Stock prices incorrect in Freetrade?

Just to add, with penny stocks like SXX would it be easier to have something like the following to view a more realistic stock price

Might be a tad confusing if you’ve only just joined the app though

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There’s a few of reasons why you may see a difference between the prices we display in the app & the prices that’re displayed by a service like Yahoo Finance:

  • The prices in our app are ‘indicative’ so we don’t aim to show the live market price. Instead prices are there to give you a rough idea of what you can expect to pay when you buy / sell a stock. We explain this in the app.

  • The prices that’re shown on sites like Google / Yahoo Finance are often delayed. In other words, it’s common that they’ll show you the price from 15 minutes ago.

  • The price that we display is the ‘mid’ price, other sites may display the bid or ask price.

  • The starting point for our daily loss / gain figures might be different. The % that we display is calculated based on the last close price & the first point on our graphs show today’s opening price.

The key thing to remember is that we use the live market price when you make an order. We will keep on improving on the information that we display in the app too :woman_scientist:

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Hi Alex, thanks for the detail.

I understand that you use 15m delayed pricing and other sites may use real time… but at the end of the day, after markets have closed I would expect that your price would be inline with other finance apps; that you would use the same methodology for calculating daily fluctuations. What I tend to see is others such as Google, yahoo, webull all show same open/close/change figures and FTs are different…

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Agreed - at the very least I would expect the open and close prices to be accurate.

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Same. While I don’t really mind the prices being out of sync slightly during trading day, they should imho be accurate at the start and end of play.

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There is a 15 min delay - there is an open vote here to get this changed to instant pricing: ☑ [Feature Request 🔧] Real-time share prices ⏰ - #18 by rod

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No. Prices are made on the exchange, nothing to do with what you see on freetrade.

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Hi, i bought shares using freetrade. When the transaction went through, it was not at the price which the market was trading that stock for at that particular time. So I bought the share at 11.20am, each share for the stock was 124.20. When it went through the app, I was charged £1.33 for each share. I understand that the price shown when about to purchase may be indicative, but when the transaction goes through, it should be at the price of the share in the market at that particular time

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What stock?

Superdry

Looks fine. @pppuf
Spread was 124.3 - 133.9 @11.20 when you traded

FinKi LSE Share Price Predition API can help you see the price spread you’re likely to encounter

https://finki.io/finkiPrice.php?ticker=SDRY

You have to be aware of the Bid/Ask difference. The market was not “trading at 124.2”. It was trading at 124.3 to sell and 133.9 to buy.

The fractional difference you got is the “price improvement” Freetrade got because of routing your order via an RSP. That’s the “O” (ordinary) reference against your trade. “Ordinary” as it was routed to market for a market price. Versus “AT” (automatic) which kinda means it’s sitting “on book” waiting for a matching order to take the other side of the trade.

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So in simple terms, when looking to buy shares, what is the best method to know how much i will actually be buying them for?

Also, where can I get up to date prices on shares in real time

Without a firm quote from your broker, say, Freetrade, the truth is you won’t

However, one unscientific method is to look for a live market price somewhere. Say, the Trading 212 App or HL.

Howver, the ‘live’ market price will only show the the actual, real world spread.

This is useful to know but won’t account for any RSP price improvement you’re likely to achieve.

Hence the FinKi-LSE-Share_price-Magic-Predictor-Thingy …

https://finki.io/finkiPrice.php?ticker=IHP

Change the ticker to another LSE ticker and… hey presto! (usually, there are a LOT of bugs currently)… but you’ll get a better idea… keep refreshing the page to see the price move…

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That link that you have given, it is not working for some reason

Also depends what you’re trading

If, say, your trading Vodafone… it’s highly liquid, highly covered by market markers etc… hence, the spread is virtually nothing… so the difference between bid and ask will worry you less

If you’re trading A N Other stock do some research beforehand to guard against disapointment.

If, say, you were trading a stock that sits on the LSE SETSqx segment you can run into oddities between brokers as to how they execute stocks that have intra-day auctions… like, say, GGP

It’s really about just understand the quirks.

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It’s rate limited and on a demo server. ie. it will fall over

The point is… change the ticker to stocks you;re interested in before trading and get a sense of the market spread

When you say

“You have to be aware of the Bid/Ask difference. The market was not “trading at 124.2”. It was trading at 124.3 to sell and 133.9 to buy”
So the price on for example webull or Google, does that not show the buying price

Can not say with 100% certainty but Google, for example, only quotes you ONE price
No asset has ONE price
It has TWO
One to buy, one to sell. The difference is the “spread”
The “spread” is the cut the market makers are taking for the risk they are taking of providing 2-way liquidity intraday.

So, strictly speaking, no, Google is not showing the buying price.
It usually shows you “last price” which is no idications its a “buy” or a “sell”
I assume this led to your issue with SDRY earlier.

Google fince right now for SDRY shows…

Superdry PLC
LON: SDRY
127.20 GBX −2.40 (1.85%)

Yet the actual spread is 127-131

Because the last trade though the LSE on a 15minute delay was
a “SALE” @ 127.2

So confirmed. Google is showing “last trade” - which is confusing to newbies, I understand

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I think it would be good if Freetrade showed an indication of the spread, it’s one area where having a simplified interface is causing confusion. Also you might choose not to buy less liquid shares if you knew how wide the spread was

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hmmm, this looks incorrect unless i’m seeing things?