What's the first stock / ETF you'll buy when the app launches?

[anon2636484]

With the initial launch of the app just 46 days away (not that I’m counting), I’m curious to see which stock / ETF everyone’s planning to buy first when they get the app & why

Mine will be Square (SQ) because I’m excited about their potential to really shake up payments by combining their consumer app Cash App & their systems for retailers, potentially cutting out the card schemes like Visa & Mastercard. That’s not something they’ve said they’ll do yet so lets see whether that guess works out

I’m also a big Jack Dorsey fan & in the meantime, their performance has been pretty good lately

How about everyone else?

Thanks to @Chris for inspiring this topic with the first post below, which I’ve moved here.

[Chris]

I’ve found one of my first trades

https://themarketmogul.com/aston-martin-ipo/

[Bob]

I think I’ll be joining you with this

[VikPaw]

I hope my usual trading platforms have access to this one.

[CTE (#REF!)]

There’s a pretty extensive shopping list in this thread from way back when…

First Orders Through the App!

Hi all With the launch round the corner, I’ve been thinking, like I’m sure most of you have, about where I’d like to invest some of my capital, and thought it might be fun to have a guess at what the first stock order will be through Freetrade. The Robinhood Rewind for 2017 showed their most traded stocks to be Ford, GoPro, Snap, Fitbit & AMD, but with some dips to the heavy hitters and some newcomers to the markets, what do you think will be the first stock ordered through Freetrade on…

Tencent and Alibaba are in my crosshairs.

[rod]

Won’t Square be in a later tranche of available stocks? Freetrade Securities Universe - Google Sheets

Boringly, probably VUSA or IWDG for me.

[anon2636484]

@rod

Won’t Square be in a later tranche of available stocks?

Good point! Guess it’ll be VUSA (Vanguard’s tracker of the S&P 500) for me too then especially as Warren Buffet’s a fan.

[Vlad (Vladislav Kozub)]

Only VUSA. And then FAANG [Facebook/Apple/Amazon/Netflix/Google] / BAT [Baidu/Alibaba/Tencent] once the US is out. And Disney, the most undervalued company in the world (my subjective opinion).

[freetrade_cal (Calum McWhir)]

@anon2636484

Mine will be Square (SQ)

Seconded.

Edit: missed that it’s up 8% yesterday

[Dave (Dave Smith)]

I’ll probably rebuy some of the dividend stocks I sold a couple of months ago.

RSDB and BP where two of them, there were a few Insurance companies a well. By pure luck I actually sold on 22nd May which was the day the FTSE made it’s all time high before dropping back, so I’m feeling like a genius

I sold because I’d seen a truck I wanted to buy, not because of any great insight…

[stephen]

I want to buy ftse100 etf, however the ftse seems high at the moment and with brexit approaching does anyone have any insights/educated thoughts regarding what will happen to the ftse? I understand in the long run all should be ok as ftse100 has global exposure but should I wait until after the brexit event or just start now? (Or rather on 18 September)

[Vlad (Vladislav Kozub)]

Index funds are generally a good idea regardless of political circumstances, mainly due to their “diversified” nature: safer to have 100 companies in your portfolio by buying a single stock, especially in long-term, when the dogs come out and new stars join the tracker. If you were to get into it now and it dropped - you could consider it being on a sale if your risk tolerance lets you. Considering long-term only, of course, usually not less than 5 years

Also, markets are often irrational and react to news inadequately (like Facebook’s unreasonable 20% drop!). As it stands, Brexit would have been priced in by now and should not change drastically unless tories/EU will announce something unbelievable. I personally think there will be a drop due to EU institutional investors potentially withdrawing their stakes, but it should only be temporary until all will realise that Brexit is nothing major and get their money back in.

[stephen]

Thanks for the insight, it will probably be my first purchase.

[dellboy (NIALL JOHNSTON)]

I was swing trading VRAY and UTC pretty well last month. I’m working on my watch list ready for when my account finally gets opened

I’ve been Curious on the pricing structure with free trade, and as a newbie trader I’m learning the ropes and trying to get through all the jargon. I notice on the free account there is an FX – Interbank rate + 0.5% charge.

Can anyone help me calculate an example of how much the charges might work out to be on an day trade. Let’s say for arguments sake I was to buy £5000 worth of VRAY. And I was to make 2% (£100) on a successful day trade.

How much would I be charged to open and close the trade on the new free trade platform?

If someone can help mucho gracias, I’ve been racking my brains for an hour now but still can’t be sure I’m getting it 100%

[anon2636484]

I’ll let someone do the maths as I’m not confident that I know how the calculation works I’m afraid.

But just to give you a heads up, although Freetrade users will be able to pay 50p per trade for instant trades or subscribe to Alpha for unlimited instant trades (the pricing is here), it’s worth bearing in mind that the service isn’t designed for day traders, it’s designed for investors so it may not end up including all of the functionality that it sounds like you might end up looking for.

[dellboy (NIALL JOHNSTON)]

Thanks Alexs, I’ll take your advice and utilise freetrade for more long term positions.

[Vlad (Vladislav Kozub)]

Your example does not involve exchange rates. To make it very simple, I will assume £1 = $2.

If you invest £5,000 into VRAY, you will gain $10,000 less 0.5% → $9,950 (which will be presented as £4,975 in your portfolio). Assuming the FX rates remained as they were on the next day (£1 = $2), you sell the holdings for $10,149 ($9,950*1.02), which is £5,074.50. And after the sale is complete, you will end up with £5,049.128 ($10,149 into GBP less 0.5%).

Frankly, you will always be exposed to 1% exchange commission, but at least you always get the best rate, unlike (probably) with DeGiro. And as Alex has said, staying longer will make this 1% negligible as it does not scale as much with your return growth, so you could treat it as 1% commission.

Apologies for a misleading in terms of the “commission”. I will quote Rob Sexton explaining the rationale behind it being called Interbank rate + 0.5% and not commission per se.

@Rob

The point I was trying to get across is Freetrade does not get 0.5% commission from the conversion. The interbank rate is the rate that banks can transact at, and no one other than a bank can actually get this - everyone will pay interbank+x%. Even someone like Revolut, who provides the Interbank rate to customers, will not be getting that itself (as whoever it uses to convert will need their cut!), and will be absorbing the cost difference.

This is in contrast to the Mastercard rate, which is available to the general market, and which people like Monzo offer.

So we have chosen to give you certainty over the rate you will pay, rather than the approach most take which is the best rate they can get plus a percentage.

I hope that would make it clearer.

[chonkie (Donald Philp)]

SPX ETF, USD Currency and then maybe DIS US when they launch US stocks. Bit scared of stockpicking at the moment.

[saf]

I thought the +0.5% on FX Fees was part revenue and part hedge against any change in FX rates between placing a order and executing the order?

[dellboy (NIALL JOHNSTON)]

Cheers Vlad that all makes sense!
Do you know if users will be able to hold funds in USD to avoid the exchange back to GBP on every trade? Makes sense to keep some usd value to trade with to avoid the back and forth .5% fee (if that’s possible).