Best platform for regular & ISA stock investments

CSMR · 28 August 2014 at 4:29PM

Currently I have stock investments inside and outside of ISA wrappers via my bank HSBC's InvestDirect service. I have found this great, but all my investments are all in synthetic ETFs and they are restricting ETF investments to a limited range of full replication funds. So I need a new place to put new investments and to move out of InvestDirect within the year.

I am considering Selftrade and TD Direct.

For Selftrade there is a charge of about 10GBP per quarter of activity, and I make trades about once or maybe twice a year, so about 30GBP per year.

For TD Direct the charges look good but I think I may need two separate accounts, one for trading inside ISAs and one for trading outside ISAs. That seems inconvenient.

I am thinking to go with selftrade because of the inconvenience of having two extra accounts but I don't really know much about either.

One thing I don't like about my current InvestDirect is that I can't access my entire trading history online because previous years get archived eventually so I have to rely on paper records and I am not good at admin. So I'd be interested to know if either allows reference to all previous trades.

Thanks for any information about either company. I'd like to decide soon because I've just sold shares on HSBC and have about £40,000 sitting in there that I'd like to transfer and invest asap. I'm also not sure what the best way is to transfer this magnitude of money.

Thanks a lot!

SomeUser · 28 August 2014 at 5:11PM

I use interactive investor and have never had a problem with them, but others have.

It will cost you £80 per year (£20 per quarter) and with that you get 8 free trades which would normally cost £10 year. There is no fixed % levied on your account.

Totton · 28 August 2014 at 6:53PM

For me it's Hargreaves Lansdown using Investment Trusts, a/c costs are £0 for the fund&share a/c whilst the ISA is just £45 per year. Account history and 6-monthly statements are all available online.

masonic · 28 August 2014 at 7:29PM

I'd second HL. Very competitive for a portfolio of ETFs.

It looks like a stock transfer will cost you £15 per ETF, so cheaper than selling and repurchasing and you won't be out of the market (although the transfer might take a long time). It might be worth complaining about the changes and seeing if you can get those charges waived.

Edit: I see perhaps you've already liquidated the portfolio, so it's probably too late for that.

jiggy2 · 28 August 2014 at 7:30PM

Equniti is taking over Selftrade so you may want to read up on that

bowlhead99 · 28 August 2014 at 9:11PM

I have a trading account and ISA at TD. Your concern about having "two accounts" is unfounded. If you have some tax-wrapped money and some other money, of course they'll be in two separate accounts. But if they're both owned by you, you can just have them linked and then you only ever use one of the account numbers to log in.

Also I just ran off a pdf copy of a contract note from 2007, and I could, so no issue there.

Price wise, you've probably seen they don't charge their quarterly fee on the unwrapped account if it's got £15k in it, so with your portfolio size you'll be fine; even with a smaller size they waive it if you also have a linked ISA account, and they waive the ISA admin fee on a portfolio value of £5k checked at the end of May every year, or if you set it up for some nominal amount of regular investing. So, I haven't paid admin fees for years.

They really are one of the better brokers around - large range of international markets, trade UK shares on extended settlement up to t+20, multi currency cash accounts etc. The only negative is high fx conversion fee but this is mitigated to an extent by being able to keep proceeds in source currency before re-investment. They have trading apps if you need that for your semi-annual trading...

If it's just shares you're dealing with there's no need to pick an expensive low-features shop like HL. HL are famed for good service but are basically a relatively pricey fund platform that has a basic share offering for its customers that want it- rather than TD who built their offering up from the other end: being a quality broker that also does funds at 0.3%pa if you need that.

CSMR · 29 August 2014 at 9:12AM

masonic wrote: »

It looks like a stock transfer will cost you £15 per ETF, so cheaper than selling and repurchasing and you won't be out of the market (although the transfer might take a long time). It might be worth complaining about the changes and seeing if you can get those charges waived.

Edit: I see perhaps you've already liquidated the portfolio, so it's probably too late for that.

Thanks. HSBC will waive exit charges and I do intend to transfer. I sold some yesterday just to realize a capital gain.

CSMR · 29 August 2014 at 10:36AM

bowlhead99 wrote: »

I have a trading account and ISA at TD. Your concern about having "two accounts" is unfounded.

If you have some tax-wrapped money and some other money, of course they'll be in two separate accounts. But if they're both owned by you, you can just have them linked and then you only ever use one of the account numbers to log in.

Also I just ran off a pdf copy of a contract note from 2007, and I could, so no issue there.

Price wise, you've probably seen they don't charge their quarterly fee on the unwrapped account if it's got £15k in it, so with your portfolio size you'll be fine; even with a smaller size they waive it if you also have a linked ISA account, and they waive the ISA admin fee on a portfolio value of £5k checked at the end of May every year, or if you set it up for some nominal amount of regular investing. So, I haven't paid admin fees for years.

They really are one of the better brokers around - large range of international markets, trade UK shares on extended settlement up to t+20, multi currency cash accounts etc. The only negative is high fx conversion fee but this is mitigated to an extent by being able to keep proceeds in source currency before re-investment. They have trading apps if you need that for your semi-annual trading...

If it's just shares you're dealing with there's no need to pick an expensive low-features shop like HL. HL are famed for good service but are basically a relatively pricey fund platform that has a basic share offering for its customers that want it- rather than TD who built their offering up from the other end: being a quality broker that also does funds at 0.3%pa if you need that.

That's very good info, thanks! I think I will go with TD now.

CSMR · 29 August 2014 at 10:43AM

jiggy2 wrote: »

Equniti is taking over Selftrade so you may want to read up on that

Thanks for this info. I put my dad on Selftrade when it had no charges. Do you think Equinti is any good for managing shares and isas for a long-term investor? Or should I move him to TD?

bowlhead99 · 29 August 2014 at 12:14PM

CSMR wrote: »

Thanks for this info. I put my dad on Selftrade when it had no charges. Do you think Equinti is any good for managing shares and isas for a long-term investor? Or should I move him to TD?

It depends what he wants to hold in his ISA and what they plan to do with the customers and business plan and pricing model they inherited, maybe that would change their existing model for better worse. I gave some comments on Equiniti based on their website (I've never used them) on a different thread, earlier today.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5049238

Best platform for regular & ISA stock investments

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