Recommended Share Dealing App ?

maxsteam · 22 February 2021 at 7:47PM

Doshwaster said:

I've been playing with eToro and Freetrade over the past week. So far I'm still using virtual money on eToro but have put 50 quid into Freetrade.
While I am happy to keep my main investments in an established provider such as HL, I can see the attraction of these app based platforms for some more speculative investments into products which aren't available elsewhere such as cryptocurrencies and fractional shares.. If it all crashes and burns then no great loss.

It is actually another concern of mine that, as well as not being members of recognised stock exchanges, these apps encourage inexperienced investors to speculate on high risk products with high dealing costs. I am just looking at an app that lets you trade bitcoins and currencies. The spread on bitcoins is more than twenty times the spread on currencies. This means that maybe it's no great loss for some but every transaction will generate a handy profit for the market maker. In many cases, the market maker is the platform provider. I have nothing against responsible gambling but, imho, charging someone twenty times as much for wanting to play with bitcoins is unacceptable profiteering, particularly when some of the apps pretend that it is free to invest.