Sad Customer - "Closing your Freetrade beta account"

So am I. I would not like to be on our Irish friends shoes

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@Ttrueno you should read the thread for the users in Netherlands, same there. Remember that Beta is Beta and is changeable. Hopefully any investments you made were small.

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I think everybody had in mind that a beta version is the previous version of something, and specially in investment, you wont be forced to sell with 1 month notice.
If you consider 23k small amount, yeah

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The solution to this is very easy and straightforward. Just sell your position and buy it back anywhere else for the time being.
Since FT doesn’t offer leveraged positions, your loss will be essentially zero. Maybe you even make some money in a downward market with this. This is more of an inconvenience than a real problem.

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I think Freetrade should at least refund the FX fees, if any on both the buy and sell and then any stamp duty paid on the buy side.

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Buy at 100
Forced to Sell at 50
Buy back at 50
You loose 50% of your investment :see_no_evil:

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It has nothing to do with Freetrade that your shares have dropped 50%.

You would be in exactly the same position as if you weren’t forced to sell.

The issues I see are around CGT and Forex fees that could be incurred.

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It’s the being forced to sell.
If FT were forcing me to sell at a massive loss I would be going ballistic

Do we want to be part of a company that will force you to do this :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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But you can just buy them back for exactly the same price.

You are no worse off.

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Buy it where? Freetrade its not being clear on when they will release versions for each country. I have been hearing “Irish expansion soon” for 3 years so it could be in 1 year. So then I have to sell, get my money back, create an account in other operator that perhaps it hasn´t the same shares as FT does… It´s not as easy as “sell & buy” in the same day

Edit: and of course, pay taxes for the benefits I have now, that doesnt suit at all to my plans for this year

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I agree it’s a pain…but the issue isn’t that people are being forced to sell with a loss.

It’s that people are being forced to sell and will incur fees having to buy back with another provider. And also the possible tax implications as well.

I’m not disputing your points at all.

How do you work that out? you’d have exactly the same number of shares

you’d only lose fx fees and spread

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If you sell or not you have still lost that money it is only in your brain that the money still exists on shares you hold that have lost value

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Guys for me the problem is not that I am forced to sell or the FX fees and bla bla.

For me the problem is about the TIMING of Freetrade communicating this.

The decision would have been entirely up to me if I would have known that this was coming 1 year ago. If one year ago someone would have asked to @adam or @ViktorWhat about the Beta users now that we are opening up to Europe?” then this issue could have been easily identified and flagged accordingly.

Now I have no other option than to sell within 1 month and to accept the losses that come with it. Then I have to wait several more months till Freetrade finally launches in Europe and re-buy the same stuff at a lower ( :money_mouth_face:) or higher price ( :expressionless:) .

PS: Please do not suggest that I could move to a competitor since it is also the reason why I picked Freetrade in the first place.

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Your loss will only be 40% if you don’t use the proceeds to invest in the same elsewhere… your real loss is the dealing fees and stamp duty you have to pay elsewhere plus any spread on the investment prices, plus any movement in the market in the minutes or days between selling and buying plus the inconvenience. it’s still poor of FT but 40% seems unlikely. Shame they couldn’t transfer in kind but that is info they ought to have made known earlier - all part of the sh1te that is Brexit imho.

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I fear too much common sense for FT in your excellent suggestion.

It is a Brexit related thing and it is not obvious that the suggestion you are referring to meets with the relevant UK or EU Financial regulations. Many banks have closed accounts of Brits who have moved to EU countries: see for example

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2020/11/eu-bank-accounts-closed-brexit

In a way that is the point that @FRusso has been making all along. He understood for a while that there would be difficulties and was trying to get this on the top of the agenda - he would have rather been told some months ago for the reasons he states in his posts.

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Someone that gets my point :slight_smile:

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I think the key difference here is, that the UK banks that were closing accounts, were doing so because they did not want to maintain a presence in those EU countries for a number of reasons i.e. the expense involved and the additional regulations etc.

Whereas, Freetrade is actively expanding into the EU counties and wants to open new accounts.

That is not the key difference or reason. Several UK banks had presence in the EU and vice versa - and continue to do so. Those banks had to change various things related to identification and transparency (amongst other things) directly because of Brexit - it is because of the relevant Financial regulations both in the EU and the UK.

p.s. I could have mentioned things that other cross border brokers have done because of Brexit but I wanted to keep my comment short and to the point that was relevant to the OP.

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