Hoodless & Brennan share dealing

Dagron

Hi all,

does anyone here have a Hoodless & Brennan share dealing account? MSE recommends it as the best share dealing service, i'm just wondering if anybody has any good / bad experiences. Can anyone tell me how easy it is to get your money out of your account? Say i do a bit of share dealing and then want to get some money out - is it easy to transfer the money to my online bank account or do they have to send a cheque or something?

any advice appreciated, ta.

cheerfulcat

MSE recommends it as a cheap share dealing service. Unfortunately MSE is not big on investments. I wouldn't recommend HB - if you want a cheap service, go to Halifax ShareBuilder or the Motley Fool version ( better if you want an ISA ). These services are batch-dealing, so you can't time your purchases, but they are really cheap at £1.50 to buy ( £11.50 and £10 respectively to sell IIRC ). If you want control of the timing I can recommend Selftrade as a good reliable broker; they charge £12.50 per deal; I use them myself. I have heard that IWeb offer a good service, too, but can't vouch for that personally. IWeb charge £10 per deal. What broker will suit you best depends partly on how much and in which markets you intend to trade.

It should be easy enough with all of those brokers to get your money out of the account; usually you set up a link to your debit card to move money in and out.

moneyandmountains

cheerfulcat wrote:

I wouldn't recommend HB

Out of interest, can you expand on any problems with HB?
It is useful so that other people can see the pitfalls.

The only problem I have had with HB was in not being able to find a market maker for buying some ETFs online. However, they sorted it out on the phone and rang back to confirm the transaction with no problems.

These services are batch-dealing, so you can't time your purchases

They deal on set days four times a month.

Xbigman

Selftrade have the lowest ISA admin fee (£25), HB are £50 p.a. So for a long term buy and hold portfolio in an ISA, Seltrade are cheaper. They also have a referal offer that is worth £50 to you and the referer.
Regards



X

gt94sss2

Xbigman wrote:

Selftrade have the lowest ISA admin fee (£25)

While I use and recommend Selftrade, they are not the cheapest if all you are looking at is the annual ISA charge - for instance HSBC charge no annual fees and idealing charge £20/year for their ISA accounts

Regards
Sunil

cheerfulcat

moneyandmountains wrote:

Out of interest, can you expand on any problems with HB?
It is useful so that other people can see the pitfalls.

Sure. HB have been fined by the FSA for " unacceptable sales practices " - press release.

The unacceptable sales practices included persuading customers to buy stock when they were not ready to do so and persuading customers to take more stock than they appeared to want.

I like my brokers to be a little more ethical in their dealings with customers. The complaint was to do with their advisory service but it still makes me uneasy and while I think that an experienced investor should be able to avoid falling for sales pitches ( though according to police, it is mostly experienced investors who fall for e.g. boiler room scams! ) a novice would be best sticking to an execution-only broker with no advisory services.

Some discussion from TMF - here, here, and here, with links to more.

EDIT: It is not clear whether those people who were telephoned by HB actually had advisory accounts, or whether they were " cold called ".

Andyboy

Dagron wrote:

Hi all,

does anyone here have a Hoodless & Brennan share dealing account? MSE recommends it as the best share dealing service, i'm just wondering if anybody has any good / bad experiences. Can anyone tell me how easy it is to get your money out of your account? Say i do a bit of share dealing and then want to get some money out - is it easy to transfer the money to my online bank account or do they have to send a cheque or something?

any advice appreciated, ta.

If you are doing your own research and just want a buying and selling service HB are fine in my experience. £7 a deal makes sence to me!

Personally I find it difficult to totally trust any company advising on what I should buy/sell and when!!


I would challenge anyone to come up with a better costing service that allows you to buy and sell immediately (within the confines of the normal share dealing world!)

wayne42

It can work both ways..
My wife bought some £5,000 NXS shares for 0.65 on H&B advise.. Although I was very wary about their hard sales tack,the share bid price is now 1.55 heading (i hope) for 2/3p..
We have noticed just latley that more illiquid shares are getting harder to buy online..We usually end up buying/selling through them on the phone. No big deal.
On the whole we remain happy with them.

Geoffo_M

Dagron wrote:

Hi all,

Can anyone tell me how easy it is to get your money out of your account? Say i do a bit of share dealing and then want to get some money out - is it easy to transfer the money to my online bank account or do they have to send a cheque or something?

any advice appreciated, ta.

Money out is directly to the bank account you nominate when you first register - uses BACS and takes 3 days. Money in is through Worldpay via a debit card. You cannot use a credit card.