Not necessarily , many free trade users ( i suspect) will have bought extremely overinflated stocks because we have only this year come off the very peak of a bull cycle
I believe the markets are currently very soft and suspect a lot will want to turn their backs on casual investing when things start to get very bad which given the forecast is looking extremely likely
Retail investors tend to like investing to make quick returns , they donāt tend to enjoy watching stocks trend downwards
This is the part where really you need a strategy and you need to stick to it like glue .
One additional thing to bear in mind is that when stocks are held via another platform, e.g. US stocks are held via Drivewealth, there is no possibility of transferring the stock out in specie (at least for now). Which leaves open the possibility that you will have a forced sale and will have to accept the market value at the moment of the sale. It is not clear to me how the mechanics of this sort of thing would work - especially with regards to ISA allowances, so on and so forth.
Theyāve been significantly restructured to prod for subscription uptake
It got to the stage where i was basically unable to do anything without paying 4.99 a month which was obviously the intention
I have a background in marketing and business dev and i know full well what they are doing
I donāt have a problem with this as long as the subscription model has actually been properly financially forecasted and doesnāt change again in the next 12 months
if it does for me that will be sufficient enough warning to leave
Well, yeah you imagine that the company would do a proper job of that. It is a given. I see no reason to believe that the executive management have not thought about this deeply.
There are various scenarios under which the financial plans are drawn: some very aggressive and some not so. This is a young business facing several types of headwinds so there will be a lot of uncertainty. Bear in mind that as interest rates rise Freetrade will increase its revenue. If you go back to the 2016 crowdfunding pitch deck you can see that the original pitch made this clear. The main point is that subscription revenue is only one part of the whole story.
A lot of things have changed since 2016** which add costs (inc. Brexit) so this affects expansion plans. It is a balancing act. To increase revenue it needs to expand, to expand it needs to spend money.
** including some elements of the proposition. But the essence is still the same.
During the crash HARGREAVES LANSDOWNE lost money on the ISA and SIPP charges but gained on stock broker fees.
Neither of the latter benefits freetrade nor is it a disbenefit.
Are they making a profit at this moment? if not does it look like they will in the not to distant future? Thats what counts.
I am only with them so i have less money drag.
I certainly donāt like the idea that I have no idea what price I am going to pay for a share. Money drag outweighs it
Well if that is what he said then that is what he said. I missed some of the Q&A. I may have mistakenly read that the crowdfunding CNL took Freetrade to the end of the year. Perhaps that is wishful thinking on my part. Also probably what I read may have assumed a much larger crowdfunding CNL take-up.
I donāt remember March 2023 being mentioned, I might be wrong. Iād have expected some concerns to be raised that they only have an 8-month runway after the funding round.
It will depend on revenues, which had they said started looking better than initially thought after the redundancies were made. The success of the new pricing plan is a key factor. They were trying to get to Ā£1m monthly burn as before and will ābrush up on their regulatory capital when neededā.
I have June in my head, but since they have strong backers and are hiring for lots of roles globally, itās clear they have comfort to do that. The question is more about what price they raise at, the amount and the terms. Even this should be viewed as a stepping stone for when the sentiment changes, IMO at least.
Can I suggest that the only one being negative is yourself. Freetrade will never touch the segregated regulatory capital. They canāt just dip into the cookie jar anytime they want.
The original point incorrectly stated Freetrade has runway until the end of 2023.
Secondly, the reason the FCA instructed Freetrade to segregate the Ā£15M is to make them more robust in an event like running out of runway. Itās there to be used - but they would need to justify to FCA why it was needed.
Best stick to what you know Brian, setting up new user accounts.
Things are not going to have big and negative consequences because Freetrade are not allowed to just eat into the segregated regulatory capital. I feel your post has a bit of fear mongering going on.
This is a good article
