Etorro and similar

lifemagic

Etoro offer both cfds and regular shares. The former involves borrowing and you can lose more than you put in. Most people lose money with cfds. If you buy regular shares you can only lose what you put in. If you buy big established companies or diverse etfs and hold (regular shares) over five years you're very unlikely to lose and that kind of investing shouldn't be considered gamblimg imho. Why not read a few beginners books to get an overview?

underground99

maxsteam said:

I've yet to receive the email that you mention but surely, if you don't like it, you can unsubscribe?

The point that seems to have gone over your head was not that the platform sends out emails from time to time that a particular customer might not want.

It was that DeGiro's platform is used by gamblers all over Europe, as evidenced by the fact that the highest traded stocks there last month were GameStop which did $6 to $480 and back to $50 over the last 6 months and a Canadian penny stock cannabis grower which went from $0.30 to $3 to under $1 in the same timescale - largely on the bank of social media hype and going into free fall when the Reddit support waned.

The suggestion that freetrade is not used by any serious investors while degiro is for the clever ones and not naive punters and gamblers, seems a little far from the mark. While of course degiro is a credible and full-featured platform if you don't mind the lower compensation scheme protection that operates in Europe, it had some of the most competitive pricing in Europe before the likes of Trading212, Etoro and Freetrade showed up, which meant it was a popular venue for chancers and gambling addicts to punt on the next big thing, especially as they offer margin accounts, options, warrants etc which freetrade don't get involved with.

Despite freetrade attracting plenty of mug punters just like degiro do, they are looking to make buy-and-hold investment accessible and low cost rather than offer the most advanced and sophisticated features, and plenty of customers will use it 'seriously'.  I don't have much money with them or Etoro, as I would prefer any serious amounts of money to be on a platform that makes profits. But if you are only punting £100 that you can afford to lose into a FTSE company as an experiment to see what happens, there's no real compelling need to use an overseas broker such as Degiro to do it.

wmb194

maxsteam said:

wmb194 said:
Freetrade is ... fine for someone new.

I agree. It's aimed at people with no experience who are looking for something free.

I've yet to receive the email that you mention but surely, if you don't like it, you can unsubscribe?

De Giro is just another discount broker, too, though... Underground99's reply covers much of what I would have written so I won't repeat it but where did I say that I don't like De Giro's mails? I'm interested to know what's going on. I've just used it as an example to show you that, despite your claim, there's nothing special or particularly sophisticated about much of De Giro's clientele. I've had an account with it since 2015, the days when people worried about it being a start-up, the days when people questioned how it could be so cheap, it must be dodgy, etc. etc.. Sounds familiar?

maxsteam

My gripe with Freetrade.io is that some of their publicity material crosses the line from being misleading to being dishonest.

Thrugelmir

wmb194 said:

maxsteam said:

wmb194 said:
Freetrade is ... fine for someone new.

I agree. It's aimed at people with no experience who are looking for something free.

I've yet to receive the email that you mention but surely, if you don't like it, you can unsubscribe?

I've had an account with it since 2015, the days when people worried about it being a start-up, the days when people questioned how it could be so cheap, it must be dodgy, etc. etc.. Sounds familiar?

If the backers have deep pockets then losses in the medium term are sustainable while client numbers are built. The backers ultimately will require a return on their funding. This will involve clients to upgrade to premium services or even a basic monthly subscription.  Robinhood's exposure in the US was interesting. Not the company investors thought it was. 

wmb194

maxsteam said:

My gripe with Freetrade.io is that some of their publicity material crosses the line from being misleading to being dishonest.

No it doesn't, it's clear that it's all about being commission free.

jjmmww1

Use Etoro my self with a few other people  started in 2017 with a few 100 put a bit more in over the years and currently up to just under $5k most all in cryptos but was thinking of moving my holding to a wallet to gain a staking edge as there long term holds. Also worth using the fake account on etoro as you get to start on $100k and see what you can do with that before doing the $500 as they have had some many new sign ups.

underground99

jjmmww1 said:

Also worth using the fake account on etoro as you get to start on $100k and see what you can do with that before doing the $500 as they have had some many new sign ups.

While lots of brokers will let you run fantasy portfolios, watchlists or play-money accounts, there is dubious value in using the fake accounts to imagine you had hundreds of thousands instead of the actual £100 which the OP intends to invest.   

"see what you can do with that before doing the $500" ?  Well, see if I can lose a fake hundred grand which means nothing to me as it's not actual money, or see if I can get it to a million by taking risks that I would never take if it was a real hundred grand of life savings that I would stand to lose if making a bad call on crypto or other leveraged stock bets.

The 'practice' accounts at these places certainly help sucker in people to trade, and might be of use if you just don't understand how a particular high-risk transaction type works, as you can click the buttons and see what happens rather than reading the help files.  But do very little to give you practice or discipline around investing a real £500 / $500. 

moving my holding to a wallet to gain a staking edge as there long term holds

Holding your owned cryptocurrency in an actual electronic wallet, backed up, rather than on a crypto exchange or virtual exchange, is safer if you are intending to buy and hold. If you don't need to be able to trade on leverage with only split second's notice before booking a transaction,It's better to keep your coins offline to avoid the risk of platform failure.  It doesn't gain you an 'edge'.

maxsteam

wmb194 said:

maxsteam said:

My gripe with Freetrade.io is that some of their publicity material crosses the line from being misleading to being dishonest.

No it doesn't, it's clear that it's all about being commission free.

The term "commission free" may be slightly misleading but it's not dishonest. Saying people can "Invest for Free" and saying that there will be "no fees or charges" is being dishonest.

 

underground99

maxsteam said:

wmb194 said:

maxsteam said:

My gripe with Freetrade.io is that some of their publicity material crosses the line from being misleading to being dishonest.

No it doesn't, it's clear that it's all about being commission free.

The term "commission free" may be slightly misleading but it's not dishonest. Saying people can "Invest for Free" and saying that there will be "no fees or charges" is being dishonest.

 

Well, it doesn't seem dishonest to tell people they can invest for free when within three millimetres of that sentence, you immediately explain that what you mean by the statement is that you will not charge them any commission for doing their trades. The basic account costs £0 per year in maintenance fees and doesn't have any brokerage commissions, so you can use it to invest for free.

If you're not charging the customers anything for trades or billing them any account maintenance fees on the basic version of the account, it's feasible for them to build a portfolio without fees or charges. As pointed out on other threads, the fact that certain transactions will attract taxation (stamp duty, capital gains tax, or income tax on dividends or interest or property income distributions) or that there will be a spread between the bid and offer price of securities traded on a public stock market, does not mean the broker is imposing any fees or charges.

The customers will simply pay the market price for the shares they buy, receive the market price for the shares they sell, and need to settle any related government taxes or levies associated with the buying, holding or selling of their investment.