Share Dealing Prices

[Ian2021 (Ian)]

This morning I used the app to buy shares with a ‘latest price’ of £9.89 per share showing.

However, I was charged £10.34 per share in the app.

I went back to check the market price and it was still around £9.89

I believe this is the second time I have had around a 5% negative difference in share price on Freetrade and after checking cannot see a reason why.

I then experimented and sold a single share. For fifteen minutes they up on the LSE at £10.17 a share yet I only got £10.10 at Freetrade.

Could someone explain to this novice how this has worked. Only the purchase disparity means I lost a lot of money on two large trades.

Many thanks,

Ian

[SebReitz]

Hi
There are dozens of threads on this already. If you use the search function, you’ll find them, e.g.

Shares more than asking price

I bought shares at asking price at 0.81 but ended up paying 0.83. ok I understand freetrade can not guarantee buy price but it seems to be the same on every share I buy never less. Anyone know what going on please.

[jspen (#1,490)]

Might be worth sharing what share you were buying.

Also - prices are indicative, and when you press ‘buy’ it clearly says the price is estimated. It also states on every single share in the app that prices are delayed by up to 15 mins, and the point in time that they were last updated.

Freetrade then go to market and find you the best price available at that point in time, which seemingly was £10.34 per share, remember prices change every second, so what you were seeing on LSE still won’t be 100% accurate, especially if you’re buying into a volatile stock.

If you tell us what share it was, someone should be able to check and explain it.

[BOOM]

You didn’t ‘lose’ money. You bought at the market price at the time.

Tell us the share/price/time and we can confirm it.

[mikeyp (Michael)]

A lot of people are asking why when they buy they pay more than the price of the share and when they sell they receive less than the price the share is at on the market.

This is always the case with shares it’s called a spread and every share has one it’s the % between the difference in a price received (known as a bid price) if you sell and a price you receive to buy (known as the Ask), the size of the spread in % depends on market volatility and demand a typical example is:

Share price £1

Sell price (Bid) £0.95p

Buy price (Ask) £1.05p

Spread is 10.5% (roughly)

So when buying shares people need to look for the Ask price not share price same with a sell look at the Bid price. I know not all the query’s will be because of this but some I’m sure will. Hope this helps a little.