Hi,
I did a test with some CEY.L stocks.
Was a sell for 14 just a min ago.
As soon as the live LSE ticker gave price of 109.92 ( last trade ), I placed an instant buy on Freetrade (I think FreeTrade’s prices are delayed, arn’t they?) & it went through for 1.10 gbp! Meanwhile the live last trade price had not moved.
No problem for 14 test shares, but different for 1000s of shares.
So, what’s going on?
Could it be stamp duty?
You actually should be looking at the bid-offer spread, not the last trade price. As I look right now, the spread for CEY is given as 109.85 / 110.00. This changes moment by moment. But it means that right now in the market there are people bidding for shares, saying that they’ll pay 109.85, and there are people offering to sell shares at 110.00. So if you put out an instant order, those are the prices that you should expect to transact at.
I think Freetrade is a good service for cheap buying and selling of shares, but it does its customers a disservice by displaying one price for a share and not making it clear whether it’s the last-trade price, the mid price (between bid and offer), or what! It would be more helpful, I think, if it displayed the bid-offer (or bid-ask, it’s also called) spread.
And also, most pricing that you see online is delayed, not real-time, because real-time data is expensive. So it’s all a bit approximate, we’re all sort of driving by looking in the rear-view mirror.
These are some of this mornings trades on LSE.co.uk
looks like ~110 was the correct price for a buy, you can see bid and ask prices, you might be able to see your trade on there
Could it be stamp duty?
No, stamp duty is not applicable.
Exactly this.
We never know what I am buying at.
FT don’t offer Request for Quote. This is the only way to see the price that you will trade at.
Many people have tested HL’s quotes vs FT prices and FT has always filled at the best price available at the time.
Good to know how they compare.
Ok excellent. Glad to know this was tried out. I have only used HL for low cost tracker funds.
£20 p/m + £6 LSE licence fee if I read it correctly.
That would be per person, ii isn’t the place FT would go for live data they’re a competing platform and a lot more expensive… for a service like freetrade that has a growing number of users (>600000) there would be better options.
Yes, per person. My point was that this fee is likely acceptable for a private investor. Therefore such a feed is inexpensive for an individual. Nothing to do with Freetrade because they’re a company and will source it from somewhere more appropriate.
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