Plus Paywall Stocks Poll

That is about the CFDs there has been no impact on the investment side of things. The CFD side of things is an absolute shit show on both sides - T212 and customers not understanding what they are investing in.

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I just felt a solution would have been that if you are in these stocks before the announcement then they have to let you keep going as normal till you sell it all. It just makes me wonder what else will be taken away later?

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How would you account for that in practice? Practically, this would be a shitshow of a hassle and something no viable business should code into any codebase. This would consume a lot of resources and create ugly overhead and tech debt.
Itā€™s not cool for current holders, but the only viable strategy for an actual business.

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To balance your view. Instant trades used to cost 1 pound per trade some time ago. Now they are free. What else will be made free later? With the users number growth and associated economies of scale we might see some surprises in the future.

The criteria for stocks getting in Plus is very clearly. Your suggesting means creating a whole subgroup of clients that are not following the same platform rules as everybody else which is an operational mess. @SebReitz beat me to it

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With no EIS benefit and potential 40% future capital gains? Seems crazy to offer Ā£2.51 to me.

If the share price in the next round is Ā£3.60 or less youā€™d be better waiting for the EIS relief alone. Not to mention the fact youā€™ll avoid any CGTā€¦

Itā€™s a simple flag in a relational database. The architecture itself wouldnā€™t change especially if a company like this is using an event driven system based around relational models.
The architecture itself does not change. The company called Vercel that used to be Zeit did the exact same thing for their team accounts after putting it behind a paywall.

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You are soooo right! We do tend to look at the negative and forget about the positives that were introduced!

It also doesnā€™t need to be an organisational mess. Given the right technical architecture

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Donā€™t have EIS as an option unfortunately. Just a flat 30% capital gain tax in my case.

Thereā€™s and upcoming series B??? Tell me moreā€¦ please

I think freetrade have used up all their EIS.

ā€œ Under EIS , you can raise up to Ā£5 million each year, and a maximum of Ā£12 million in your companyā€™s lifetime.ā€

In which case what is stopping me buying a fractional or single share of every plus stock? Iā€™d never have to pay for plus. Yes it sucks that Freetrade didnā€™t have their categories set before they opened plus, but they are business that has to focus on being profitable eventually. They made a choice knowing it would annoy some customers, but at least it is now clear for the future.

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Yh I can see what you are saying. That is easily avoidable

  1. There is a minimum you must have in that equity to be allowed to hold it and buy more past the cutoff date
  2. Any good investor would never diversify to over 300+ individual stocks. You will blow up your own account and never be able to really manage it
  3. A lot of those stocks have more chance to go down so if you were holding it you would be doing yourself a disfavour
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Queue the complaints that theyre forcing people to buy more stocks to meet a minimum to keep the ability to manage them

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To be blunt, whilst itā€™s understandable that existing customers who wonā€™t sign up to Plus for whatever reason will be annoyed at not being able to continue buying Plus stocks, FT have aspirations to grow the number of existing users considerably in future.
The reality is that this isnā€™t the final product and itā€™s unfortunate some users got caught out in the short term with this paywall, but for new users signing up they wonā€™t have that issue. Given the fact thereā€™s potentially millions of new users to join I think itā€™s worth having a clean break and not giving special treatment to existing users.

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Not confirmed, but check the ā€˜How Many Usersā€™ thread. Adam shares a slide with Series B on a timeline for December :+1:

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Interestingly the funny thing is the removal of the Ā£1 trading fee is whatā€™s made this look less valuable. I bet it would have been an absolute no brainier for almost everyone in this thread Ā£10/m vs Ā£1 a trade? Everyone (myself included) got very used to free trades very quickly :smile:

And your right, new users wonā€™t even notice this issue

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Absolutely right here Eden

What alternative are you all suggesting then? All the stocks you own already stay free? Iā€™d probably drop Ā£2 on all the ones I was watching just in case.

They did say eventually more will go free on the zoom call, perhaps when more international markets go onto plus (my guess).

But then people will say ā€œyou canā€™t call it Freetrade when you have to pay for a tradeā€ā€¦
I feel like recent discussions on this are going round in circles.

  • Plus isnā€™t the finished product
  • No you donā€™t have to sell your holding once it moves behind the paywall
  • Yes there is another broker who doesnā€™t charge, but there are also many, many more brokers who do charge high fees for trading
  • Plus is only really Ā£7 per month when accounting for the ISA (and if youā€™re serious about investing long-term then an ISA is imperative)
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As a round 5 investor donā€™t you get Freetrade plus for free??