This Plus offering is way below expectations. Am I surprised? Absolutely not. Execution at Freetrade is poor (I think they’re ultimately constrained by a lack of engineers and a tight budget.) But with time, it will get better no doubt and a big VC round can’t come soon enough imho.
This is redundant and it’s a smear tactic I see used by misinformed Freetraders: Trading212 Invest and ISA will be self-sustainable before Freetrade even turn the crowdfunding taps off.
How? Securities Lending (they’ve updated their terms recently and transparency) and also are pursuing a freemium model later down the line but will break even without paywalling basic features.
phildawson
(Sorry, I will have to escalate this.)
#1244
Trading and Investing is the same in my book. You can’t stop people making bad decisions be that short or long term. There’s plenty of warnings that capital is at risk.
That may be the case, but right now it isn’t. I’m not trying to smear T212. I just strongly dislike the concept of CFD trading, so I won’t be in a hurry to line the pockets of a company that will happily sell such a product to unwitting customers.
Warnings won’t stop a poor gullible chap with mental health issues and an addictive personality from losing money with CFDs. I’m not completely clued into the figures myself, but a recent one I saw floating around on fintechtalk is that 70% lose money with CFD trading. That’s frightening. I can’t endorse that.
Interesting. Can you provide me with some data to back up that claim, or are you just assuming?
Do they have any plans to cease profiting from CBD trading, or will that continue? Because it’s the fact they offer this as a product that deters needs, regardless of if it still subsidising other products or not.
It’s not virtue signalling. I have been that poor gullible chap with mental health issues and an addictive personality in the past. I’ve fallen victim to this crap as a result, and i consider to myself to be well educated, and finance makes up apart of my degree. That’s why my opinion is strong on this.
Literally click the link I dropped to the thread. Browse their forum for the topic and all the info you need it there. The source is the horse’s mouth. Literally ask them in their forum and a staff member will confirm for you too if you want more.
Apologies, virtue signalling is what I see generally from Freetraders when they want to bash T212. Totally understand where you’re coming from and why yours isn’t. Again apologies.
I don’t see why they’d have plans to cease a profitable business tbh. Only thing that will stop them is a ban of CFDs. I think they’re positioning themselves to pivot very well if this ever happens by investing in Invest and ISA now.
I’ll do this later this evening when I have a little more free time. I had a skim of the link you shared, but nothing seemed to suggest that was the case now, in the present. I’ll have a more thorough read later, thanks for sharing!
No worries for the misunderstanding! My intention isn’t to bash T212, I just don’t like CFD trading.
Anyway back on topic: Freetrade Plus… I think it will be successful once SIPPs are added to it among other things (live pricing, AutoPilot, reduced FX fee, powerful insights, etc). Freetrade set out to make it so good you’d be compelled to pay for its value, so in time this will ring true.
1 Like
phildawson
(Sorry, I will have to escalate this.)
#1251
Having traits of mental health or addictive personality wouldn’t stop them losing money with investments any less though.
I think you need to look at what they are, it’s the same account as Invest/ISA at the end of the day. The focus is just on quick same day or weekly trades rather than years/decades.
Either way you’re still “betting” the market will go up or down at any given point.
I’ll leave it at that or we’ll be in an infinite loop.
Being a shareholder in both Monzo and Freetrade, it pains to see that Freetrade are making similar mistakes to Monzo when it comes to rolling out its Premium account - such as removing some existing shares from the free tier and also in the way they have decided the pricing and which shares should go in which tier going forward.
Understand where you’re coming from, but I’m long term bullish on Freetrade. On reflection, I like that we’re actually seeing customer facing progress and decisiveness now. Mistakes will be made, it’s inevitable as it’s a start-up, but what I’ve learnt from even looking at the Tesla story is to zoom out and see the bigger picture. Freetrade has product-market fit, great branding, closing in on what I’d consider a critical mass of users and is still on Day 1 in its story. As a crowdfund investor too, what they’ve done on a shoestring budget is still impressive to me and they can raise capital relatively easy to have room fo fail forward over next 5-10years imho
A bit late with this but… Freetrade are running another promotion for new users joining through a referral. You get a chance to win a share in Apple (1 of 10) when you refer a friend. Both of you get your normal free share and a chance to win.
Refer a friend to Freetrade from your app between 1st and 30th October for a chance to win. Once your friend opens and fund their account and fills out their W-8BEN form, you both get a free share from Freetrade and a chance to win an Apple share.
It’s clear you don’t see the value the Plus offering. However, I’m curious to know, if Freetrade offered identical features to 212, would you use Freetrade instead?
Well, not quite free, as it’s a time value of money consideration, but it would essentially pay for itself. It’s particularly interesting for people with large cash positions. And anyone (larger investors) with Plus for Life, as they’d be in the money to the tune of £120 a year.
