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Freetrade Review After 4 Years Of Use

 

Disclosure: I own shares in Freetrade.

Freetrade is a relatively new trading app that started in the UK and has now opened up across Europe, the app essentially allows you to do as the name implies, purchase and sell shares without a commission fee. Of-course there's still a currency conversion when buying stocks in currencies other than your home currency, however compared to many other investment services, this is very cheep when taking into account the cost of buying and selling shares.

The Interface


Having used Feetrade for almost 4 years now I've found the interface of the app to posses a beautiful and simplified design. When opened you are presented with a clear list presenting all of your positions, the number of shares, and the amount of money those shares represent, as well as the percentage that those positions are in the green or the red.

Scrolling down you are presented with a watch list that clearly shows how each ticker you'r watching has done over a month at a glance.
This simplicity is where Freetrade really shines, making it incredibly easy to keep track of positions i find interesting, simply opening the app and scrolling down gives me all the information i need in a pinch.


The Insights tab gives you a basic breakdown of your portfolio by Type, Sector and Position, It also compares you'r portfolio to the FTSE All World (£VWRL) as a quick comparison of how your doing against the market.

where Freetrade falls short of other investing apps however is its none existent Auto Investing features as well as a web interface. Meaning that you will always need your phone to check your investments and make buy and sell orders. This suits plenty of people but i wish they had some kind of online interface to allow for more easy viewing without the need for a phone.

The lack of any kind of Auto invest feature means investing using Freetrade is very hands on, you choose your stocks and buy them each individually. Dividends need to be used to purchase more stocks manually with no drop features in place either. 

Again for hands on investors the lack of auto investing is fine, and if you really wanted to you could just buy the SNP500 commission free and leave it at that. Freetrade have said they want to implement these features but have not currently given a timeline for when they will appear in-app.

Freetrade Plus

Although Freetrade offers commission free investing, it does lock off a sizable portion of its stocks and shares, as well as features such as limit orders to its plus membership.The cost of being a plus member is currently £9.99 a month. 

Being a plus member does allow you to gain a generous 3% interest rate on up to £4000 you have stored as cash in your holding account, this alone can offset the plus fee entirely should you choose to keep £4000 sat around doing nothing. I would personally consider this a loss of opportunity however as you may be able to earn more by simply investing this money instead of leaving it sat around.

Another perk of Freetrade plus is it makes the UK Isa account free, however i only see this as a benefit for UK users.

United Kingdom ISA Support

For people living in the UK looking for somewhere to place their tax free investing allowance, Freetrade offers you an isa account for just £3 a month or free if you choose to pay for Freetrade Plus. This compared to other investing services is incredibly cheep, and the price stays the same no matter how much money you hold with them. This alone has made them my favorite investing service when it comes to handling my isa accounts.

Community

As well as being an app for investing, the Freetrade team have also gone out of their way to create a welcoming investing community. I personally frequent the forums and find the information there to be very useful and welcoming to new users and even those new to investing.  

Not only this but you can also sign up for a Freetrade Honey newsletter, providing you with market news on a daily basis. I'm personally a fan of the weekend read, where they deep dive into interesting subjects such as the housing bubble and individual stocks in opinion pieces.

Conclusion

Overall i enjoy Freetrade's simplistic and to the point design, as well as the way their fees are setup, being fixed costs instead of a percentage of your portfolio as some other services operate. In my opinion it has also been very transparent with its user-base and Freetrade staff can frequently be seen talking on their official forums with their user-base.  They have a number of features i would like to see added in future but as of right now, im happy keeping my Isa with this provider.



If you'd like to get started using Freetrade, why not start with a free share worth £3 - £200 by using this link to sign up: Here


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