I apologise for talking about a rival platform on your forum but hopefully people here can tell me what Iām missing.
Both my girlfriend and I signed up for free trade yesterday, with the lure of free share purchases and a relatively cheap annual platform fee of Ā£36 the real draw.
Weāve both made one purchase each but were quite disappointed at not getting the price shown. I understand that you get the price that can be filled so itās just something you have to live with. So i looked into limit orders.
It appears these have been 3-6 months away since last summer so i guess theyāre not coming any time soon.
So why do i mention trading212? Well in googling to see when FT would add limit orders I came across them. From what i can see they offer a very similar setup to FT but with some added pros and no cons (that i have found).
The pros I can see are
bigger range of things to trade
limit orders (coming to FT but not now)
fraction shares (coming to FT but not now)
no currency conversion commission (as opposed to 0.45%)
i donāt see any annual charge like the Ā£3 per month of FT for the ISA.
So as you can see, from very limited research they seem better. But I donāt want to think Iāve made a bad decision going with FT so please tell me all the bad things Iāve not found with T212 to make me feel better about myself.
UPDATE:
My conclusion seems to be, although itās annoying that 212 offer a lot of things that FT donāt, itās a donāt YET not that they wonāt. Plus some scare stories about 212, make me think itās better in the long haul to stick with FT and not to jump ship. Thanks everyone
Competitor threads are delisted and locked as theyāre not allowed bar the Robinhood thread until the community guidelines are updated, which should be āa few weeksā.
Iāve DMād @Freetrade_Team on this issue as I want all delisted threads that didnāt appear to be affected by shilling (basically all except T212) re-listed.
I guess my only query is why would you come on the Freetrade forum to ask if Trading 212 is any good when Trading 212 has a perfectly good community you could go and ask there?
Might not be your intention, but this feels like really thinly veiled shilling.
But Iāll indulge
T212 needs you to trade CFDs and lose money. If you donāt the account wonāt stay free forever. How can it?
Trading 212 is registered in Vanuatu, why?
Trading 212 has been trading a lot longer the Freetrade, catch up time should be expected.
My personal interactions with T212 wasnāt stellar.
I dislike that their staff signed up for accounts here with staff emails to try and undermine discussion.
I like Freetrades community.
I like the fact that the Freetrade owners pop in and answer queries. I like the discussion here isnāt heavily regulated.
I want to support a British broker
I like that Freetrade allows me to own part of their business and drive change forward with community guidance.
Yeah i didnāt really want to ask on here, and potentially bad mouth FT, but Iāve literally no idea where else to ask. Iām certainly not shilling for 121! But i assumed if i went there theyād all tell me āoh itās amazing here donāt go to those nasty freetrade peopleā so i wanted to come here to hear scare stories and reasons to NOT use 212. My main worry with 212 is Iām struggling to see their fees. They donāt seem to have a Ā£3p/m like FT but how can they possibly be profitable?!
I fully understand if you want to choose this thread down. Though if anyone can point me in a better place to ask this question, to Iād be grateful
Iād rather leave it open to be honest. So long as it doesnāt get out of hand. Iāve edited my post to a list feel free to ask for clarification if necessary.
Hey thanks for holding it open, I wonāt try and derail or drag it out too long. And on my previous reply i didnāt see your extended answer with valid points. Let me just reply to thoseā¦
T212 needs you to trade CFDs and lose money. If you donāt the account wonāt stay free forever. How can it?
Is there any proof of that? Like other people saying the account has started charging? Or is this just your prediction for the likely future? And does this mean the ISA will start charging or the CFD account will?
Trading 212 is registered in Vanuatu, why?
I can see a couple of Trading212 things in companies house as UK, and theyāre on FSCS/FCA as UK? Iām not knowledgeable enough to know if this means theyāre registered here or if thatās like an arm of the company or something. But without you saying Vanuatu, I would have assumed they were a UK company? What am I not understanding?
Trading 212 has been trading a lot longer the Freetrade, catch up time should be expected.
Yeah 100% agree with this. I wish freetrade had the limit orders etc. If they did I wouldnāt even be looking elsewhere. I just got hit with some quite wide spreads on all 3 of the trades I did, so itās made me wary. (e.g. I bought Games Workshop this morning when it opened at Ā£42 roughly. I got matched at Ā£45! The graph on FT doesnāt even show the price ever hitting Ā£45 so I felt pretty angry. But then I looked at the LSE website and you can see my little 20 share order was on there at that price, so it was legit. I just wish I couldāve said, buy at Ā£42, not buy at whatever is good at the moment. It makes me really worried when i press the buy button!) Ultimately Iām not using this for regular trading, Iām using it because Iām currently on HL which is charging me Ā£45 for my shares and Ā£12 to buy and sell them on the odd occasion when I do. For me Ā£36 and free buy/sell is better! but on the Ā£42 i wanted, Ā£45 i got this morning, I in theory paid Ā£36 more for my shares, so the āfreeā trade was worse, than one where I couldāve fixed the price and paid Ā£12. Roll on limit orders!! Get them higher on the roadmap!
My personal interactions with T212 wasnāt stellar.
Care to elaborate? You donāt have to give all the gruesome details, but it would help to know their issues.
I dislike that their staff signed up for accounts here with staff emails to try and undermine discussion.
100% agree, thatās minging.
I like Freetrades community.
Also agree, a nice community is a good thing to have, especially when your new to this. Ultimately, Iāll be buying maybe once a year, so the community isnāt that big a deal to me, but itās good to have.
I like the fact that the Freetrade owners pop in and answer queries. I like the discussion here isnāt heavily regulated.
Another good thing.
I want to support a British broker
Personally, although Iām British, I donāt care where the broker is from. My gf is Italian so Iām happy to deal with anyone from any country
I like that Freetrade allows me to own part of their business and drive change forward with community guidance.
So you can buy shares in FT? Thatās cool.
So ultimately, although they sound a bit underhand and devious, theyāre still currently offering better options for trading, at least in the short term. I was 100% thinking of moving to them before this post, but now Iām about 70/30. I donāt like supporting sh!tty companies, but it is also only your word that Iām going on (not that Iām saying your lying, but Iād want a bigger opinion field than 1), and Iām also in this to make money so any edge I can get is better.
I need more concrete reasons to not use them. Tell me more! haha
Trading 212 makes money by allowing its costumers to trade CFDs. 76% of retail costumers lose money when trading CFD instruments. They can be very profitable if you place a winning bet, and let me emphasize the use of the term bet here for itās pretty much appropriate in this context. But when you place a losing bet, and you will, you will likely lose more than you initially placed on the table. Because when trading with CFDs your borrowing from the broker, and you have to cover all the losses you incurred with your trade. This is pretty scary stuff
T212 charges commissions and/or fees when people trade with CFDs, and that allows them to subsidize free products like their ISA or their free share trading. Iām not gonna tell you to stay away from T212, but Iāll say this much: feel free to use T212 stocks and shares and ISA products but stay away from their CFD product unless you are a trained professional; donāt think you can win the CFD game cuz you canāt
I have one very simple reason for using FreeTrade although I am perpetually frustrated by their limited stock universe and things like limit orders - both are in the works by the way.
The reason is transparency and fairness. They have been nothing but open about what you get charged for and what not.
212 uses stocks for the āfreeā part of their freemium model, as they intend to drive people into CFD as thatās where they make their money. However, 70% or so of people lose money in CFD.
Now, I know I can resist the urge so I wouldnāt be stung by that, but do I want to stick my money in a company that operates on such an unscrupulous business model? Nope. Iād rather pay my Ā£3/month ISA charge, but know FreeTrade is not looking for ways to rip me off.
In short: my decision is driven largely by ethics.
Does that create some frustrations on the short term as they lack some functionality. Yes. But Iād rather suck it up and support a company for the long term that is trying to do the right thing, rather than fleece people by pushing them into CFDs (eg 212) or charge old-school fees (eg Hargreaves).
Yeah i wouldnāt really be looking at the CFDs, Iāve not got the time nor patience to be monitoring and checking hourly/daily. However, couldnāt stop losses help avoid all this?
I actually used to work for a, maybe youād call them scammy, company that ātaughtā people how to trade (all on technicals like patterns etc). So Iāve learnt a fair few things about how it all works, but never remotely put it into practice, and Iām sure for all the stuff I think I know, there is loads I donāt! But I always thought stop losses should be able to minimise heavy losses. I guess you have to actually be disciplined enough to use them!
So maybe open a shares ISA with them after Apr 1st(or 5th or whenever it is). Are you also thinking that the shares ISA will eventually hit me with fees if I never use the CFD side?
āDoes that create some frustrations on the short term as they lack some functionality. Yes. But Iād rather suck it up and support a company for the long term that is trying to do the right thing, rather than fleece people by pushing them into CFDs (eg 212) or charge old-school fees (eg Hargreaves).ā
This sentence has pretty much sold me. Iām staying!! Now, how can I help get limit orders pushed up that roadmap!! Is there a vote or something? I am a little wary that back in July it was on their 3-6 month roadmap, and it still is!
I was more asking, if this has been discussed that itās happened to other people in the past. Did you mean youāve heard of other people having fees added, or youāre kind reading between the lines that theyāre going free now to boost their customers, and will chuck fees on later on. Both are valid but the former is an actual event thatās happened, thatās all.
You can also āharassā @Viktor, although I am sure itās very high up their list now that they rolled out the investment platform. Fractionals and a bigger stock universe are their first priorities though it seems.
They have recently disabled the in-app chat with support and I currently have 0 visibility on when I am going to receive any answer to my query (you can still fill a form in the app or send them an email).
Also, their money withdrawal system is absolute garbage.
Out of date as they threw the kitchen sink at their own investment platform. I suspect after launch of fractionals and stock universe theyāll revisit the roadmap.
