Trading212

[BigDeal]

Hi all.

I'm regularly reviewing my brokers and options, and with the new tax year looming fast, am looking for the funding of my 2024/25 ISA.

So my current S&S ISA is with IG, and I'm pretty happy with them. However I've just seen an advert for Trading212 and have to say their offering looks amazing (on paper at least)

So my question is anyone using Trading212, and how do you find them?

 

[1nvest]

Hi all.

I'm regularly reviewing my brokers and options, and with the new tax year looming fast, am looking for the funding of my 2024/25 ISA.

So my current S&S ISA is with IG, and I'm pretty happy with them. However I've just seen an advert for Trading212 and have to say their offering looks amazing (on paper at least)

So my question is anyone using Trading212, and how do you find them?

Hi, what's the offer that looks amazing. is it the cash balance %ge?

 

[1nvest]

If it is, take a look at their terms if you haven't already
In order to take advantage of the 5.2% you need to opt in, which is effectively allowing them to invest in a QMMF
By doing so, a QMMF falls outside the protection of the FCA. so any protection is only afforded up to euro 20k rather than the 85k from the FCA

in addition, there is no guarantee that the QMMF is even going to reach that 5.2% target. looking at the below

I'm not trying to put you off, only to me that doesnt sound like a good deal anymore. I'd rather get 4.8% from a cash deposit that is covered to 85k and know im going to get that 4.8% unless interest rates start coming down.
their caveats below

and if that didnt put you off. In order to even put money into your account, anything over 2k is charged at 0.7%. so using up your ISA allowance already sets you back £140 for a cash balance that isnt suffciently protected

all that aside, the transactional commission is free. but then so are investengine and they dont charge you to deposit your money and provide FCA regulation
Just my thoughts, I have an account with them, but never ever used them

 

[cara2]

I notice eToro have moved to QMMFs too.

My wife and I have etf's all over the place, due to historic reasons. They all have higher fees than say Interactive Investors or Invest Engine, with varying other qualities, such as good or otherwise comparison tools and customer service. I had ideas to put some, or the next 20k, into an ISA at T212 . I've been using them for trading for a few months, and the more I do it the less I like them, for their incompetence and dishonesty. What I've just read is more than enough to send me elsewhere.
If you want another reason, their range of funds isn't great. If you want to invest in say Japan or India to get distance from US Tech, T212's funds are well inferior to Jupiter India or Nomura Japan hedged. Of course that leads me to think that they only offer funds which give them the best commission, but them I'm biased.

 

[BigDeal]

Hi both and thanks for responding. 'Amazing' was probably the wrong adjective to use and I'm normally a lot more measured before use terms like that.

My comparison was based on the fact I trade UK and US shares through my ISA. I pay £3 (£6 round trip) on UK, and £0 on US, but 1.5% FX fee on the latter, so Trading212 at zero commissions and 0.15% on US would save me a few quid based on that alone. I sometimes have a quite large cash balance in my ISA and it is frustrating to earn nothing on this, but I accept your point @1nvest regarding lack of FSCS protection.

Incidentally the deposit charge seems to only apply when using a card to deposit. Bank transfers in and out are advertised as free, and a method I'm comfortable with.

Presumably they make their money on leveraged accounts, 'cos they're not going to make an awful lot from the S&S ISA by the looks of things.

@cara2 I use AJBell for funds in my ISA, just because, well, I find them OK. The fund range is wide enough for me, and the platform fee is accepatable (they pay a little bit on cash as well) Sounds like Trading 212 would'nt cut the mustard for me in this area.

Anyway I'm still undecided, but thanks again for your inputs

 

[1nvest]

I sometimes have a quite large cash balance in my ISA and it is frustrating to earn nothing on this

I too have an AJBell account, along with a few others.
There are a couple of funds you can use where you have cash, and not needing it for a while...
a money market ETF symbol CSH2 or another accumulating mutual fund "L&G Cash Trust"
I find the ETF better simply for ease of access as i move in and out of equity, and the mutual fund just takes so long by comparison
Currently the annualised return on both is 4.8%. if you werent aware thats all

there are indeed a few good things with trading212. their range of ETFs are better than Investengine and the platform itself also far more intuitive than investengine. I wasn't aware of the fee, so thanks for the input

 

[cara2]

I use the T212 Invest platform (distinct from their CFD part) with no problems. They do have eg some leveraged funds there which EG eToro don't. Really searching on HL, they have a lot - probably more.
That's NOT the T212 ISA platform, haven't used that.
Getting money in and out is quicker than a bank transfer. They connect you to a service which a fingerprint on the phone confirms, and it's instant.
A BT took a day or two.
It has stop/limit orders, but not trailing stops (eToro has those and they can be guaranteed. It's also free). T212 makes most of its money from the cfd platform though I imagine there are commissions for investment funds.


I absolutely do not recommend T212 for CFD/day trading. Too many faults.

 

[cara2]

T212 have started using a half-new platform, for them. They've adopted the Tradingview charts, sort of. At the moment it's in Beta and is a mess. E.G. you can colour your chart the way you want so you can read it, but you can't have templates or any way to store the chart layout so if you click away and back it's gone.
Some things are better, but many are worse. On the Invest side you no longer get a line at your buy price. On the CFD side you no longer get a line for the buy price so you can't see the spread, though the help bot says it's an option. One click ordering is also gone, as are TP and SL tabs which you used to be able to slide to where you wanted.
Unless they fix all that, which I doubt, I'll be off to an MT4/5/CTrader platform for day trading.
Trying to ask them about any of those gets you a wall of incomprehension, The staff give the impression that they've never used the platform, and when they don't know something they tell you something stupid or ask for never-ending screenshots and videos.

As regards ETFs available, I found they have some of their own instead of the ones you finsd at Harg Lan, HSBC, ii, IE.

ETF Range - The best return India ETF I found is Jupiter India which T212 don't have, and the best Japanese is a Nomura hedged, which T212 don't have. I just checked, ii DO have them. Handy for non-US tech related diversity, though Japan gov is doing strange things at the mo.

T212 Do give interest on cash, though, it's about the best rate of anyone I think, 5 or 5.2%(?).

The Leveraged funds T212 have which I didn't see elsewhere are available at Harg Lan, but you really have to search hard for them!. HL is a good platform in some ways but their fee is 0.45%.

 

[BigDeal]

Thanks for the additional info. Looking at their site again I now see they're offering 1% cashback on new ISA funds deposited by the end of April. (Looks like existing clients are elible too as long as it's not an ISA you hold)
Anyway I think I'm going to give it a go for 2024/25, with the intention of using it for UK and US share trading only. The range of shares is adequate for me (I'm pretty much a growth investor so don't need to worry too much about small caps) I like the idea of keeping my share trading / funds / leveraged arrangements with different providers, so looks like it will fit in pretty well.
I also think the QMMF is OK on the univested cash - interest is paid daily, and it's only on the part which isn't invested. I sometimes have a number of days between investment decisions.

Incidentally, looking at their accounts I see the directors paid themselves a collective divident of £15,000,000 last year. Yes £15 million quid, so they're doing something right!

 

[cara2]

Thanks for the additional info. Looking at their site again I now see they're offering 1% cashback on new ISA funds deposited by the end of April. (Looks like existing clients are elible too as long as it's not an ISA you hold)
Anyway I think I'm going to give it a go for 2024/25, with the intention of using it for UK and US share trading only. The range of shares is adequate for me (I'm pretty much a growth investor so don't need to worry too much about small caps) I like the idea of keeping my share trading / funds / leveraged arrangements with different providers, so looks like it will fit in pretty well.
I also think the QMMF is OK on the univested cash - interest is paid daily, and it's only on the part which isn't invested. I sometimes have a number of days between investment decisions.

Incidentally, looking at their accounts I see the directors paid themselves a collective divident of £15,000,000 last year. Yes £15 million quid, so they're doing something right!

Something right - like fleecing their customers with a site which trips people up ??

T212 have just released a changed platform , with a TradingView front end. TV with most things stripped out. No dealing with it. You can't save charts or templates, and many indicators are missing, it's not even at the free TV level.
I has a huge amount wrong with it, and it's changing all the time.
A lot of people are having the same problems with it but T212 have only corrected a few things so far. They obviously didn't bother to test it before release, and the "legacy" platform, whose life has had to be extended, is due to die next week.
Currently, it's no use for day trading at all - it has slowed right down needing sequences of clicks instead of one, and there's vital info now missing from the chart.
For Investing, it lost many features, but it's usable. Assuming you only want a limited type of fund, plus stocks. No "managed" funds.
They don't do instructions, and their staff haven't a clue yet. I daresay that'll improve, with so many users having the same issues. The staff seem to change, but recycle the same East-European names.

I'll be using a different platform for trading, unless they change things for which they have "no plans".
I wouldn't think to join it for a while, let it settle for a month or so at least.

I thought about using them for the 24/5 ISA but have decided agains. eToro have trailing stop losses, (guaranteed) which could be very useful, but neither T212 or eToro have Managed Funds, maybe they're OEICs I'm not sure, which often have much better performance. I'll probably use ii or IE. IBKR give about the same interest on uninvested money.

 

[cara2]

Trading212 have now discontinued the platform which was discussed before.
They released a complete mess, and are using customers to test it.
It has had a MASS of alterations so it's like a patched road now.
Many many things don't work properly.
The staff don't know how it's supposed to work so can't help.

I'm not prepared to spend money finding out what works and what doesn't so I'm not trading at the moment - I'll try a new platform or two.

The INVest side is ok, for "slow" trades, but forget the CFD platform. I guess it'll improve when people stop using it.
For my new S & S ISA, I may use Etoro. At least you get trailing stop-losses.

 

[BigDeal]

Actually I took the plunge this morning and opened an account. I was going to do it at the beginning of the financial year, but then saw your comment on 8th April, so held back and vacillated a bit longer. I'm not going to do any leveraged trading with them; I'm really happy with my existing providers in that area, but will use them for this year's ISA allowance; It'll be interesting to see how much I save on fees. I'm also intrigued by their share lending facility.

I've never seen the previous platform so have nothing to compare it to.

If I'm unhappy I'll simply close it any move somewhere else.

 

[1nvest]

Trading212 have now discontinued the platform which was discussed before.
They released a complete mess, and are using customers to test it.
It has had a MASS of alterations so it's like a patched road now.
Many many things don't work properly.
The staff don't know how it's supposed to work so can't help.

I'm not prepared to spend money finding out what works and what doesn't so I'm not trading at the moment - I'll try a new platform or two.

The INVest side is ok, for "slow" trades, but forget the CFD platform. I guess it'll improve when people stop using it.
For my new S & S ISA, I may use Etoro. At least you get trailing stop-losses.

if you dont mind me asking, what did you find wrong with the CFD platform, compared to etoro's?
I don't need charting, or trailing stops, just execution and the execution is done on a monthly basis.
was it the speed of execution? not being filled appropriately, range of CFDs, spread etc?

 

[cara2]

T212 CFD is getting better. It's quite amusing really, it's development by patch following consumer complaint!
Many of the problems are speed associated, which won't bother you if you trade only monthly.
They have sorted out many of the impediments now. They don't have instructions, so there's a stream of posts saying this or that isn't there, because people haven't found it yet.
I've started to use it now they've put in/back things like single click ordering, but last I tried, you couldn't close orders quickly.
They have a partial implementation of TradingView, so you can't set or alter some things, lines on the screen are hard to see, and so on.

What will still bother you using CFD on T212 OR eToro, is the overnight aka swap fee, it's credit card level. I hardly use it. They have many leveraged instruments on the Invest part but those ALL have wide spreads and daily losses.
I haven't used eToro much, but one difference is that you have to switch between platforms on T212, which can be pretty slow. You get a rather different set of instruments, which can be very annoying, and the trading aspects of the two are different.
I noticed a couple of leveraged stocks on T212 which weren't on eToro, but I daresay that's fluid.
Spreads are often a little wider on eToro, but a perennial problem on T212 is that you often don't get the price where the bid/ask lines are, even if it's not changing. Stop losses also trigger for no reason, a long way from where they're set, even if the price isn't changing. And the profit loss signal is often wrong. It can say you're £200 the other way.

Stretching my memory here, I believe you can SHORT without a swap fee on eToro, you certainly can't on T212, because you have no choice of leverage, it's fixed at 5x (10x, 20x etc). (There's often a "1x short" instrument in the Invest side.) You can't guarantee your stop losses on T212 like you can on eToro - in fact they don't exist, you need to use a sell stop order which is not part of the position-opening order . On CFD you can set a Stop Loss AND a Take Profit, you can't do that on Invest. I can't remember the possibilities on eToro. I would often like to set both.

There is a point you would need to check if you want the 5% interest - you have to give them permission to use a type of fund (MMTF??) I'd have to check, which means you are not covered by the FSCS £85k, it's only £20k. Check Youtube for a guy explaining. EToro maybe the same, I don't know.

If you want to use the ISA platform, I'd opt out of their interest, you can just buy Money Market funds which give 5.2% returns.

Fills - I've had nasty experiences on small cap stock orders getting "stuck" between T212 and te exchange somehow. They can be pending for weeks. If you cancel and resubmit they go through straight away. T212 don't help.

Sorry that's rather disorganised!

 

[1nvest]

What will still bother you using CFD on T212 OR eToro, is the overnight aka swap fee, it's credit card level. I hardly use it. They have many leveraged instruments on the Invest part but those ALL have wide spreads and daily losses.

Thanks for the reply Cara, much appreciated. I did have a look at CFD for 212 and yes they've almost made it mandatory that everything is on leverage and will charge daily on both long and short. eToro on the other hand dont charge for non-leveraged overnight long positions which is the key difference i'm seeing. I've been using etoro for some time, and its this aspect (i can choose whether to use leverage) that allows me otherwise, you rightly point out, i'd be charged each night and given i hold for very long periods of time would make it cost ineffective
thanks again

 

[BigDeal]

@1invest. You should not get charged for non leveraged positions with any broker because you're not borrowing anything.

Don't forget that brokers who agree that short leveraged positions will not be charged are not always as generous as they sound - when interest rates are high, you can often get paid for holding short positions