The market is closed on the weekend
I think thatās a difficult pill to swallow. Robinhood said the same thing, despite being in bed with the intermediary and investor. There was no liquidity issue on the backend so itās either a political decision or purely rich guys shutting down the small guy to exit their near bankrupt positions.
When are you intending on launching legal action? I would assume if youāre with the retail investor you will be doing this. Appreciate it might not directly be your fault. The system is rigged itās a scam. If this were a blockchain based system this could not happen and ultimately itās not a free market. Almost all the hedge funds got out of their shorts on the verge of being bankrupt and one of them is left still not out. I never placed a single trade based on this stupid wall st bets, however now Iāll blow 10k with them simply to ensure a hedge fund goes under. To me doing what has been done is like putting fuel on a burning fire and now it really is the small guy vs the big guy. Iāll be closing my free trade account and maybe open a more risk based trading account in order place leverage or higher bets, including buying more crypto to ensure the current rigged system changes.
I find it insanity that any trading company allows a sell buy not a buy. Why allow any sells knowing that doing that means youāve screwed us losing us money. If thereās no buyers the price is always going to drop, which is highly convenient for institutional based investors.
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Yes. My sells were blocked from executing on both days. I tried to sell AMC at 2.45pm today and it was repeatedly rejected. Then it was 25% down and continued to drop. It did not regain. Yesterday, I was 50% in profit but all my sells were rejected. I have screenshots of all my transactions and values at the time of the orders. I could only sell at a small profit which by the time it executed turned into a loss. I blame the US system but want to.know what FT are going to do on our behalf as millions of dollars in lawsuits will be paid out to brokers and we will be the ones suffering.
Given the interest in US stocks from UK investors I do think this feature would be worth prioritising this year. It is probably quite a complex area they were hoping not to get into but it seems inevitable at some point. However they would then be running multiple client accounts at Barclays and trying to manage all the transfers between them and tie them to FT accounts, plus lots of screens to manage that so quite complex and lots of work to do. It could save people quite a lot on fx charges though as it would separate the fx charge from every trade and would I imagine dramatically cut down the number of fx transactions. Not something they can add quickly unfortunately.
Iād really like them to offer instant client account transfers even on the UK accounts as a first step (and not with margin). Given faster payments and sufficient timely data from barclays this might be possible? This might be made difficult by the tools barclays provides though (for example they might update a csv of transactions every hour or something, precluding instant access), but it would be nice to see a predictable fully automated service for transfers.
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Another possibility is that the fx provider simply canāt handle the huge surge in transactions they are seeing from lots of clients and put quotas in place to maintain service instead of upgrading their servers. I suspect the truth is more prosaic than a hedge fund conspiracy.
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Automated same day withdrawals:
Of course the system is rigged against the retail investor it just happened. If it was not rigged why were all institutions able to place orders but conveniently not retail. Fx has nothing to do with it, London handles almost all global Fx and has capacity, I know because I work on trading platforms. Not possible this was an issue. Someone decided to put a stop to it its simple and who possibly might want to do that. Government or the people who have most invested. The US has done this before with silver trading.
Also to add how convenient is it that thereās an Fx issue in UK (wherever) and at the same time Robinhood and other US trading was stopped that require no Fx.
It doesnāt matter how you cut it, retailers have been fucked and something smells wrong. No one can argue with that.
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So some did execute? The problem is the price on the app is always just indicative, it says that when you confirm, you need to use a live price like Yahoo to see what youāre likely to get. On an average day it doesnāt matter much but with a crazy volatile day like yesterday with halts etc it could do.
More info: https://freetrade.io/order-execution-policy
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This is the most toxic thread Iāve ever seen on Freetrade.
The demands by some of these customers about compensating their imaginary gains is hilarious.
Itās a shame Freetrade gained all these customers in whatās turning out to be such a crazy, finger-pointing frenzyā¦
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It could potentially have been third party or counterpart risk paper based in intermediate covers on stocks. So maybe it was liquidity of the intermediary I guess the time between the trade settling that cash has to be available temporarily. But it it were that Iād expect people to have just said instead of providing bullshit responses or reasons like Fx which is not true at all.
Some people would have lost shit loads, of course thereās finger pointing someone is to blame and free trade provides a service. Just like freetrade Fx provider aparently, will probably face legal action from either freetrade or other providers.
Reading some of the comments here, along the lines of āfreetrade are in the ring here too because theyāre only allowing sells not buysā. People forget that multiple messages across multiple platforms yesterday explained that freetrade have had the volume of fx trades severely restricted with pretty much no notice.
They therfore decided that they had to allow all sell orders to try to avoid trapping people in to falling stocks like other platforms have done to their users lately, which could be accommodated with the restrictions imposed on them.
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What annoys me is the threats directed at Freetrade. I expect most claiming to have lost money really mean they didnāt gain from buying shares. Not the same thing at all.
You could still sell, hence you couldnāt lose any money because you always had the option to sell.
I donāt want to get roped into this, but my original point was more aimed at how itās a shame Freetrade have gained these customers in this toxic, political market and face potential backlash for something out of their control.
Letās just wait this whole thing to simmer down I guess 
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We now know that Multi-currency accounts or just in $ would have prevented this Barclays/CurrencyCloud issue and this is a business decision,
If you donāt vote, you donāt get:
Here:
ā¦and here:
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No it wouldnāt. If thatās the case why was the US retailer based in US dollars also be locked out. It had nothing to do with currency exchange at all. Not saying the Fx provider didnāt stop Fx.
Lots of febrile, frankly ridiculous comments and wild conspiracy for sure, but I see all these new customers as an opportunity to educate and convert into long term saver/investors.
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And 99% of those donāt realise that shares that jumped opened with those gains already. They wouldnāt have been buying at Thursdayās closing price.
GME, for example, ended up 70% yesterdayā¦but if you executed a buy order at 2:30pm - you would actually be sitting on a loss now.
Freetrade have handled it as well as they could have done. They are clearly an ethical platform and this is not remotely comparable to what T212 or RH did. Itās the opposite - they got screwed by the big boys too.
Hopefully they resolve this over the weekend - I wish the team the best of luck.
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I choose to believe Freetrade on this, rather than speculation based on incomplete facts (you were not party to these discussions). They said:
Hours before the market open, our partners suddenly decided to severely limit the rate of how many FX conversion trades they choose to support. They gave us no notice, no opportunity to work this out together in advance, which impacted our ability to uphold our standards for you.
So from Freetradeās perspective, it is about FX - US transactions cannot happen without it. We can speculate on what made that provider shut down transactions, but bear in mind it is just one provider, so the capacity of London FX markets doesnāt really matter and itās quite possible it was as simple as unprecedented demand and protecting clients who pay bigger fees for fx than free share trading.
Iām sure FT is looking into all the options here but a solution wonāt be simple unless this provider can provide more capacity.
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Weāre not talking about other brokers. Their US partner was still making trades
Viktor and FT team, thanks for the transparency and updates. I just got a notification of the refund. I am willing to forgo the refund. Please continue to develop the app and maybe switch/get a better primary FX provider but what you are doing to support the retail investors is what makes me most happy!
P.s Iām not speaking for anyone else - if you have been impacted then itās within your right for a refund.
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