Hi there,
Any plans in reducing the FX charge of 45 bps or to allows us to have a USD account? The amount of FX fees made on US shares when buying and selling is too high even if you only make one/two transactions a year, it can easily costs more than a year of Freetrade plus. Perhaps it would be good to include it as part of the Freetrade plus subscription?
I recall that they thought about lowering it for plus but decided against it. Maybe check the latest AMA. Pretty sure this won’t be changed anytime soon.
I, personally, don’t think 0.45% is bad if you’re not a trader.
The last AMA disappeared from Youtube for some reason. The last info is that they are looking into it.
Out of interest, anyone have up to date comparison figures of other brokers fx costs?
Short summary.
Some CFD brokers ripping of clients have it lower. Other traditional brokers have it higher.
Degiro is 0.1%, T212 is ~0%
Traditional brokers (e.g. HL) are around 1%
So FT is basically right in the middle between the low cost providers and legacy. I’d love to see a more competitive FX rate as part of FT+
Revolut is c. 0% similar as with Trading212?.
I can understand they may want to charge it for free users however as part of free trade plus, this would make a lot of sense.
I’d like to see a USD account as well, as I’m mostly interested in US stocks.
T212 appear free as they don’t charge a commission on their FX but they do charge a spread, so you are technically paying a fee but it’s just hidden.
I recently posted a picture comparing the different platforms and trading 212 days they do not charge a spread nor a foreign exchange fee. It’s in their website so not sure why my post was hidden due to it being “offensive”?
Maybe because it’s such old information so no longer relevant. Plus that refers to a commission (which is zero) the spread is where the fee is hidden. Google it, they certainly charge for their FX but just not in a clear easily comparable way.
Spread applies only to CFD and not Invest/ISA.
It’s illegal for brokers to mark-up a spread (in addition to the spread by Market Makers) without disclosing to the client. This is mandated by Article 24 of MiFID II directive.
Recital (79) reaffirms the principle of disclosing imbedded costs in dealer prices:
The costs and charges disclosure is underpinned by the principle that every difference between the price of a position for the firm and the respective price for the client should be disclosed, including mark-ups and mark-downs.
They have other methods of reducing cost thought it’s not clear it’s enough.
But 0% Fx isn’t a deciding factor on its own the larger service as a whole probably needs to be considered.
Indeed.
Securities Lending is one of them but it isn’t isolated to T212 as a lot of other top brokers do this as well.