H&L fees a bit steap?

grubby23

Hi all,

I just started my "investment career" and I had the opinion that H&L has the lowest fees to do share dealing (has been recommended also on this forum). I invested £1000 in shares in one company and on my contract note it says:

Share Price:
978.65

Commission
Transfer Stamp
14.95
4.89

So I payed almost £20 in fees, that is 2% of the investment... I thought it is more about £12 per sell/buy order. I assume that I have to cope with the same amount when selling the shares again, is that right?

Is there a better place when just investing in shares? Should H&L just be used for funds?

Many thanks

Gaffy

Only use H&L for funds. For shares I would personally go with iii.

Forgot to add that stamp duty is the same where ever you buy shares from.

SalsaDanca

It's been a while since I compared the online brokers, but I think Hargreaves Lansdown are cheap for buying funds (as they can make money from the comission paid by the fund managers) and relatively expensive for shares.

The £4.89 is for Stamp Duty. This is a tax, and it will be charged by all stockbrokers in addition to their advertised fees.

Regards,

Rob

jimjames

Firstly HL is not cheapest for shares. Secondly that is one reason why buying smaller amounts of shares isn't always most cost effective. When the fee is fixed the higher the amount you buy the lower the % commission.

atypical

SVS Securities are the cheapest execution only at £5.75/trade:
https://www.svssecurities.com/Default.aspx?tabid=339

Or X-O at £5.95/trade (they've been mentioned a lot on these forums):
http://www.x-o.co.uk/

dunstonh

I just started my "investment career" and I had the opinion that H&L has the lowest fees to do share dealing (has been recommended also on this forum).

I would be surprised if anyone here suggested HL were had the lowest fees for share dealing. Indeed, normally posters are told to not use HL when they want to utilise direct investments.

HL are currently cost effective on utilising funds. It is possible, indeed probable, that will change in future with the forthcoming rule changes.

inflationiscoming

probably a good lesson learnt early on. Always read the charges and background documents carefully before investing....

grubby23

Thanks guys for all the comments. As I said for some weird reason I was sure that they are charging £12.5 max per transaction.

Anyway, this x-o looks really good, in particular as you can hold the shares there in an ISA.

Reaper

grubby23 wrote: »

Anyway, this x-o looks really good, in particular as you can hold the shares there in an ISA.

I hope you have learnt your lesson about reading the small print before singing up. If so I'm sure you will have noticed X-O have £50 fee when you evetually come to close your ISA. I'm not saying that's bad and indeed I have an X-O ISA myself, but just make sure you are aware of these things.

grubby23

Reaper wrote: »

I hope you have learnt your lesson about reading the small print before singing up. If so I'm sure you will have noticed X-O have £50 fee when you evetually come to close your ISA. I'm not saying that's bad and indeed I have an X-O ISA myself, but just make sure you are aware of these things.

Thanks for that Reaper, that is surely useful to know. I guess in that case I just wont close the ISA and leave one pound to avoid the charge .

Rob_192

Yes, it's well known that HL are not the most competitive when buying shares, but for various reasons, I still opt to buy shares through them - basically, I don't buy many shares, compared to funds and I want to buy within my Isa and therefore choose to pay the small premium.

You do however need to look at how the charges are structured - your £14.95 that you paid is a lump sum and this could have bought you up to £1999 worth of shares, so by buying only half of that you effectively doubled you fee! Always look to optimise the fee, so for instance always buy £1999 worth, not £2,000, otherwise you go into the next catagory.