Hi all, I am looking for a good platform share and stocks ISA. I opened with IG group and now I realised that they charge £24 per quarter if you hold the shares in your account. That’s huge on rope of £8/trade.
What is the best platform which doesn’t charge you fortune please?
Many thanks
Would second X-O, cheap and cheerful. They are also pretty helpful over the phone, including when placing orders (often they have agreed to keep the same price, i.e. not charge an additional fee for a telephone order).
On IG, the £24 charge a quarter is annoying, but I had understood they waive this if you make three trades within the quarter in question. Still annoying but a little more palatable...
It's not just the cost that matters, it's the overall service quality. I use Hargreaves Lansdown and am more than satisfied with them. They are much much better than the several other brokers I used previously.
Using the Share Centre myself, costs the same quarterly and I trust the nominee accounts are in safe hands.
IG do not charge if you do more than 3 trades a quarter or have more than £15,000 in your account
I believe that £15,000 exemption applies only to IG smart portfolios, not regular holdings.
Also, I believe that even if you only do 1 or 2 trades per quarter, the tradings fees are offset against the custody charge, so the full custody charge only applies if you make no trades at all.
Charges are not the only consideration, you should also look at share prices and spreads, I have read that IG prices are that that good, some of the smaller brokers have issues with tax and dividends on foreign shares. ALso check the forex charges, some are quite high. I use HL I was considering moving to another but there seemed to be issues with them, HL also reduced its forex fee to 1% which helps, they charge £45 per annum, they are not the cheapest but service is probably better than most. It's also important that if you want to sell a share your broker can, I think HL maybe better than some of the cheap dealers. Also IG is rather limiteed if you want to buy European shares, only has a few countries. I looked on IG site and its not clear about the £25 charge.
I think it would also be worth checking out award winners and shortlisted providers from the following website:
http://www.icawards.co.uk/awards-2018/
Hi Herbie, interesting point on prices and spreads.
I have always used Halifax as they only charge £12.50 annually for the administration fee and then £12.50 per trade. Once per month they have a commission countdown offer which allows to trade for £3.95 within a small window of time (couple of hours). International stocks included.
However, I recently tried to purchase Volvere shares and they no offer the customer to trade in this stock. Pretty unsatisfactory.
One thing I haven't done is to compare spreads between brokers, as without opening an account it would be difficult to do this. Is there any research out there which compares spreads between brokers? Would HL be more competitive on share price / spread than Halifax as it is a bigger broker in the market?
Yes some shares are difficult to trade, it is one reason why I sold Volvere (LON:VLE). I did look at Biome Technologies (LON:BIOM) last week, very difficult to buy anymore than £1,000. Spreads and prices is a tricky one. You can see the trading prices on HL, I don't think you need an account for that. Hl prices are generally better than the ones you get on Stockopedia fantasy funds. There foreign shares though seem to be the full spread probably because they don't deal direct. But I have read from users that prices are not so good with IG and some other brokers.
Just checked Volvere (LON:VLE) and I can buy 1,000 @ 1045 today. The last sales went through @ 1015
Has anyone used degiro? Are they good? Had a quick look and they don’t seem to allow S&S ISA
I use four brokers at the moment, and have fired a few in the past. At the moment my favourite two are Iweb and XO. Both have great support. Neither has much of a web site (good, this is not what I need, and use Stockopedia for research). Both are free to keep and cheaper than most to trade. IWeb owned by the Lloyds group and XO is on aim ( so IWeb night be safer). Both seem properly registered. Iweb are the fastest to credit dividends and don't round down the last penny often (some other brokers always do, not a big thing but it sends me a message I can't ignore).
Also these links might be helpful.
https://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/
https://monevator.com/compare-the-brokers/
Yes I use De Giro. Low transaction costs. Was easy to set up - all the AML stuff went electronically. There was talk of an ISA offering some months ago but hasn't happened yet. Great for non-UK shares.
As others have said, headlne transaction cost is just one factor. I still keep my Barclays accounts as, despite the dire website, their price improver service often seems to save me a lot relative to other online platforms.
Surprised no one has mentioned AJ Bell Youinvest yet. I use them for my ISA and SIPP, and have found then very good and reasonably cheap.
"Surprised no one has mentioned AJ Bell Youinvest yet. I use them for my ISA and SIPP, and have found then very good and reasonably cheap."
I thought so too when I used them for my SSAS - that is until they insisted that I couldn't maintain an account without a corporate trustee. I had to transfer holdings to HL (who had no such problem). AJ Bell really strung out the process, charged a lot and wouldn't transfer the cash on the account to HL, insisting it had to go back to the original bank account.
