Trading 212 review

Summary

Trading 212 is a UK-based broker that makes trading and investing easy for the masses. It was founded in 2006 allowing users to trade everything from Forex to stocks.

The platform is registered in England and Wales by the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority). It is a web/app-based trading platform available for iOS and Android phones. Its main traits are offering investing without any charge while hoping users go on to its CFD platform to use its paid services.

Pros

• Practice accounts available allowing to experiment first
• Zero commission investing
• Easy to use app
• Fractional shares

Cons

• Inexperienced traders can lose money on the CFD platform
• Limited amount of stocks compared to others

Features

Trading 212 offers 3 services seen above, Invest, CFD and ISA. I strongly recommend avoiding CFD unless you are experienced in trading as 76% of investers using CFD lose money on Trading 212. I will therefore be focusing on the investing side of this platform. Both Invest and ISA are very similar with the only differences being that you do not need to pay any taxes on your profits and a deposit limit of £20,000 in the tax year. If you do not already have a stocks and shares ISA, I would recommend using this service over the normal Invest.

The main feature of Trading 212 is zero commission investing. This more or less means that whatever you put in and take out will stay the same without accounting for gains or losses. This is very unique to Trading 212 as other platforms tend to charge a fee per investment minimising your gains. Fractional shares is quite unique as other brokers tend to not offer fractional shares, this basically allows you to own a fraction of shares which allow investers like you and me to own more expensive stocks such as Tesla (as of writing around $1500) without being forced to pay the full amount to buy the stock. As seen below, you can buy stocks from markets in Europe as well as the US giving a large variety of stocks to choose from. With an zero-fee exchange fees allows you to buy stocks and ETFs without reducing your gains. However with only 3000+ stocks from 7 exchanges compared to platforms like Degiro who allow you to invest from 50 exchanges, you choice is sometimes limited although the pros do outweigh this small con, especially when most well-established stocks are available on Trading 212.

Mobile App

Going back to my experience as a beginner, I can say that the User Interface was very easy to understand and use, it even comes with dark mode! Stocks are very easy to buy with graphs and financial information on the companies, allows you to more easily conclude on your decisions. The Portfolio allows you to easily assess on what stocks you have brought with pie charts and line graphs on your returns, no. of stocks as well as your invested amounts. On the first page is where watchlists are stored, this is where you can easily access stocks that you are closing watching with other categories like the most popular stocks and top winners/losers in terms of returns. To sum it all up, with a little exploring using a practice account, you can easily start buying multiple stocks from different companies.

Security

Security is by far the most important aspect of any brokerage. After all, you are entrusting your money with the platform.

Firstly Trading 212 is FCA regulated. It is also protected by FSCS up to £85,000 in case the broker should go down under. Your information is also protected and with the developers constantly updating the app, it makes the platform very secure to use.

Final Verdict

In conclusion, I would strongly recommend Trading 212 for new investers. Everything in the platform makes investing easy, fast and hassle-free and with upcoming new features such as auto-invest, it is always improving upon itself making this the best platform for investers in the UK and some parts of Europe. Other aspects I will quickly mention include instant card deposits, 24/7 support and a great web/app rating. Make sure to do your own research when starting and remember if starting off, use my referral link to get a free share as it is basically free money!