Think this would work well and create more awareness and ambassadors.
On the activity page, it would be good if things like Buy / Sell / Dividend notes could be shared.
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I think this is a bad idea and would encourage reckless risk-taking in new investors! High total portfolio returns are not necessarily indicative of good investor behavior.
There is a reason why metrics such as Sharp-/Sortino-ratios exist. Putting all your money into Tesla stocks might work well for some time, but the volatility and risk need to be accounted for. It would be a bad idea listening to investors encouraging such behavior. Diversifying your portfolio across sectors and geographies is key for long-term success (unless youāre RenTech).
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I donāt like the idea of basing it on portfolios but we could have some fun flairs or badges for lots of likes or posts or just key members of the community. Jack deserves one for all his DD! Also people who arenāt crowdfunders can feel involved.
The one thing Iād love is on each stock page, the last 3 community topics mentioning that stock, or maybe just a link to the dedicated stockās topic. I donāt mind if itās a link and not in-app. We know people want stock info and fundamentals in-app eventually, this way you could get some info and opinions quickly until that happens. I regularly find myself looking up tickers on the forum, some are fantastic, others donāt even exist.
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I could see this working pretty well, almost like the bottom of the weekly email but for specific stock. It could slowly be developed to contain news articles too, like the iOS stocks app
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This:
Threads in the native languages of the countries where Freetrade will expand to.
Every once and a while someone asks, in English, for Freetrade to open in France, or Greece, or Poland, or Spain, and several other countries.
I like the French Initiative you can see in the link above, though a rebellion or revolution may not be necessary.
I think it would be interesting to see people who live in countries other than the UK to start threads in their native language.
In those threads people could express their desire for Freetrade. But threads like that alone would feel, how would I put itā¦ letās say short. What I mean is that for those threads to have a positive impact they would have to go beyond the expression of a demand; they would have to appeal to the users.
How could we achieve it?
How about starting from the beginning?
How about by asking beginners questions, welcoming those questions, and provide answers to those questions. In French, German, Castillan, Portuguese, Polish, Greek, and so on
Ā¢2
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I have an idea. On Reddit there is an optional āflairā display for usernames on some forums. As an example in the r/bitcoinmarkets sub forum you can display next to your username ābullishā and r/soccer you can display your teams badge. Personally I think this is a blunt instrument for fans of blunt instrument, but if this idea can be developed so you can pick a range of sentiments, maybe even a customisable flair then it could be quite useful. It would add the same sort of forum information as the ātop 10 buys of the weekā thread which I think is great information to have.
I support this idea.
Iām not sure many people know what Castillian is, why not use the much more common term āSpanishā?
The year is 2007. Iām living in Madrid, Spain. I arrive being able to speak āportunholā (an equivalent to spanglish).
In my interactions with the locals I refer to their language as EspaƱol/Spanish. In several different occasions. Iām reminded by them thereās no such a language called EspaƱol/Spanish. They tell me there are several different Spanish languages CatalĆ , Euskera or Castellano, amongst others. And that we are talking in Castellano, not Spanish. I ended up learning it.
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Just for the benefit of any non nerds out there, this forum runs on Discourse. So a quick search for Discourse plugins/extensions/features etc will give you a rough idea of what that platform is capable of and whatās easy (plug and go) vs what would take an army of developers and an Apollo sized budget to achieve!
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I know that argument. I think itās more a political view. I have many friends from Spain that will call the language EspaƱol, rather than Castellano. Iām actually a Spanish native speaker, in my country we called it āEspaƱolā. So I will disagree with you that the correct term is Castellano.
But beyond that, in English very few people (I think) know what Castilian is, people call it Spanish, so my comment was about using this more common used term.
Apologies for the off-topic comment. I do support the idea of more language specific threads, and even Iām still a beginner Iād contribute to the Spanish language threads.
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Itās not me you are in disagreement with. The information was given to me. I just try to behave accordingly to what they told me.
No need to. Itās not my fight. I donāt have a say in it. Iām good either way
And now for what really matters
I praise you for it. Bravo
Maybe you could create sub forums for each of the companies and you could link that to the app. For example:
I want to buy Amazon through the app so click on Amazon and I can see not only the main info about a company but the discussions about Amazon on our forum.
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What do you mean growth? 1. More users signing up to become members or 2. more engagement from members?
- Reach/visibility of the forum
- More topics with shared interests between members
Does anyone have ideas on how we can boost this?
I actually disagree with majority on this, I donāt think app should be linked back to the forum as it will introduce clutter to the app. I suggest to follow M1 and introduce extended set of functionality to the web like portfolio pies and then link it back to the forums.
Linking public forums and content you canāt control to the app could also mislead new investors. If you were to add something Iād imagine it can only be curated insights.
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Has anyone heard of BOTB? It has a brilliant business model Freetrade could adopt to promote the community! Hereās the suggestion. Run a share prize draw, hear me out! You can choose how much you pay to enter and you select the share(s) you would like to win. You might pay Ā£20 for the chance to win a Tesla share, Ā£1 for the chance to win a BP, 20p to win an M&S share etc (you could do multiples of). Monie calculated by the fund could be redistributed in cash into account or gift other random quality shares. Make sense? Itās about engagement, so someone could win that tesla stock and many could get something back to increase community engagementā¦
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Great idea but I think to run such a scheme (where you pay a āfeeā to enter to win something), a gambling licence would probably be required.
The gambling commission says it does not regulate prize draws so not sure no suggestion a license is requiredā¦article here: Gambling Commission website - Gambling Commission.
An alternative might be: deposit Ā£100 in a month, 1 chance to win a Ā£5 share, deposit Ā£200, 1 chance to win a Ā£10 share then itās not paid, companies run prize draws all over the place to customers. Freetrade would just need to invest a little cash and time into the community, but the community would grow and engage more so you could utilise that resource more effectively so it should more than pay for itself if done well. Ok Iām shutting up now 
All the gimmicks and tricks to āengage the communityā take a lot of energy and time to administer. I also doubt the value of them.
Buying stocks and shares is an investment decision, not really a game for most people. People will naturally invest what they can afford each month, they wonāt be swayed by prize draws etc. If they are swayed by prize draws then FreeTrade would do them a disservice by using this method. The type of person making investment decisions based on that kind of marketing should probably join āgamblers anonymousā instead.
Working out why FreeTrade has so many investors but not too many that use the community chat, is the real question. There are 2 arms to the answer to this question:
- What type of person does use the chat?
- Is the community well signposted during the average user engagement with the product?
The answer to the first question, seems to lie massively with the group of people that have invested in the FreeTrade company. The regular contributors are the early investors and users of the platform. They are emotionally invested in the FreeTrade Journey and want to talk about the product and their investments. What is lacking is the massive amount of newer users of the FreeTrade platform. Which brings us to the next question.
To understand the answer to the second question, you need to understand the user journey. When they first hear about FreeTrade from a friend or advert or article, they go to the website or straight to the App Store. If they go to the website they will do a brief scan of the product and then download the app. The community is well signposted on the landing page of the website, but this is easily forgotten about as most users after reading all about FreeTrade will immediately download the App. Once on the App they may never go to the website ever again. On the App there is no link to the community!
Basically the FreeTrade journey for a new user bypasses the community forum, with no more than a glance when they first see the website. It is not hard to see why the numbers on the forum are low compared to the total number of users.
On the plus side, it could be thought of as a triumph of the App that users are having very few problems that they feel the need to reach out to the community!
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Interesting. However, some skill needs to be involved in that case, in order for someone to win.
From your link: āUnlike a lottery where the outcome depends on chance, the outcome of a genuine prize competition must depend on the exercise of skill, knowledge, or judgment by the participant.ā
The share prediction league could possibly be seen as āskillā, although some would say luck!