Hey guys, it's sasha trading toronto has just announced that they're gon na start charging foreign exchange fees on their platform starting from april. Well, they didn't do very much announcing. They didn't make any public statement. They didn't release a press release.

They didn't even really work with any media. This was just a post on their community forum. The fee is not even that big, it's only 0.15, which is actually less than pretty much every other platform out there, which sometimes charge several times that so you might be wondering what is the big deal? Why am i making this video? Well, let me tell you because this isn't the only thing that has happened with trading one two recently and when you piece the various different pieces together, it really does not look good because here's the thing a lot of things have been happening with trading toronto and They all seem to be completely separate, completely different things that are sort of happening, but suddenly, when you just take a step back and begin looking at the sequence of how these things have been happening, things suddenly begin to make a whole lot more sense. Trading talk to been doing a lot of marketing recently and they make a big point that, unlike all the other platforms, they do not charge commission and they do not charge any fees.

They wouldn't want you to see how they bathe in a bathtub made of gold filled with gold, even the sink plug is gold or how they make paper planes with money wipe themselves with money. Your money, your money, your money, because you are paying for things that should be free. This is a mainstay of every single bit of marketing and every single bit of communication trading, two one two have been doing um on their website. It still says so in big writing.

They make a really big point. Making no mistake trading 212 is not like the other guys. They even made a big deal out of the fact that, according to them, their invest in isa, business is profitable without relying on cfds. Even without having to charge any fees from things like lending out shares and earning interest on customers, cash that is lying in their accounts, so why would you introduce this fee and, more importantly, why introduce it now? Well, you might remember, at the end of january, trading 202 suspended the acquisition of new accounts when the whole gamestop saga happened, and there was a couple of different reasons.

The official reason that was given to me personally in some emails after i made a video about it as well as publicly is that there was a technical issue. There were too many accounts being onboarded and because of that they had to suspend new kind of questions because of that very short-term issue. You know there was a big sort of number of accounts happening over a short period of time. I didn't make that video about it.

I asked the question of what that was the entire whole story or not, and i was assured that this is just a very short-term thing and that this is genuinely down to just a technical issue. I got a flurry of emails after i made that video from trading to one two uh with very active rebuttals and all the points that i made in the video. Except now we are over a month from that point, and new accounts are still not being accepted by trading toronto, so this must have been one giant technical issue. If this is the impact that it has caused right or here is a slightly different, take on it.

What if you were running an investing platform and what, if you were gon na, introduce new fees on that platform, so you're gon na start charging your accounts fees and you didn't want to book new accounts just before you start charging those fees, because that would not Sound very good if you booked an account and just a few days later, you then told that person that now they have to start paying fees, even though just two days ago, when they were brand new, they didn't that wouldn't be very good right. So would you maybe if you were planning to suspend fees, sorry to introduce fees, would you maybe suspend the acquisition of new accounts for a period of time before you start doing that i obviously have no idea, but this version to me personally sounds somewhat more plausible And somewhat a bit more explainable, because there isn't much of an explanation from the other option, despite people asking in fact, if we refine rewind this whole thing a little back further. If you were a major cynic, you might even wonder how far back this whole thing was planned, because if you were starting a new investment company, what would be the quickest way to get lots and lots and lots of new customers? That's right! You just give away everything for free and not only that, but you also let people go and invite people and everyone gets a free share through the affiliate links, because that is even better than free. So naturally enough.

That is exactly what trading 212 did, and they were very proud of this. Just a few days ago, on their forum, they made a big post, which highlighted their success of getting to 1.4 million customers really really fast. If you were a cynic, imagine if the business strategy all along was to go and acquire a huge number of customers by giving away everything for free and then once you've got all those customers onto your platform. Then you begin adding fees.

First, you add a small fee for deposits. Then a foreign exchange fee then well. We haven't got that far. Yet by this point, you already have all the customers you want and unlike other platforms, you didn't actually have to spend huge marketing money on tv ads or maybe pay affiliates in the region of hundreds per account.

All you had to do was pay one free share which cost about 11 pounds per free share, and that's pretty much it so a year or two of giving away everything for free to attract a huge number of customers is a pretty cheap price to pay to Get that many customers into your platform right compared to you know paying all that marketing money, but then a few really interesting coincidences happen and, as as a brief disclaimer, these may be complete coincidences. I have no idea - and i am not making any allegations, i'm just stating things as i see them in the sequence in which they happened, because to me this is a really noteworthy interesting thing to talk about. First, we had new accounts suspended two to three months before these fees. These new fees that are coming in april are added to accounts, which is sort of roughly the exact timeline you would want to have in suspending new accounts so that you don't have accounts that are too new when those fees are being introduced.

When you have a load of people with stocks like tesla sitting in the red because of what's happened over uh the last week or so um, these people would then have to take a loss in order to sell those stocks and move the money out and they Made the announcement of the new fees immediately after the markets had a correction last week, like literally one working day after that correction happened and went down actually sort of almost in the middle of it, because it's sort of ongoing as we as we film this video In surveys, over the last few years on their own forum, multi-currency accounts have been the most popular requested feature and, despite them introducing most of the other popular features over that time. For some reason that one feature that always tops those polls is one of the most popular in all, the requests has never been added training212 in their comments stated that they weren't going to work in a multi-currency account. This new fee is not 0.15 on every transaction. That involves a currency other than the one in which your account is so if you, for example, buy a us stock and then sell that stock you'll pay, two lots of fees.

So roughly not point three percent. If you get paid a dividend from a us stock and you choose to reinvest that dividend you'll, then pay 0.15. When the dividend arrives, then another 0.15, when you put the money back into dollars in terms of reinvesting and the further what 0.15, when you then sell the share at some point down the line says 0.45 in total. So will the new accounts reopen at roughly the same time as the new fees are introduced onto the platform? If so, is that just a miraculous coincidence was the introduction of fees planned while trading to want to took cheap shots at all the other? Investing platforms for charging fees is that why multi-currency accounts were never developed despite customers, clearly wanting them, so was this planned some time ago at some point in the past, are all the timings that i just talked about in terms of when things were happening, incredible coincidences Or part of some kind of business plan i don't know, but here are a couple questions that i do know the answers to first.

Is this in any way illegal? No, i don't think so. I am not saying that in any way whatsoever. I am guessing trading 202, have a bunch of super smart lawyers working for them, and i think this is perfectly legal. But is this? Okay from a moral and ethical perspective, from my personal opinion, to position yourself as a guy who stands against fees and makes a huge deal about it everywhere, to attract 1.4 million people and then start charging them those exact same fees.

No, i don't think so. I don't think it's okay. I think it shows a massive lack of respect for your customers, and it really makes you wonder: how exactly is this company going to be treating you in the future when they want to raise their revenues even further and exactly how far they're prepared to go in Terms of making statements that later mean absolutely nothing. You guys make up your own mind.