Why I use trading 212 over other brokers
(A quick disclaimer)
- Diversification is keyyyy!! Don’t just use one broker or one business or one stock or one etf. I use 212 as my main place to invest but I have others on the side and ones I invest in each month. Find out the others on my website.
- This isn’t financial advice. I do this for fun…
- Find the rest of my disclaimer here
Lets get right into this!
Commision free// Low Fees
This is the main reason I use 212 over their competitors.
- 0% investing on all their stocks
- 0 fauren exchange fees
- Free to use ISA.
This doesn’t mean trading is free but the company doesn’t take anything for doing a trade for you. You pay stamp duty tax (on UK shares) and the bid office spread or if you buy an ETF you’ll need to pay the ongoing charger fee (If you want I can do a whole article on basic fees and fees in general. leave a comment or go to my website)… but you’ll find this on every broker or app you decide to use to invest within the stock market. It’s a given.
Compared to its competitors… There fees are ridiculously cheap. Hargreaves Lansdown, the no1 trading platform in the Uk for private investors, have a £11.95* charge (this might have changed after publishing date so do double check this but at the time of writing, that is the base line charge).
Regulated by FCA
(and funds are protected by the FSCS up to £85,000)
Solid financials
- Been profitable for 16 years
- Debt free and hold cash reserve
- (para phase from their website) ‘It’s cost effective for us to use free share because of their investment into their CFD platform.
- (If it was a public business I’d invest into it)
Their customer service
I wasn’t expecting much when it comes to this as the site has free comision and very little fees but I was super surprised at the time it took for me to get through to another human. It was close to instantaneous. Of course there is the odd hiccup but I’m in contact with someone (on their live chat section of their app) within seconds usually.
Of course I think I’ve kissed their ass enough. Here's what I don’t like…
Their lack of dividend investing knowledge. They have had a major upgrade which gives you a lot of information on each company which includes dividend yield, ROI and so on so this isn’t as big of a problem as it once was but they still need to work on it. I don’t get the message that I got a dividend from a company till 1–2 days after the company has handed them out. Not to mention to rate of exchange when it comes to that dividend or buying american shares (I would suggest using skate or revolt when it comes to the US market)
But they are making strides in that area.
Another would be there lack of graphs and analytics. Now their site is free so I don’t expect much or even them to have any. This is more of a ‘I would like them to add some’. Rather than a ‘stops me from using the broker’. It’s not a game changer for me (it could be for you?). But knowing how much of my investments are in a certain sector or how much of my overall portfolio is in etfs… you get my point. I have learnt to do this on Excel but it is time consuming and would be much easier if the app did this but I also understand why they don’t and maybe this would be paid option one day as you can’t have everything free.
Comparing it to other brokers. They have a smaller amount of stocks and shares but have much lower fees.
The app does display late numbers (sometimes) with volatile stocks which is normal as they can change with every second. This can be a little annoying but if you find a stock which is well under value than you shouldn’t find this a problem.
How they make money
They make money through their CFD account. These are for TRADERS not investors and I am talking about investing. Not trading. I could do another post about this and go in depth about how they make money through their CFD account but I suggest you not to use that account at all if your an investor. head to my website or leave a comment and I might get on that. But as I’m only commenting on their ISA and Invest account.
Use my link throughout the article (and at the bottom) to sign up with a
212 account and get a free stock worth up up to £100. Linked here!!!
This helps out with content and helps you at the same time.
Peace
