Online Platform to Invest in Stocks

bushido1

Hello,

I am planning on investing in stocks with a buy and hold long term strategy.

I am resident in the UK and I will be paying my taxes there. I will be investing about 100kGBPs to begin with.

Which one of the online platforms would you choose for investing in stocks/bonds with a long term strategy of buy and hold? Why?

I am deciding between these 3 now:
BestInvest
Hargreaves Landsdown
Charles Stanley Direct

JohnRo

There's a heck of a lot to consider that's not immediately obvious imho, for example what are you planning to buy and hold? Do you intend to hold funds, ITs, ETFs, individual shares or a combination of these?

Are you wanting active involvement, comprehensive data access etc. or a passive, buy and forget hands off approach?

Are you planning to feed the investment into a SSISA or hold unwrapped?

Do you intend to hold funds, ITs, ETFs, individual shares?

"100K to begin with" implies further investment, will it be regular, ad hoc, how much, etc.

The more detail you apply the more appropriate the choice. There are also the difficult to quantify aspects like customer service, platform features and general efficiency which obviously have a value.

I chose CSD but for a very specific set of reasons relating to my IT income investment plan which wouldn't work nearly as well if I invested in funds for example.

bushido1

JohnRo wrote: »

There's a heck of a lot to consider that's not immediately obvious imho, for example what are you planning to buy and hold? Do you intend to hold funds, ITs, ETFs, individual shares or a combination of these?

Are you wanting active involvement, comprehensive data access etc. or a passive, buy and forget hands off approach?

Are you planning to feed the investment into a SSISA or hold unwrapped?

Do you intend to hold funds, ITs, ETFs, individual shares?

"100K to begin with" implies further investment, will it be regular, ad hoc, how much, etc.

The more detail you apply the more appropriate the choice. There are also the difficult to quantify aspects like customer service, platform features and general efficiency which obviously have a value.

I chose CSD but for a very specific set of reasons relating to my IT income investment plan which wouldn't work nearly as well if I invested in funds for example.

I will be buying low cost (Vanguard mainly) ETFs (VWRL), Unit trust and Bonds (VGOV) only.

Forget hands off approach in general, but I will be making investments of 2000GBPs every 2-3 months or so on a regular basis.

I will use an ISA 15kGBPs per year.

100kGBPs at the beginning and then the amounts explained above will be the plan.

I hope that with this info you are able to give me a more precise answer. Thanks!!

JohnRo

Funds then

CSD let you trade funds for free, however if your average investment is £104-106K at 0.25% p.a will incur platform costs of £260-265 in year one.

HL let you trade funds for free, their costs on £104-106K at 0.45% p.a will incur platform costs of £468-477 in year one.

iWeb on the other hand charge a one off admin fee of £200 to open your account and then £5 commission per transaction after that.

http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/

bowlhead99

If you don't want to hold "funds" (unit trusts or oeics which need a platform) then TD Direct are a decent choice. No fee for ISA admin and no inactivity fees likely. UK and international stocks and ETFs and bonds can be traded. A proper stockbroker offering extended settlement on trades if wanted, dealing on margin (fund the account by settlement date), smartphone app etc. And they do also have fund "platform" services and a discounted monthly "regular investing" facility and decent free nominee services for corporate shareholdings if your needs change over time.

There are various platform price comparison tools and a search on this forum will help you find them. However, they tend to be focused really on the fees for different activity levels rather than articulating the services available. At TD, service has been fine for me over many years with three accounts although you will see complaints here and there on websites including this one.

bowlhead99

JohnRo wrote: »

Funds then

Be careful with the distinction between

Exchange Traded Funds which the OP wants and which are bought and sold in real time on an Exchange, and

Open Ended Investment Companies or Unit Trusts which are subscribed for and redeemed at fixed daily dealing points under a declared NAV and requiring access to a Funds Platform.

You seem to be analysing the latter for CS and HL when the OP wants the former; if he is smart, he should be able to avoid all Platform Fees.

IWeb may be a good choice if extensive broking services are not going to be needed, as their per-transaction charge is lower than the bigger brokers (assuming you aren't trading monthly on a fixed plan to get discounted rates)

bushido1

bowlhead99 wrote: »

If you don't want to hold "funds" (unit trusts or oeics which need a platform) then TD Direct are a decent choice. No fee for ISA admin and no inactivity fees likely. UK and international stocks and ETFs and bonds can be traded. A proper stockbroker offering extended settlement on trades if wanted, dealing on margin (fund the account by settlement date), smartphone app etc. And they do also have fund "platform" services and a discounted monthly "regular investing" facility and decent free nominee services for corporate shareholdings if your needs change over time.

There are various platform price comparison tools and a search on this forum will help you find them. However, they tend to be focused really on the fees for different activity levels rather than articulating the services available. At TD, service has been fine for me over many years with three accounts although you will see complaints here and there on websites including this one.

Thanks a lot to both of you guys for helping!!

I guess then you guys recommend CSD before HL because of the small fees. But are you guys aware of other factors?

I was aware of the fees before posting this, but my biggest concern was that I heard the small companies (such as Interactive investors) give more headhaches and you have to even be aware of receiving the dividents properly. And I obviously don't wanna deal with that, even if that means cheaper fees.

1/ Is CSD one of the most reliable ones in the UK market? So I don't have to worry about what I mentioned above?
I am still not clear on which company to go with.

2/ For the CSD website and they rates I understand that if I put any amount 100kGBPs+ in VWRL I would only be paying 150GBPs a year no matter the amount. Is this correct?

JohnRo

1/ Is CSD one of the most reliable ones in the UK market? So I don't have to worry about what I mentioned above?
I am still not clear on which company to go with.

I've yet to encounter any problem whatsoever and I've tested them more than once with some quite convoluted admin tasks involving transfers and gifting etc.
Dividends are always credited to the account the day they're due, before noon every time I've checked. The exception has been where income payments are received as a foreign currency cheque, in which case it seems to take them three or four working days to credit it to the account, which seems entirely reasonable to me.

2/ For the CSD website and they rates I understand that if I put any amount 100kGBPs+ in VWRL I would only be paying 150GBPs a year no matter the amount. Is this correct?

Yes that's correct AFACT. You'll pay £10 commission on the first purchase which I believe but cannot verify will count towards your £150 maximum.
I'd definitely call them though to check if that's the case.

Somewhat perversely, you could just make 6 random trades for a token amount each 6 month charging period and the platform fee is then waived completely. This works out at 12 trades p.a for £120 (ex. sdrt) which is why I use CSD.

When regularly purchasing new, adding to existing, and/or rebalancing it's handy to have that "free" 12 trade facility and save £30 p.a into the bargain.

As for the customer service, I've been very impressed with CSD so far, their platform account features and data retrieval options are also equally impressive if that's the sort of thing that impresses.

bigfreddiel

I often wonder at people's abilities to build a portfolio of various equities, bonds, funds and so on if they can't decide on a platform to realise their plan.

Cheers fj

bowlhead99

JohnRo wrote: »

Somewhat perversely, you could just make 6 random trades for a token amount each 6 month charging period and the platform fee is then waived completely. This works out at 12 trades p.a for £120 (ex. sdrt) which is why I use CSD.

When regularly purchasing new, adding to existing, and/or rebalancing it's handy to have that "free" 12 trade facility and save £30 p.a into the bargain.
.

Meanwhile over at TD Direct, you can sit there and hold £100k+ of VWRL, some in an ISA account and some in a regular account, without even bothering to trade at all, and pay zero maintenance fees...

It's nice to think you are getting trades "for free" when you have to pay £100+ every year for the account anyway..., but for someone who just wants to buy and hold some shares or ITs or ETFs, I personally find it better to not have to pay for the account in the first place and simply pay to trade when you want to.

Not to criticize your choice of course - because as was mentioned earlier, we all have specific reasons why we chose our service provider. I found TD when I wanted a full featured online trading account a long time ago, and they haven't given me a reason to leave.

JohnRo

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Meanwhile over at TD Direct, you can sit there and hold £100k+ of VWRL, some in an ISA account and some in a regular account, without even bothering to trade at all, and pay zero maintenance fees...

It's nice to think you are getting trades "for free" if you have to pay £100+ for the account anyway..., but for someone who just wants to buy and hold some shares or ITs or ETFs, I personally find it better to not have to pay for the account in the first place and simply pay to trade when you want to.

Not to criticize your choice of course - because as was mentioned earlier, we all have specific reasons why we chose our service provider. I found TD when I wanted a full featured trading account a long time ago, and they haven't given me a reason to leave.

Of course but for someone who does want to trade 12 times a year CSD are cheaper than TD and the customer service and account portal and associated features are vastly superior imho (and experience with both).

* To the OP this just highlights how you need to be clear about your intended investment, initially and in future, and also what you want from the chosen platform.