Why would I choose Freetrade?

Nothing wrong with naming other brokers. It will keep Freetrade on their toes with constantly improving their service if theyve got competition on their heals! :skier:

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Do they also plan on removing their withdrawal fees?

Freetrade doesn’t charge anything for withdrawing your own cash, eToro charges $25 per withdrawal.

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He’s probably referring to Trading 212. And missed out the more significant benefit: even their ISA is free.

And to answer the question, there’s no particular reason to choose Freetrade over T212 right now that I’m aware of.

Actually, just 1: both Freetrade and T212 have limited selections of stocks and products to invest in. If T212 don’t have want you want, Freetrade might.

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I have no idea. That’s certainly off-putting, nobody likes being charged for access to their cash!

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Freetrade’s purpose is to help long term investors, separating it from nearly all other brokers who mainly encourage trading. I think the portfolio chart over time (while not perfected) is unique amongst stockbrokers and shows where FT is heading. It will soon compare you portfolio against a benchmark and release it’s analytics tab giving you further insights (perhaps identifying risks) as well as an autopilot feature to rival Robo-Advisors, giving you control and without the excessive costs. If you’re a long term investor it is sensible to go with a company that is built for your needs.

  • Built for long term investors
  • Clear, simple and low pricing
  • Transparency and community focus
  • Shares priced in pounds and pence, rather than just pence
  • Autopilot robo like service (in progress)
  • Analytics tab (in progress), portfolio chart against benchmark (in progress)
  • UX
  • Further innovation (any secret plans! :eyes:)

I think T212 will follow a similar path to IG: it will lure customers in with low commissions and then pressure them into trading frequently or using CFD products (where 80% of clients lose money and they make a lot). E.g. IG introduced a custody charge Ā£24 per quarter for customers unless you use CFD’s/spread betting or trade frequently. The T212 app’s confusing, particularly for new investors, CFD’s and real shares are muddled in together looking the same. I have no doubt it’s luring some investors into using CFD’s and that they’ll be losing money :money_with_wings:

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Hello @777GE90

@Freetrade_Team1 is the moderator of this forum and he posted

Hence it seems to me you now can share the name of the broker you mentioned.

In the recent past I posted about other brokers

And others have done it too. Here are a few examples:

Here are 3 reviews for eToro:

Amongst other things, according to those reviews, there’s a minimum deposit of $200 (circa Ā£150). Unfortunately, there are many people for whom this is a barrier to entry.

Trading 212, on the other hand, according to this review

has a £100 minimum deposit. Unfortunately, this is also a barrier to entry for too many people.

With Freetrade I can start with as little as Ā£1 or even Ā£0.01. One penny. Of course with one penny I can’t buy much if anything, but that’s not the point. The point is, generally speaking, the barrier to entry has been removed.

Also, in the near future, Freetrade will have fractional shares. I think this is huge. A huge incentive. I can buy Ā£20 worth of Amazon, or Tesla, or Jonhson’s & Johnson’s. Or Ā£1 worth of Apple or EssilorLuxottica.

Everybody has different wallets, or different pocket sizes, or different cash flow streams. Everybody has the ability to save money every month. Just different amounts.

Also what @Rob14 said

It seems to me you’re scanning the market, doing your due diligence so you can find the best sevice provider for your particular needs.

I’m glad you consider Freetrade in your journey. By the way, have you seen

they offer 3 free trades per month.

I’ve looked into quite a few brokers myself. And they all have charges, one way or the other. And that’s because they have expenses and profit targets. Nothing will ever be completely free. Look at Robinhood the

I suppose.

A few years back I considered opening an account with Vanguard and get one of their tracker funds. In the end I didn’t because there were a montly minimum deposit of Ā£100.

Once again, welcome to the forum and feel free to share the name of the other stock broker.

If you consider Freetrade it’s not the best option for your personal circumstances I think that’s ok. I wish you well and a boat load of profits in your investment journey, regarless of your chosen broker.

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FWIW, Vanguard doesn’t have a monthly minimum of Ā£100. It does make that the minimum when you’re setting up the account, but you can go in and set it to Ā£0 or Ā£1 or whatever as soon as it’s set up.

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I think T212 does actually have an ā€˜inactivity’ charge already!

Accounts that have not generated transactions for a period of six consecutive months (180 days) will be charged an inactivity fee of, as follows: EUR 9, USD 9, GBP 9

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Yes I was referring to Trading212. Also, Robinhood (who are even better than Trading212) which seems to have a very similar business model are also looking to enter the UK (still mostly strong rumours though).

I’ve been with Trading212 from the first day when they opened up their commission free trading, they’ve been very open that their plan is to have people come in via their commission free shares and hopefully that will encourage those same people to go and use their CFD platform as well. There is no pressure from Trading212 to force you to do that and if anything they have relaxed their rules more and more over the past several months to make it even easier.

Minimum Deposit: Used to be GBP 100, dropped to GBP 1 during promotional period and now GBP 29.
Withdraw and Deposit Fees: Used to have these, now completely removed except bank transfers.
Inactivity Fee: This used to be in place but they removed it from the Invest accounts and it only applies to CFD accounts now.
Single buy order minimal value: GBP 10 - this never used to exist but they added this new restriction in recently.

Generally, I find the Trading212 platform inadequate to help me make my long term investments and I rely on data and charts from third-parties heavily. If Freetrade can provide real good tools for long term investments then you’ve won half the battle. The other half is getting rid of your fees and finding another way to make money.

Also, in terms of transparency and your USP. When I go to your homepage, the first thing I see is ā€œFreetradeā€ and ā€œzero-commission free tradingā€. It instantly implies to me that your just like your competitors, you offer free trading and I thought that was cool. But then when you look into it and find out it’s only on the 4PM buy/sell orders, it kinda defeated the purpose for me. Just my view anyway.

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Two or three years ago I was visiting Vanguard’s website. I wanted to buy into a tracker mutual fund for, back then, I didn’t want to go the ETF route.

Thinking of it, I don’t remember exactly if the minimum monthly deposit was in the context of their GIA account, or the ISA account, or the specific fund I was looking for. All I can say is, back then, I was under the impression I would have to deposit Ā£100 every month. I’m not sure I can commit to that.

Now you say

When I read what you wrote I get the impression what you are saying is:

When setting up an account with Vanguard, you have to set the minimum (monthly?) amount to Ā£100. Once your done with the setting up process your account is created. You can then go and change the minimum even to Ā£0 or Ā£1 if that’s what you want.

If this is what you meant, I wish I had that information back then.

Thanks

Yep, it’s probably because they don’t want people putting in less than a Ā£100 and definitely give the impression that Ā£100 is the minimum monthly. The only way you’d know otherwise is if someone told you.

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Where were you 3 years ago??? :joy::rofl::sob:

PS: obviously you don’t have to answer

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@777GE90, what do you think about what @Antidev says here

What I think is we live in a free world. Everybody has it’s own opinions, experiences and expectations.

Robinhood sells their costumers trades to high frequency trading companies, which increases the costs per share a few cents. Every company will have to charge something somehow in order to cover costs and make profits.

I’m staying with FT

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Well, I have never received marketing from Trading212 to ask me to switch to CFD’s, they occasionally send a push notification about their platform updates (I’ve seen one in the last few months). Their customer service is also very good and available on live chat 24/7, when I’ve had issues with them in the past, they’ve resolved it and not only given me my money back but also compensated me on top.

In my opinion CFD’s are a piece of shit, gambling through the back door product that should be avoided. I could talk about them forever, they are not even legal in the US. But I won’t say anymore, I know Trading212 is heavy on CFD’s too, but if you wish to use their platform just for investing (like me) then it is very good.

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I looked at Dabble when they were on Seedrs. I think they’re doing a good thing in helping people to get started with investing and could be an viable small business. I don’t think they’ll get big enough to challenge Freetrade however. They spent a lot more initially to launch and I think they took longer. I doubt their tech is on the same level and wouldn’t label them as a true fintech disruptor.

I think their pricing is less competitive because they don’t expect high customer volume. They’re name suggests they’re an app you just try out (dabble in) rather than invest properly long term.

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I’ve put half in freetrade and half in 212. I much prefer 212s features (instant free executing, limits and stops, timeline on graphs), but also keeping in freetrade to see how it improves. The positive for freetrade is it feels more transparent and there is a community. If they can get the features too then it’s be great

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this is pretty much my plan.

Ask not what Freetrade can do for you! Ask what you can do for Freetrade

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I’m currently wrestling with this myself. I’m only on Freetrade at the moment and rate the app reasonably well through there are lots of improvements to come and the customer service is great. 2 things are making me debate switching to trading 212 - the better intelligence on the platform - while still not enough on its own, you can see company budget, revenue, yield, EPS, beta, market cap etc. Second is the Ā£3 ISA charge here v none in 212. I have loyalty to FT partly because I came here first, partly because of the community but Ā£36 a year while not huge is something I can potentially avoid - & gain more resources at the same time.

I’m struggling to see what FT offer for the Ā£3 - it’s clear pricing which I’m grateful for, but what does it provide that I’ll miss if I switch elsewhere?

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My main selling point was the ISA they setup for you to utilise. Honesty haven’t looked into what T212 offer in that regard, but to me personally FT setup was just more neater and cleaner, (think Instagram for investing). I get some may be put off by the Ā£3 a month, but as I laid it out to one of my friends who joined FT, there are people in my office who spend roughly Ā£3-5 A DAY on a cup of coffee! So if you compare it to something like that, to me its a small price to pay that shouldn’t put a large dent in your outgoings compared to most people?

And yes as you rightly said, their customer support is top notch! Any issues I’ve had so far they have rectified them and checked back with me to ensure I was ok.

My only gripe with FT is honestly like most on this forum, in that I wish they got new stocks faster, or could get the ones most of us want when we request them. But alas, cant please us all suppose. lol

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