Unhappy Investor

If thatā€™s to me, thatā€™s got nothing to do with the commission free trading comment I made?

I think Freetrade should have the most up to date prices for instant trading when executing orders.

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Watched, researched and visited tech startup companies in the US and the UK for about a decade already, including several that grew from nothing to a :unicorn: status. A few IPOed in the last two years.

Also remember watching Monzoā€™s CTO do talk at a tech meetup maybe four years ago. You wouldnā€™t have bet your money on it, despite the free stickers and t-shirts, because a current account is free at most banks and Santander UK and Barclays offer good mobile apps.

:freetrade: is an early stage startupā€”pre-VC moneyā€”and itā€™s a long game with a growing market share for all kinds of players.

Just like in life, itā€™s a marathon not a sprint. If you study successful ventures in-depthā€”small or largeā€”youā€™ll notice that their paths were far from linear.

Google stacked its racks on top of each other because server farmsā€”which mostly went bustā€”charged per square meter instead of electricity consumption. There are stories of engineers who had to be woken up at night to fix an outage so that users could use Google search or hail Uber during the early days.


(Alphabetā€™s early server rack)

The amount of US$ we have saved is incredible. Slow Degiro hasnā€™t released Deziro and it looks like itā€™s been shelved.

If you like reading about tech startups and their journeys, Iā€™d recommend starting with The Upstarts and Elon Musk.


(Airbnb, source: Inc.com)

Airbnb was selling cereal to fund themselves a decade ago.

Muskā€™s Teslaā€”faced with own Roadster issues and many hybrid-making competitorsā€”had cash crunches during that period (and again very recently because of Model 3). If the fourth :rocket: launch test did not succeed, thereā€™d have been no call from NASA and there would be no SpaceX.

[Edits: poor grammar fixes :woman_shrugging:]

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I was doing the same! Looks to me like FT use IEX ā€œLast Tradeā€ (which could therefore be either bid or ask) and hold it for 15 minutes then refreshā€¦ now the price has moved to 229.22 ā€¦which marries exactly what went through IEX at 16:15 UK time

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I am sorry, but if you really need the price of Tesla at the exact same moment by the cent then Freetrade is just not the app for you. Freetrade has never been a trading platform, itā€™s main focus is on long-term investors.

Also if you really want to follow the exact prices at the given moment you should use third party apps as most traders do.

That being said I feel like they have been falling behind and expanding their stock universe and offering fractional shares should be a number one priority. I havenā€™t checked the stocks available on Revolut, but I am sure that there will be more relevant stocks than the ones on Freetrade. And Revolut has barely been out for a month.

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Iā€™m really surprised that no one else is reporting the same technical glitches based on the app updating the data.

Iā€™ve had multiple situations where Iā€™ve bought shares and it started incorrectly calculating my P/L because it hasnā€™t incorporated the most recent purchase into the cost basis calculation.

Iā€™ve had numerous times where a share purchase goes through and it shows in my portfolio but not in the activity history tab or the share info screen(where it shows trades below) for over an hour.

Iā€™ve also had situations where Iā€™ve tried to order a trade and its taken three days to process it. Iā€™ve sent screenshots to customer service who donā€™t understand why.

In addition I canā€™t even pull down on the main portfolio page to refresh the balances.

Yes at the time of your screenshot there is 30c different but the point is you canā€™t manually refresh the portfolio which surely is something investors expect? On HL I can manually refresh the balances and it shows me the current market price before I order a trade.

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They also have live pricing, which is also why you pay per deal. (Not dismissing your other observations which are clearly bugs that needs fixed)

Another thing about google, donā€™t forget that itā€™s not so long ago that Yahoo was a more popular search engine than google. Itā€™s not always about being first, sometimes itā€™s about being the best

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One thing is clear. With Revolut and Robinhood coming to market, Freetrade need to up its game and improve timely execution of its roadmap. Personally I feel Freetrade has big advantage currently and it need to make best use of it. Execution challenges seems like key risk for freetrade.

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I do hope that live pricing is in the works. I understand the grievances around this. Once limit orders come online this will need to be a priority

@Salternator youā€™re unhappy? I canā€™t even use it :rofl::rofl::rofl:

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Iā€™m pretty sure the prices shown by Hargreaves are actually the current live price for shares. To the best of my knowledge they have mirrored the price that I received when placing a trade on Freetrade. This is only for UK listed shares though and not for US listed shares. This is for HL customers with an account with them and you need to ā€œenableā€ live streaming prices.

I believe you can get the live prices for the US shares from Yahoo.

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I strongly believe that if someone cannot deal with a 15 minute price delay then Freetrade will NEVER be the correct broker for them. Freetrade is for investors and wants to foster long term intelligent investing, not trading at instant speed.

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You are all focussing way too much on my statement about ā€œlive pricesā€. I dont mean literally immediete I just mean its really slow and should at least quote the price at the time an order is place?

My point is simply that Freetrade is currently a pretty basic product, which is totally FINE.

The issue is that generally speaking the app is not pulling in and processing data fast enough to prevent issues with the portfolio display. Its simply not good if you purchase a share and then the data is getting all messed up because it 1) doesnt calculate the cost basis correctly and 2) does not show the purchase immedietely in the activity page.

Edit: My point is not about it changing my investment decisions. My point is that for a new customer it is potentially going to affect their confidence in the app if its not pulling data in quickly

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This is pretty annoying, they really need to get the syncing of accounts right. It happens a lot with bank transfers. I understand itā€™s being worked on, but still, very frustrating.

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HL has optional Live prices, Itā€™s in the preferences, you can have streaming Live, Streaming delayed or static

Yes I agree with you.
No doubt there is a delay with HL, but it appears to be minimal to me.
I canā€™t complain as they provide the streaming prices for ā€œfreeā€ (but of course make more money through commissions etc).

If there is a delay itā€™s not much at all. They specifically say up to the second love pricing https://www.hl.co.uk/shares/live-share-prices

Iā€™ve found itā€™s generally quite accurate. And while ā€˜freeā€™ you pay for trades because it costs money to run a business. Iā€™ve not seen any good evidence that a free platform with free live trades with up to the second live data is actually sustainable when your not paying for it.

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Iā€™m not having this argument with you on another forum haha!

Iā€™ve been with Freetrade since the beginning and I mostly agree with the OP.

I would reiterate and add:

*app updates/general syncing is FAR too slow. I want stock prices to be updated every few seconds, and when I manually update, it needs to be done then and there. When I submit an order or sell a stock, anything that affects the activity feed - it needs to be updated immediately.

*the graph/charting needs a lot of work. Iā€™ve suggested before the ability to unlock an ā€˜advanced modeā€™ in the options which would give me a similar toolset to what you can find on tradingview

*the figure to the bottom left on the portfolio screen needs to tell me in figures and % how far in the green or red my entire portfolio is

*individual purchases need also to show the % gain or loss, not just for the overall stock itself

*the app is called ā€˜freetradeā€™ - t. r. a. d. e. Not invest, if this is an investing app. Call it freeinvest. A trading app needs to be snappy and with the above options. Further down the line it needs similar options such as options, margin and leverage, crypto and so on.

*it desperately needs more stocks, hundreds more. The roll out of extra stocks is appaling. Stocks mentioned here many months ago are still not in the app. Hot stocks suggested months ago, still not in the app.

*the app needs 2FA or MFA, itā€™s best practice and industry standard. ā€˜your phone has a passcodeā€™ or ā€˜enable 2fa on your emailā€™ is a ridiculous and insulting suggestion. Iā€™m a security consultant so absolutely baffled as to why nearly a year on this isnā€™t even an option for your user base, itā€™s not hard to implement. This should be priority number 1.

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I like :freetrade: a lot although I do have some issues with the app at the moment.
Firstly my portfolio value is out by Ā£100 and as Iā€™ve only deposited Ā£100 a month for 11 month that seems significant. Secondly I made 4 basic buy orders this morning, only one of which went through at 4 pm today. The other 3 are still queued and state they will be executed at 4 pm today :thinking:
I am confident that these issues will resolve themselves in due course as they have in the past but it would be nice if these bugs are worked out soon

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This actually is very reasonable, Freetrade can detect whatā€™s enabled and whatā€™s not on your phone. FaceID for example is perfectly fine as itā€™s authentication source. I agree on the initial login, and Iā€™d agree if your phone had no security enabled, it shouldnā€™t just let you open the app with nothing to protect it. But it does make you (?) setup a pin as well in the app. Which funny enough I just noticed thereā€™s no way of changing it? So the actual in life authentication is imo fine. I still donā€™t like the new user / new device login. Email is not a security device, itā€™s the open good mine for criminals, and the primary source of almost all problems in security, second only to peoplešŸ˜„