall out from today plays out I imagine - itās so hard to have any idea how many of the new signups will be here next month, or further down the line. It was tricky before today due to all the GME people and 212 refugees, but many people will irrationally/incorrectly blame Freetrade for todayās goings on.
Donāt get me wrong, itās great to see the numbers go up - Iāve followed this page daily for over a year. But it feels to like the 500,000 mile stone has been slightly tarnished in the short term thanks to these FX jokers. Freetrade have done a great job in tough circumstances of showing their commitment to customers today though and hopefully that counts in some newbies eyes.
Me too a little. All we can hope now is that more than we would expect would be sticky. And stay because of the transparency even if freetrade have been drawn in to the latest issues!
I think weāll see what we may all expect. Some users will stay, some will leave, few will actually cancel their account which leaves the option open for them to look at Freetrade at a later date. I think in the long term theyāll see some retention from returning customers from this incident.
But in the last couple of days a shoal came by, and I feel most will just pass through. It has been an impossible mission to handle. I canāt imagine the levels of stress in the office. I hope they all understand their efforts are appreciated. The good thing about this is that a business attracts and retains the customers it wants to retain. Keep the focus. Slow and steady wins the race
One thing we regulars can all do to help with is to be as helpful as usual. Iām always impressed by how quickly one of the community will respond to a question, or will directly reach out to a member of the customer ops team to help chase up a particular issue, etcā¦ Iām normally too shy to offer assistance as I feel like I donāt know enough about the markets compared to many of you on here but have gradually felt more comfortable playing an active part as Iām sure many have.
I say letās continue to be as useful as we can. And we need to remember not to come across condescendingly as the learning curve as first time investors is steep and we all knew bugger all about it at one point or another (and sometimes I still feel like for all Iāve learned and read, I know nothing still).
I mention as a reply to Eden as he (edit - or she or they) has been someone I always notice is extremely quick to reply to and assist with everything and anything that comes up (there are many many others of you)
Absolutely. The forum, in parts has been hard to watch the last day or so but incredibly impressive from members like you. And @Eden ā¦ He knows I love him too
This is how freetrade have cultivated a different forum to other brokers in that weāre all willing to help if we can help new members and people that are new to investing. Most of the freetrade customers wouldnāt have even known about investing last year but the forum in the most part has remained a very helpful place, and the community has bloody stepped up over the last two days with frustrations across the whole of the market
their growth will be a game changer over the next few years.
Some of the comments and complaints here and on other threads are absolutely embarrassing. Iād be frightened to think what their reactions would be if something serious actually happened in their lifeā¦ā
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