I canât see â$GME fanaticsâ and woke politics, also known as progressive politics being connected.
Many in the progressive sphere of political thought would see any stock market investor as financially privileged, which I agree with them, we are.
It doesnât matter which tickers you buy or donât buy, were all financially privileged in comparison to those living hand to mouth.
According to the strict legal definition you are not the legal owner of the shares. This was tested in a legal case sometime ago (Duck duck goâing will help you with the case and details here). Your shares are held in a nominee account.
You are however the beneficial owner of the shares. This is what entitles you to the dividend etc.
I pay for my ISA, my SIPP and Plus.
Is the business model so wrong that FT now need to increase revenue differently?
FT costs me enough without my account then being used as the âproductâ. Shame on you. Whatâs next, pfof?
Your ISA is free with 
so your total cost to have your investments looked after if ÂŁ19.99 a month. HL for example would be ÂŁ11.95 per trade + platform fees
PFOF is illegal in the UK
It wasnât so long ago someone senior at FT posted his purchase of a âmemeâ stock saying F you hedge funds. And yet here we are looking to let them sell our investments short.
Plus thatâs rather offensive saying I shouldnât be investing.
I chose FT because they didnât lend out shares and âwereâ retail focussed.
The majority replying here are more than likely FT shareholders.
Adding on to what @Viktor shared above, itâs worth taking a look at some of the market data and information explaining the securities lending market on the International share lending associationâs website.
Thereâs a great explainer video there too.
As of December 2021, about 1/4 of all securities loaned globally are loaned by pension funds. Another c. 20% are lent by collective investment vehicles (i.e. funds).
Thanks for the reply and Iâm sorry if I caused any discomfort with any of my posts in this topic.
Although you are not wrong, the fact that FT didnât lend your shares was a selling point, it was a benefit they had over competetors (competetors that had a wider variety of securities, offered more features, etc)
To me, this says that FTs vision of 2018-2019 has turned out not to be possible after all, and so they have to be more like everyone else to survive, which isnât inherantly bad, it just erodes the benefits of choosing FT over other brokers. The main response from FT seems to be âitâs normalâ and âeveryone else does itâ, which is true, but they used to be very proud of the fact that they didnât.
So thereâs no advantage for us to agree to this.
What happens if we opt-out? There doesnt seem to be any reason for us to opt-in. Or, are you telling us rather than asking us? The pages on this donât say
The FAQ has the question âDo I have to agree to securities lendingâ and then⊠never answers the question.
Do I have to agree to securities lending?
Weâre asking all Freetrade customers to provide their consent to allow us to lend the securities they hold. Itâs an important evolution in our business and one that means we can continue to offer our customers a low-cost, simple way to invest.
My post is a bit critical⊠but Freetrade seem to be avoiding giving a clear answer on what happens if we dont agree, and if youâre forcing us to agree or have our accounts closed?
This seems to be answer the question.
Could we have a clear definitive/official answer? If we do not agree to securities lending, our accounts (exc. ISA) will be closed?
Iâm not necessarily against the idea, but I donât understand why the official communication on this is trying to avoid accuate details on what happens if we dont agree.
The benefit to customers is that you can continue to use the sharedealing services.
Vague benefit perhaps but the business is currently loss making, so this sort of change comes as no surprise to me. Theyâre a business, with shareholders, and want to make money.
I understand that shorting stocks is an essential part of keeping the market stable. If I understand correctly, lending shares maintains stable share prices and is essential to us all here having a market that does not fly off the rails.
Do I understand correctly and can others expand on this?
Thereâs quite a bit of discussion in this thread and I linked a couple of papers that demonstrate the benefits of short selling by analysing what happens when short selling is banned.
But basically markets get less efficient, price discovery is slower, liquidity is reduced and prices are not supported in the long term.
This is kind of the point though, there was a post in june 2018 saying the european expansion would be âsoonâ, then there were no features for a year because they were rebuilding their backend, new stock additions slowed down, etc. But a lot of people were fine with it, after all, freetrade werenât making revenue from lending shares, offering CFDs etc, so it was understandable. With this, they will need to seriously step up otherwise they will end up just the same or worse than their competetors.
I donât think itâs fair to paint anyone concerned about this as a âwoke GME fanaticâ. I understand that this forum has a bit of a problem with anyone saying anything negative about Freetrade, but that really is too far.
Thank you @Cameron some of the documents wonât work on my phone but interesting discussions.
I was going to start another thread asking why the markets dip so much with bad news but maybe you have answered my question. Is it that short positions being cashed in causes the dips, that then allow us long-haulers an opportunity to invest and make our gains on the rebound - and is it that our investments make the corrections?
Curious to know how much resource/overhrad this will take to manage on a realtime basis - how much is automated or is it all manually approved and controlled?
So US should be doable.
Just to check my complete ISA stock portfolio will not be part of this?
Yes exactly