What's wrong with this post?

Apparently, I have been reported for suggesting a stock request. Why? No idea. The reason given was that “the community feels it is an advertisement”.


the original post: BERK:LSE - Berkshire Hathaway Tracker ETP

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I may be wrong but someone likely thinks (wrongly) that you’re requesting it on Leverage Shares’ behalf. It could also be partly due to the nature of the product requested.

Freetrade is generally adverse to these type of ETPs. While this one is 1:1, Leverage Shares offers lots of products that are completely out of kilter with FT’s ethos.

LS delisted seven or eight ETPs in one day over the summer which tells you a lot. The ETP in question appears to have less than ÂŁ200k in underlying assets and trading volume is thin.

It can be difficult to buy and sell such illiquid stocks. And if you do, you’re likely to get stung by a hefty bid-ask spread. For example, spread’s currently more than 2% for BERK.

I give FT as much stick as anyone, but I do commend it for protecting clients’ interests by not offering products from the likes Leverage Shares and GraniteShares.

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Out of interest - what would be the point in holding this rather than just Berkshire?

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Thanks for raising this.

There was nothing on the face of it wrong with the original post, however, there were a handful of newly created accounts that posted and engaged with the post that were all coming from the same IP address which led us to believe the post was spam.

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Well, with Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) you’re investing in a publicly listed company with all that it entails, first & foremost, so therefore in its future returns but also all liabilities and debts. It is also as a company involved in a plethora of business operations ranging from insurance to investments and private equity, in fact, contrary to what many people think, the insurance component is the biggest source of revenue here. So you’re implicitly also investing in Berkshire Hathaway’s public markets investment portfolio.

With (BERK) you’re investing into essentially an “ETF” tracking the portfolio of the public markets investments side of the business of Berkshire Hathaway. Investing explicitly and solely into the future returns on this portfolio (Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio | Warren Buffett 13F Holdings & Trades).

These are very different things.

There are however some good points @rehpot brought up about this particular security which I didn’t realise at first. Which unfortunately makes it not so simple in this case.

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Reading Alex Campbell’s post it sounds like you are using a public VPN like NordVPN which is never a good idea because it proposes a security risk to yourself and causes provider concern if they are kept being hit at high levels with the same IP addresses.

People posting on the community need to be careful in terms of wording, while it okay to talk about shares you own, it illegal to recommend shares and unintentionally, posts can sometimes be interpreted as such if the writer hasn’t been too careful with the words they use.

I am willing to bet in your case, you have got a VPN installed on your computer or phone?