Hey guys, it's sasha, a lot of people recently asked me. Why do i use more than one investing platform? Surely it's better to just pick the one that has the lowest cost? That has the features that you need and use that one, because it is the best right. Well, i'm going to explain why i currently use three different, investing platforms and why i'm planning to use more over time and there's some really really good reasons for it. But first let me start with the one reason.

Maybe you haven't really thought of now. Each investing app has a lot of really unique pros and cons, and the more you study, the apps, the more you go into the depths of exactly how they work. What they do, the more you realize that each comes with unique platform, specific perks, having more than one different platform on the go having more than one account means that i can go and use these individual perks over time, and i'm fully intending to do that with The accounts that have already opened that i have, and even ones that i haven't just opened yet now out of the three that i have just to give you a few examples here, are some of the specific perks trading 202, which is platform where i have my Ice at the moment and the most uh of my investments, it is the cheapest for passive, investing in u.s stocks out of the broadly available cheap. You know platforms available in the uk and that's quite a unique advantage.

I guess in a way it's also the platform with the best company performance data. You need graphs and various information about. You know the companies you're investing in and definitely the best one out of the three different ones that i currently use. So that's also another big advantage, because it makes me able to very quickly go and look at certain data without having to go and spend lots of time elsewhere now.

Free trade, for example, have the pension sip account, which is not necessarily part of the investing app. If you like, but is sort of an extra feature that is available, that i really love and i'm personally using now as well, they also. This is a really micro thing. But to me it's important.

They also allow you to trade aim listed stocks in uk. So these are ones that are not big enough to be on the london stock exchange proper um. So i can buy things like, for example, team 17, which i'm invested in immediately with trading to one two, for example. If i want to go and buy those shares that trade can take a day, sometimes several days or even longer than that because of the way they execute through the specific market makers and free trade have a better uh plug in there.

So so that's a really small thing, but uh a pretty useful perk for me. Um talking off you know. Other platforms etoro allows a relatively seamless way to invest in cryptocurrency, for anyone who doesn't want to have a whole separate account on top of all of these, and actually the pricing is reasonable in most cases. So so i use it for that purpose, which is again unique because the other two don't offer it.

It also offers you the opportunity to invest in uk london stock exchange based companies without having to pay the uk stamp duty, which makes it the cheapest platform. For those who want to actively invest in uk companies and recycle the money, you have to pay no point: five percent to deposit money plus not point five percent. When you withdraw plus the five dollars on top, but once you've paid that, then you're not paying the 0.5 stamp duty every time you buy a uk stock, so for people who are actively trading those, this might actually be unique perk, which makes it the cheapest platform. Also, you can invest in u.s, specific, specific etfs that are not actually available in the uk, which is unique because you can buy them through unleveraged cfds, which mean that you're not actually borrowing any money which eliminates that risk and you're also not incurring any extra costs.

Because you're not using leverage, and although it is a cfd, you know you're not actually buying the underlying asset and the risks are different. As a result of it, you still get the benefit of the growth of those assets and the same as if you were actually buying them, and you know, for example, with dark, invest portfolios. That is the only way if you're based in uk, that you can actually properly invest in those portfolios and i'm not advocating cfds by any means, because there is lots of risks involved and people who actively get involved in those things can and do lose. A lot of money, but it's just a really unique thing that i think is also important to point out.

Those are just some of the unique perks. The more you dig into these platforms, the more you'll find yourself for those who, for example, love investing in funds that i personally do and don't do. A lot of vanguard have a bunch of proprietary funds that are only available on vanguard and some people are really big fans of those. So again, even platforms that i don't use, there are other benefits that are unique to those platforms.

On top now number two one really important perk of having accounts with multiple platforms that you get to collect the free introductory shares when you go and sign up with them. I had to do this right. Free trade and training 202. Both do this 202.

Currently is not accepting new accounts, but if you go and use the link and send the waiting list, they're saying that that free share will be given once they reopen and it's not a lot of money. It's only one free share and typically they're not worth that. Much money, six pounds or so with free trade or maybe 11, we're trading two on two, but it's still more than nothing and it's a nice little extra for people who just want to go and check out those platforms. All you have to do is sign up and make any available deposit, which is very, very low uh.

You can find the links in the description below if you're interested in trying them out, and i will also get a free share if you use those links. So, thank you very much in advance, but anyway, let's move on to the next thing on my list, and this is something that doesn't get mentioned very often, but i think is also actually quite important. It is being able to access your cash now, one of the most common complaints that i certainly get, and i hear, and i read about investing platforms - that people can't withdraw cash at the point when they actually need it. Because you know you have to verify your bank account, you have to go and verify your identity.

People say they're, stealing my money, their thieves, but there's really good reasons. They're trying to protect people's money from you know, unauthorized people log into their account and stealing and withdrawing into some other bank account. So there are good reasons why, but this does happen very often, and it happens on every platform. Often, the first time you try to withdraw money, they'll go and put you through these verification steps or, if you're, trying to withdraw to a bank account that you previously haven't authorized now, one trick to beat this is to go and do a test withdrawal before you.

Actually need to so that you go through those verification steps. First, just don't do this out of a non-flexible iso like i did by mistake, because then you lose that amount of withdrawal out of your ice allowance for that year. Now, if even if you have set everything up, the money could be held up, maybe you make a larger withdrawal and then they do some additional checks or whatever it is. There might be some technical issues if you have just one account: you're gon na be stuck, but if you have multiple different accounts, that means that, even if there's some reason why you can't withdraw money from one and you urgently need it, i don't know either.

There's some kind of urgent medical reason or that you, you really need to fix something in your house is broken. You don't have the cash or any other reason you're able to pull that out of some other account and it might not be the most sensible thing from an investment perspective or might kind of screw up your distributions of investments and different types of things. But you will be able to access that cash now. Just remember that you will need to wait two full business days from the point when you sell any stocks and shares to the point when you can begin with the withdrawal process.

This is standard across all the platforms, because that's how long trades take to actually settle and from then it can still take a few days to actually arrive in your bank account so expect about a week. Maybe for that money to actually be usable, which is you know longer than maybe some people expect, i mean longer than some people think now, while we're on the topic of platform stability, let's talk about uptime and stock availability. I've seen a huge amount of different things happen recently, the whole gme saga platforms being unavailable for hours and sometimes even a whole day, trade2 recently updated their test conditions to expressly allow themselves to block the buying or selling of specific stocks at any time based on Their determination so given the way the stock market has been over this period over the last few months, and you know the risk of you not being able to either buy into a stock or maybe sell some off at a point. When you decide it kind of it kind of is higher than maybe it has been in the past, and maybe people thought it would be now.

If you have more than one can the situation happens and you have different portfolios that are sort of represented in multiple different accounts like i do, for example, it means that if i want to go and buy into a particular stock and the platform i was going To use for that is unavailable at that point or they've blocked transactions on that stock. It may well be that on another platform i can do that and sometimes there's very short windows for opportunities where something happens, and you really want to go and invest. For example, in a particular stock that is hugely undervalued because it crashed for no reason or or something else, if you are having access to multiple different accounts, you can go and use one of your other accounts to go and do it, which is a really big Plus now some people think that this next bit is really not important, but fscs protection is another really really important. Perk fscs protects investing accounts for amounts depending on which platform it is mostly up to 85 000 pounds, sometimes lower.

You need to go and check depending on how they're legally set up, and yes before people point it out. In truth, the likelihood of the platform going down is relatively small, and even if it does the money that you hold with each broker and the the assets, the shares are typically held in a third-party segregated account. It is a legal requirement, so your money will be held with a big bank like barclays or something like that, and then your shares will be held with a big international repository like interactive brokers in the case of trading. No one, two, for example.

Now, in the event that the broker goes down, those will still be typically recoverable and in most cases, you're probably going to get either 100 or pretty much 100 off both of those. So the risk is actually even lower than people, maybe think. But - and this is a really important thing - there is still a risk, for example, the place where your shares are held going down for some reason and although that's low a lower risk on the broker itself, that can still happen or, if there's like a rogue employee. At the brokerage that causes something really big by you know committing fraud and accessing those things, even though they technically shouldn't have the ability to do so.

Although the risk of that is very, very, very low and there's lots of processes in place, it technically could still happen, so the risk still exists, however small. It is, and i just like the fact that you know, even if the risk is low and even if it's negligible, i like the fact that if my money is distributed between different portfolios, if say, one really bad thing was to happen with one. Even if i'm gon na get the money back but let's say it's gon na take some time while that's happening, i still have some other investments that are still going that are still you know, earning money and and the fact that my money is distributed. Then it's not all eggs in the same basket, and that means that even if the money comes back, i don't kind of feel like i'm waiting for my entire investment portfolio and only when i get the money back i'll then be able to reinvest it's kind of.

Like it kind of mitigates that risk to a degree now, i hope you find this useful. If you did, please make sure you smash the like button for youtube algorithm, it would be really really appreciated and help this video reach more people. Thank you. So much for watching.

I really really appreciate it and i'll see you guys later. You.