Stake app

I’m just wondering what everyone’s thoughts are on the app stake? Seem to have some cool features and give good insites into the financials of companies. Is Freetrade planning on using similar features and incorporate them onto the app?

Downloaded it out of curiosity. They have interesting info in there with analyst ratings etc but personally I don’t like their UI - it feels more oriented to trading.

The app is a bit laggy as well, market orders take a while to appear in your portfolio even though they are immediately executed. Also minimum trade value is $10 which feels a bit high.

I do like their focus on US market and the fact that the account is kept on USD

Overall I think they are vaguely interesting but prefer Freetrade. I could use them as a 2nd broker if I ever need one. They seem more trustworthy than T212

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I recently signed up for an Australian Stake account to get a free share. I got GoPro share worth like $4.50. I used their website not the app.

Here are some screenshots:
Right-click (or long press on mobile) to open the images in a new tab if they’re too small…

This is the dashboard:

This is an individual share page:
I can’t get a screenshot of this, but the Chrome tab says “Stake | Trade shares in undefined (undefined)”. Super sloppy.
The analyst ratings, news, related things, and financials are nice (more on financials below).

Here’s some of the expanded sell options.
The sell experience is a bit clunky. Like the textboxes start with zeros, and when you start typing it doesn’t get rid of it, but instead just leaves you with a leading or trailing zero lol. I also didn’t notice where it said I had 1 share (is right below, but feels disjointed from a UX perspective).

When you click Full Financials:

Cash flow for another example:

Here’s the search (actually called “Browse”):
That “Today, I want to” thing rotates between different things like “get exposed to gold”, “trade commodities, not stocks” etc.

Here are a couple of random things added to my watchlist:

Here’s my account. It never explained what Stake Black was. When I click on it it talks about day trading and pattern trading :man_shrugging:

I put a sell order in on my GoPro share. I did a limit order at the bid price it said. I have no idea if it traded or is still waiting lol. There’s some trade confirmations page in the “Account” popup menu, it’s just blank.

Same with Monthly Account Statements

There’s a Reports page. No idea what the report is like because I can’t click the button. It’s not disabled, but when I hover over it there is a :no_entry_sign: sign without explanation. Maybe because my account is so new.
I initially thought it was listing reports… but that’s actually the start and end dates for me to sort of build a report (I assume).

Free stocks are GoPro, Dropbox, or Nike.

I took some screenshots while I was revealing my free share (I found a random invite code on Reddit).
It’s a reasonably interesting spinner thing.

When I clicked spin, it changed the top text to “Stocking stock…” then “Assembling wheel”. Then it spun around and landed on GoPro.

I didn’t get the share straight away. You get it within 3 trading days:

Speaking of trading days. Here’s some details on deposits.
I kept getting logged out at this point, so I connected to a VPN in Aus. Must be annoying for travelling Australians. Hope the UK version works better.

Anyway, it defaults to POLi. POLI is very much like the new Freetrade deposit experience built on open banking. You basically get a popup, choose your bank from a list (most or all Aus banks support POLi), give your bank login details (to POLi, feels so sketchy lol), choose which account to pay from, and POLi makes sure it goes to the right place. The account name is not Stake, which is silly. Shows up as “OZFOREX LIMIT”. So that’s probably https://ofx.com that they’re using to exhcange AUD to USD.

The default deposit amount is $2,500 lol. You can pay with POLi or Card. You choose a Speed too which you pay for “express”.

POLi Express & Regular

Card Express & Regular

Whenever you change the “Method” it goes back to Express to get you to pay more :wink:

The fees vary by amount. They aren’t linear:

There are FX and bank processing fees to get money out:

Looking around more, you can deposit USD directly to Drivewealth for a $5 flat fee.
You basically send in the money and then fill out a form. I cut my reference off this.
It asks for my Stake account number. I can’t find it anywhere. Maybe it was in an email :man_shrugging:. The form is on a different URL, so clicking the Stake logo at the top takes you to their homepage instead of your dashboard.

While looking for my account number. I found this day trade settings page:
“Under US rules, your account may be restricted if you make more than 3 day trades in a rolling 5 trading day”. Interesting!

So, overall, the website is a bit slow in parts. Some of it is snappy since it’s in a CDN, and some of it (like instrument logos and stuff) are hosted by Drivewealth (also in a CDN I imagine). But some of it is really slow, sometimes to the point where it doesn’t ever load. I imagine that stuff is coming from Australia, but the fact it doesn’t load eventually is strange. I imagine it’s a better experience in Australia though lol.

From a technical perspective, they have heaps of CORS related issues. They just log errors in the console rather than breaking things mostly.

Overall, I don’t rate their website very highly. I’m sure I’m biased, but it doesn’t appeal to me much. Feels very clean, but bland and boring. Functional would describe it. I dunno. It’s just okay. It’s not very helpful or user friendly. Very basic.

I like that they have real time prices, though they’re not really refreshing with trades as much as I’d like to see.

The biggest thing I didn’t like actually was that they only offer US markets to Australians. No ASX, and you have to convert your AUD to USD when depositing. I also had to pay US$5 for doing the W-8BEN form. That wasn’t optional, of course (since you can only buy US stocks). Just part of depositing. The experience of doing so was okay, I think. Nothing special. No happy illustrations.

So yeah. Is their app better? I dunno, maybe I’ll try at some point. Maybe they’ve put all their effort into the app and not this website. It certainly feels like it. Maybe this will make people thankful Freetrade doesn’t half-ass a website? lol.

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It looks so beautiful :star_struck:

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The app is definitely a better experience. Most of the issues you described are not present. The one problem with the app though, same with the website, is that holdings are displayed by alphabetical order rather than value which is, IMO, possibly the stupidest way of doing it.

The applications main page is brilliant though. It provides an overview of market movements as well as a countdown to market open. This is then supported by Market Movers, Popular Searches and Most Up/Down.

The main reason I use Stake for my USD holdings is that everything is available including ETFs which the EU has placed restrictions on. This may be irrelevant given the latest movements around financial regulation which look like the UK government will remove this ruling though.

With the release of Superhero in Australia, essentially Freetrade for Aussies, you can combine this with Stake to get a really wide variety of shares very cheaply. Selfweath, another good broker, is also expanding its offering to include US shares for AUD $8 plus 1% FX (0.5% each way).

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You’ve joined the forum just to post links on multiple threads?

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yes and no. i’m relearning about the stock mkt right now thanks to E19: Robinhood's GameStop decision: Why did it happen and how can it be prevented in the future? - YouTube

and this is blood boiling. Stake is just in it to make money. DriveWealth-same. Citadel executes RH trades. wth.

“the house always wins”

stake is having trading issues if you check their site.

i didn’t jump on GME or AMC though but man this game is rigged.

Uh huh, but posting multiple links in multiple threads immediately after you join comes across as a bit spammy.

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thanks , i’ll post less . no endoring stake here, they’ve caused enuff damage to ppl jumping on hype stonks

It’s not necessarily about posting less. If you have a good point to make then a new thread for that point may be best to get it across.

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sorry about this

friend got dropbox

also in sydney they dont have lockdowns any more

i had no idea they had a web app

Sorry but… Is this relevent… your sure you’re not spamming? You’ve just necro’d several threads.

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lockdown life

This thread invites too many violations of rule 6, so we will close it.

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