Brokers

A Liquidity Fairy-tale

Introduction This article is about the prices you pay or get when you buy or sell shares. It may seem somewhat technical and arcane, but please bear with me, as those prices can have a significant effect on your investment results and hence this issue affects all investors. I will cite a specific example which illustrates how much existing systems that your broker offers are costing you. Quote Driven Markets vs Order Driven Markets There has been a longstanding debate about the merits of ...
Post Date: May 27, 2020 Read more

Share Centre Takeover and Holding Unlisted Shares

This morning it was announced that the Share Centre (Share Plc: SHRE) were recommending a takeover bid from Antler Holdco, the holding company of Interactive Investor and the ii...
Post Date: February 18, 2020 Read more

Draft Response and Petition on LSE Market Hours Consultation

Further to my earlier post on this subject, I have now drafted a response, on behalf of ShareSoc, which you can download here: Response to LSE Consultation on Market...
Post Date: January 28, 2020 Read more

Bucket Shops are Back

I recently saw an advertisement on Twitter for a company, who shall remain nameless, offering to trade “fractional shares”. That means instead of buying a whole one share of...
Post Date: January 24, 2020 Read more

The Vultures are Circling – Woodford, Carpetright et al

With the demise of the Neil Woodford’s empire and the winding up of the Woodford Equity Income Fund, investors are looking for whom to blame – other than themselves...
Post Date: November 2, 2019 Read more

Woodford and Hargreaves Lansdown

To follow up on my previous blog post over the collapse of Woodford Investment Management and how to avoid dud managers, the focus has now turned in the national...
Post Date: October 18, 2019 Read more

Another Update on the SVS Special Administration

Since my last update, there have been several significant developments: Leonard Curtis have published a “Statement of Proposals”, setting out their plans for returning client money and assets A...
Post Date: October 14, 2019 Read more

An Update on SVS Securities

On 5th August the FCA announced that broker SVS Securities had entered Special Administration. Once again, as in the case of Beaufort Securities, this is a situation that will...
Post Date: September 14, 2019 Read more

Broker Charges, Proven VCT Performance Fee and LoopUp Seminar

The Share Centre are the latest stockbroker to increase their fees. The monthly fee for an ISA account is going up by 4.2% to £5.00 per month with increases on ordinary share accounts and SIPPs also. This is the latest of a number of fee increases among stockbrokers and retail investor platforms. The Share Centre blame the required investment in technology development and “an increasing burden of financial regulation”. The latter is undoubtedly the result of such regulations as MIFID II ...
Post Date: June 9, 2019 Read more

Chas Stanley Prices Crest Membership At Ridiculous Level

Charles Stanley have sent out a letter to all their customers who use Personal Crest accounts that in future they will be charged £504 per annum (inc. VAT). Although the company stopped offering the service to new customers some time ago, existing users have in some cases been paying nothing to be a Personal Crest member. They clearly want to get rid of all such users of their service, include those using the low-cost Chas Stanley Direct platform because £504 is ...
Post Date: May 19, 2019 Read more