£0 commission investing - any users of Trading212 ISA?

DiggerUK

Trading212 seems to fill an aspiration to trade profitably, as opposed to investing wisely, I can't quite fathom out what sector of the market it seeks to attract.
Is it an alternative to using an FA, wealth fund manager, day trading, DIYing or buying into a packaged S&S ISA or SIPP.

The smell test with a BS alarm attached for me rings loud and long with the 0% charges, 0% fees, we do this for you for free spiel. 

It sounds like a supermarket that says everything is free, but charges you a handling fee for everything in your trolley. Or am I off my trolley again..._

m_c_s

I use a Trading 212 ISA for a £50k portfolio which is now in multi-asset ETFs for retirement planning. To be honest I have not had a single problem with them. I transferred a smaller ISA from Vanguard to Trading 212 a few months ago to save a few pennies on platform fees and that was all done efficiently by email.
The app on the iPhone and iPad is nice but I mainly use the web app through safari browser for viewing my portfolio or making transactions. One can use either the live or a beta version with upcoming features. Have saved £125 this year on previous platform fees.
I looked at Freetrade as an alternative although they do charge for S&S ISA (still cheap at £36 per annum). I prefer Trading 212s selection of ETFs though and the platform has the three new Blackrock ESG multi-asset ETFs (20/80, 50/50 and 75/25 bond/equity).
Trading 212 does make money with a foreign exchange fee (0.5% I think) and CFDs non of which I use or need.I have not noticed any spread widening to claw back fees but I am only interested in a small selection of ETFs, I don't day trade or deal in single shares.
Most important for me is that Trading 212 UK Ltd is authorised and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority. For safety and in compliance all funds for each user/investor are kept separately in segregated bank accounts and are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).  So upto £85k money/asset protection.

Albermarle

Thrugelmir said:

Trading 212 also generate income by lending investors shares held. 

Could you explain how that works ( just out of interest) ? Who do they lend them to ? short sellers?

London7766551

I use it to invest small amounts. I have not actually tried to sell anything yet and get the money back out. I aim to leave it there for years. But so far it has been very easy to use. I won't pretend to understand how it works, the app tells me I own 300 shares in such and such a company. I use the rule that it is money I could lose and be fine, otherwise I would not risk it, although really don't want to lose anything obviously. It even says that on their site!

Alexland

Albermarle said:

Thrugelmir said:

Trading 212 also generate income by lending investors shares held. 

Could you explain how that works ( just out of interest) ? Who do they lend them to ? short sellers?

Yup short sellers
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securities_lending

Thrugelmir

dellboy102 said:

Just noticed under spread markup it says none so for now doesnt look like they do increase the spreads and make money this way.

Will be trying to entice users to pay for a premium service once they become sucked in. In the US it's a very different market where market makers do pay commission back to introducers. One reason why Robinhood aborted it's UK launch. As a very different business model. 

norsefox

I use Trading212 for my 'investing' fix, with Vanguard the platform for my S&S ISA and as my sensible 'set and forget' approach.
T212 has a good interface and is generally pretty easy to use.  It's seriously struggled on a few occasions in the last month or two, at least once because of a DOS attack, and a couple of times due to server overload - right about the time the US markets opened following the announcements of vaccine #1 and vaccine #2.

I'm looking to keep the ratio as approximately 1:4 between my GIA with T212 and ISA with Vanguard.  So far my self-managed approach has pretty much identically mirrored the returns in my VLS and other funds.  Go figure.

Personally I quite enjoy 'managing' a portfolio, but it is certainly true as has been said above - it does foster 'meddling' and so therefore has the potential for inadvertent downsides.  That said, I suspect the novelty will wear off.  After all, there are only so many times in a day or week that one can check the stock price of NIO, Tesla, or Palantir.

cloud_dog

m_c_s said:

To be honest I have not had a single problem with them. 

Yes, most things work until they don't.  And T212 may well be fine but, I don't like the lack of transparency, I wouldn't want to hold a sizeable amount of my investments in a relatively new organisation going through growing pains.

Anyone else can do whatever they choose. 

Thrugelmir

norsefox said:

T212 has a good interface and is generally pretty easy to use.  It's seriously struggled on a few occasions in the last month or two, at least once because of a DOS attack, and a couple of times due to server overload - right about the time the US markets opened following the announcements of vaccine #1 and vaccine #2.

Have you compared the prices on offer for stocks between T212 and your GIA? 

Tolteca87

I've got an ISA with them and my SIPP with HL. Both crashed on the Vaccine news. The prices are not that different and trades are usually pretty fast. T212 has also just added a lot of the investment trusts I already hold in my SIPP as well as a lot of other stocks and international stocks it did not have when it started. The costs of trading are minimal - given you do still pay stamp - at T212 on UK trades. The big thing that makes me really like T212 is that no big fees for each purchase makes it much easier to pound cost average into a position and that fractional shares make it easier to slide in and out of a position in larger priced stocks (especially the US) The news on stocks is no where near as good but, hey, I can always use the HL newsfeeds on stocks as I already pay for that in the monthly fee.