I saw this in the app the other day and wondered if it was new, but saw some info that made my think it was around for a while 
nice little addition though
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I guess some people can find trading an addiction 
. I think the choice is optional you can trigger a tab button
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That’s what I think as well.
Hey @Big-g
The trading breaks feature was the result of some extra time work that a few team members picked up.
As a regulated business we have a duty of care towards our customers. We need to take steps, especially, to help any customers who might be experiencing some sort of vulnerability. While this sounds a bit extreme, in reality work the FCA has done showed that over half of adults have experienced some signs of vulnerability.
This can become more serious when using products like ours where you are putting yourself at risk of financial loss.
Our head of user research wrote a great piece with some more background that is worth a read.
It’s a feature that we all feel strongly about as it’s critical that we support our customers regardless of their personal circumstances!
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As an investor “it worries me” they are going down a route where warnings are needed potentially. Not sure how that makes my life easy 
@acamp that is a great response so are FT considering there crypto offering going forward as this is a very volatile product that many people lose lots of money on and is a major problem along the lines you mentioned. Certainly more than standard stocks and ETFs.
No issues with the warning as any help is good but wondered if it was being put in place for future offerings which need this disclaimer.
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This is a great feature and I’d love to see FT do more in this space. While ‘commission-free’ brokers do an awful lot of good in terms of increasing access to investing – on the flipside, they also allow people to easily put 100% of their pension into one small-cap mining company or the latest ‘meme’ stock.
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I agree with this, HL are clearly trying to help protect their clients from negative outcomes resulting form high idiosyncratic risk strategies but it’s a tricky space with the current FCA regulation.
A quick browse of this forum, look at the most popular discussions and look the weekly top buys points at a lot of concentration in meme stocks and generally bad outcomes.
I don’t think Freetrade should stop people buying what they want and at the time of the GameStop squeeze Adam said the same and that instead they would try to focus on education - I’m not sure how they feel they are doing from that angle but I’d argue there’s a lot of room for improvement.
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short term trading IS gambling.
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Nope totally unrelated to crypto. All investing carries some risk (or else you’re getting a return for free which is too good to be true!) and even for stocks and ETFs it’s important for us to educate customers about these.
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This and other things we might consider, at least in the short term, are quite different from the stuff that’s pushing the boundaries between guidance and advice. We’re an execution only platform, so our main aim is to promote healthy investing habits.
On the education front, we’ve got a really great team of investment writers pushing out Honey and other content. We can do a lot more in the app - one thing I might call out are the really great descriptions that are accompanying the new fundamental stats that are gradually being added (bonus points if anyone notices the new one that shipped today).
The Honey writers are actually starting to go into workplaces to run introduction to investing sessions for a number of different companies. Purely an educational focus on the importance of investing. Shout if anyone might be interested!
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Totally agree but there are levels to what kind of gambling seem to link to problems as the excellent link on the FT response mentions that types not available here are usually the bigger problems. Also, short term trading is meant to be what FT discourage and long term only which is what I think should be the main focus of the company.
But as the responses are saying it just for education then I am 100% behind it
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Any trades a gamble really just because something has had gains for the last 100 years straight doesn’t mean it couldn’t fold tommorow.
Of course every trade is a gamble but if you go to the clinics/rehabs with the problem gamblers or the surveys mentioned in the FT piece linked above then a vast majority will fall into other forms of gambling. This is often caused by the “rush” of the fast paced sports, gaming or crypto type nature of certain levels of gambling.
Stocks/shares/ETFs are very boring, excluding meme stocks, and won’t find a high rate of gambling problems as it doesn’t meet the typical gamblers needs of quick fixes. Similar to buying a house, collectibles or gold which are also gambling as people expect a return which is greater than the original price, No-one disputes it is a form of a gamble but for the nature of the context it certainly doesn’t fit the same mould of the vast majority of gambling addiction problems in the wider community.
Meme stocks are very similar and are problematic to many due to the pack mentality of the people egging each other on to become rich quick and how it is guaranteed to go to the moon etc. With that in mind I do think it is a good idea to have breaks.
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To be clear I don’t FT are falling short of any legal obligation nor do I think offering full advisory services is the answer.
Obviously I only have access to the public data but my intuition is that broadly user’s investing habits are not particularly healthy.
I’d find it quite problematic if in long term the median user is treating the app like a casino (even if FT do adopt the gambling break type features as mitigation) - that undermines FT’s mission to get everyone investing.
RH rightly drew criticism from ethically questionable practices and I find it hard to draw a clear distinction in behaviours, I don’t buy that just not offering certain products absolves all guilt.
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So you agree with the break,fantastic.
Agreed. I think the mission statement is problematic. Getting everyone investing also includes those people who should not be investing, for whatever reason. In a way the basic account helps here, it largely steers away from the riskier end.
I don’t see how you can be an execution only broker, with wide market coverage, and have as a main aim to promote healthy investing habits. These are, for the most part, contradictory.
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I never disagreed at all. My concern was it being a “get out” clause for new additions to FT that are riskier, hence my worry that it would affect these people. I personally, just my unimportant view, wish FT stay as boring and as risk free as possible in a trading app.
Maybe I was not clear but that is what my worry is about and not any self imposed restrictions. Example being that I turned off scratch cards on my national lottery app years ago as I know I can waste money on them and have kept for years. This has been great for me as that money has been better spent.
If I never had that option it is possible I went down a dark path if life turned out differently, luckily I no longer touch any casino type products. I would actually argue that the 24hr is far too small a window to have an effect and would be good if you had to actually phone to restart as if you had a gambling problem 24hrs is not really a restriction. Maybe add week and month or something.
Hey folks. I just want to jump in and shed some extra light on this feature and our thought process.
We have a duty of care towards our customers, as Alex mentioned above. We conducted some user research interviews with a few customers who were willing to share their experiences with gambling addiction and the similarities they felt existed between gambling and trading. They spoke about how harm can come from episodes of activity when they felt they were not in control. We showed them some designs for this feature and the feedback was positive, with one stating that even if they never needed to use it, knowing it was there was enough to feel more confident using Freetrade.
We wanted to make sure that if any customers on the platform were beginning to feel like their trading activity was becoming problematic, or even if they felt that they might be vulnerable in future, they would know they had a way to put a block on buying on the platform for 24 hours. The block can be extended if needed and we have a call to action on the feature to reach out to us if they need any further help or need.
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It seems sensible. I don’t know about their experiences, but commission free trading has brought the barrier to investing to basically zero. And that includes investing in potentially highly volatile companies or companies with no research required. It now costs no extra money to lose everything on some random AIM mining company that Bob mentioned in the pub.
It’s why I actually think the limited stock universe in the free tier seems like a good idea, it puts in a barrier to making on a whim investments in smaller companies. Not that that’s its purpose.
Education is important as well. So I’m hoping that future updates will include more in app data. Company reports, regulatory news, etc.
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