SVS Securities - shut down?

masonic

johnburman said:

masonic.  Agree with what you say.  NEVER have >£85K with them but I am interested that you were with them.  you are right about the spreads, but that seems to be a fact of life.  I see that TRADING 212 only lets you invest 95% of your funds.   so they may make a few farthings on the interest earnt on your funds.  Mind you how do you ever invest £20k exactly in an ISA I do not know?   

I don't think that limit applies if you don't indulge in their casino products. I made a small deposit into their general investment account to meet the terms of the joining incentive and all of that money seemed to be available to invest. Investing £20k exactly is easy when you hold some minnows of the market, or have the option to buy fractional shares (as you do with T212).

johnburman

Sorry masonic it does.  See their T&Cs on this:
10.14. You can place an Order, as long as the value of the Order does not exceed 95% of the available funds in your account. Regardless of this, you can still end with a negative balance on your account in cases of sudden market volatility, where the price would drastically change between the time of giving the order and its execution. Should such a change occur and your obligation to settle exceeds your available funds, you will remain liable to settle the Deal in full.
You can "deposit" ££20k, but you can only invest 95% of it.  You have a cash balance for the 5%.  I wonder why?  I suppose to stop day trading when it goes bad...but all very odd   

masonic

johnburman said:

Sorry masonic it does.  See their T&Cs on this:
10.14. You can place an Order, as long as the value of the Order does not exceed 95% of the available funds in your account. Regardless of this, you can still end with a negative balance on your account in cases of sudden market volatility, where the price would drastically change between the time of giving the order and its execution. Should such a change occur and your obligation to settle exceeds your available funds, you will remain liable to settle the Deal in full.

Yes, that's another aspect of T212 that will make your head spin. During my brief time with them they changed their T&Cs frequently and did not communicate the fact with customers. At one point they were introducing new terms on an almost daily basis, some of them to the significant detriment of customers. Looking back at the T&Cs I signed up to that term doesn't seem to be there, although for large balances (mine was very small) they might have been doing it in practice all along.

johnburman said:

You can "deposit" ££20k, but you can only invest 95% of it.  You have a cash balance for the 5%.  I wonder why?  I suppose to stop day trading when it goes bad...but all very odd   

I think the reason is obvious. As I mentioned earlier, when you deal it is not typically a market order, so they get an indicative price to check you have sufficient funds at the time, but the deal is aggregated and placed later. If the price moves in that time they might need to charge you more so the 5% buffer is needed to avoid your balance going negative. As mentioned in the new term, if the price changes drastically, this measure might not be enough and you'd be on the hook for whatever deficit there was in your account.

A couple of weeks ago I was busy buying up some investment trusts and REITs that had fallen to ridiculous discounts and was struggling to get a live price, and in one case the price I eventually got was 10% higher than when I initially tried to buy (this was not with T212). I'm over that though as the price rose another 50% over the next 2 weeks

masonic

A few other things in T212's T&Cs that might be of interest to you, in relation to how they make money from you:

"Costs: Our charges may be incorporated as a mark-up or mark-down (the difference between the price at which we take a principal position and the transaction execution price with you). The Company’s price quote in many markets already includes our spread and there will be no additional fees or commissions due from you."

"By trading on our platform, you express your consent to us arranging for your orders to be executed outside a Regulated Market, MTF or OTF."

manorhouse

Do you not set a limit with T212 .. Have to buy at best  ?
If so i would not be interested .

Thrugelmir

Sounds like a case of smoke and mirrors. I'd prefer to pay a competitive broking fee rate and maintain complete transparency over the transaction. 

johnburman

Do you not set a limit with T212 .. Have to buy at best  ?  No, you have a choice to do all/any of these.
For XO on the LSE you pay the price shown on the LSE website for the actual purchase (I am nerdy like that I check!)
Mmmm.  All rather odd.  PS I have just looked a the Share Shop charges and the account fee of £60 Plus, then plus a dealing fee of £7.50 per pop is hardly cheap.  Mind you SVS was cheap, and look what happened!  But there is DeGiro and Trading 212 etc. out there...

masonic

manorhouse said:

Do you not set a limit with T212 .. Have to buy at best  ?
If so i would not be interested .

Yes you can set limit orders. I can't comment on whether those limit orders are as likely to trigger as with a full fat broker. Since they seem to be matching orders on their internal market then that could be to your advantage in some situations. But as I mentioned earlier, I have some concerns around that and it would be a right mess if their internal market was disputed.

englishmas

Hi
With due respect to all the participants how are using their valuable time to give information and helping out others worried people.
After the SVS was shut down I found the forum very useful and helping people ( like myself) out who are bit stupid and naives cone into investing in SVS.
Recently I am bit disappointed about the discussion on this forum (SVS SHUTDOWN), I am sure current  topics  under discussion are very important needs airing but I am not sure that this is the right platform for these discussion.
So I would request  that please please turn back to the problem we all are facing, eg
We should be putting some pressure on LC and FSCS  speedy results and to pass back our assets, minimise the LC bill , select the other provider and lobby the FCSC and also  the people who suppose to be looking after our interest. Some of us are even more worry by seeing the market crash.
Please let's try to think and we can do to bring this matter to end. Thanks

bowlhead99

englishmas said:

After the SVS was shut down I found the forum very useful and helping people ( like myself) out who are bit stupid and naives cone into investing in SVS.
Recently I am bit disappointed about the discussion on this forum (SVS SHUTDOWN), I am sure current  topics  under discussion are very important needs airing but I am not sure that this is the right platform for these discussion.

When the issue first came up, the responses to "SVS Securities shut down?" went a lot further than the obvious "Yes, it is". There was information and education for those who needed it.

However, now everyone already has the information and education about how this works - there's over a thousand posts of content on the thread - you can't expect new information and education to be continually provided. It's inevitable that conversation will drift onto other related topics.

So I would request  that please please turn back to the problem we all are facing, eg
We should be putting some pressure on LC and FSCS  speedy results and to pass back our assets, minimise the LC bill , select the other provider and lobby the FCSC and also  the people who suppose to be looking after our interest. Some of us are even more worry by seeing the market crash.
Please let's try to think and we can do to bring this matter to end. 

At the moment there are known dates for the next stages, provided by LC on their site and by posters who have shared the content of personal communications received. In the meantime there's a waiting game.

The forum is what you make of it. If you think that some concerted lobbying of LC, FSCS, FCA etc will make a difference, do it, and tell others what you are doing and how it will accelerate the process, and perhaps others will join you. But meanwhile it's not particularly surprising that people who have used SVS execution-only brokerage services are now discussing what other options are available to them for when they eventually get their assets back in a few months' time.