Hey guys, it's sasha free trade are in trouble, and in this video i will explain exactly what is happening with free trade and why they are in trouble, make sure you watch all the way through because it actually gets a lot worse later on before i get Started it is extremely important to note that last time i talked about free trade. I faced legal action by free trade. That's right. Free trade were upset when i pointed out that some parts of their marketing were, in my opinion, not compliant with uk laws and fca's requirements.

I first pointed this out to them privately without going public and urged them to fix it, but when they were extremely rude to me and basically told me to go and do one, i went and made a video. They then took the legal route and filed for defamation. Since then, the fca has banned free trade from affiliate advertising and has placed multiple restrictions on free trade, so a top tip for anyone watching from free trade. If someone comes to you and points out that you have a flat tire, you shouldn't get angry with a person pointing out that you have a flat tire.

You should perhaps not go and shout at them and not drive off at 100 miles an hour immediately. After now, in case, free trade have not learned their lesson if anyone is watching from the fca from free trade from youtube. Every single thing i am going to say in this video is going to be a fact, substantiated by evidence. I will show you the evidence on the screen.

Reporting factual data, including legal action taken by the uk finance regulator against the company, is not defamation. Reporting truth is a valid defense against any claim of defamation according to the defamation act, 2013 and, more importantly, reporting. Your honest opinion, based on facts is also allowed in the uk, because you know we have free speech and on top of that, reporting on matters of public interest is also allowed in that same act and seeing as free trade have over a million customers. I feel that this information is very important.

It is also public information. So yesterday, free trade announced that they will start lending out. Shares lending out shares is not allowed for isa accounts in uk, but if you hold shares in a general investing account or a sip pension account, then free trade will in the future go and lend out your shares to go and make some money. Now there is nothing particularly wrong with lending out shares a lot of investing apps out there.

Do it even etfs, do it. So if you invest in things like the s p 500, some view shares there will also be lent out. It is very common, it means short sellers and some trading companies can go and borrow your shares from companies like free trade and in case you're, not aware short sellers borrow shares and then do everything in their power to drop the value of those shares. That's how they make money, so the practice stinks because your shares can be lent out to someone who will then use your shares to try and make the share price drop a bit of a conflict of interest.

You would think, but do not worry. This is not a conflict of interest because it is not listed on the free trade website as such anyway. The practice of share lending is pretty common in the industry, but free trade has spent a long time trying to explain to its future and existing customers that they are different to the industry. They are not the same as all the other greedy platforms.

All of the marketing materials say that they are not like somebody else. They are the champion for their customers. Look here is their ceo, adam dodds, after the gamestop saga last year he says i understand people's anger at certain financial markets, participants activity. We are not building a platform to encourage short-term trading behavior, but damn do we respect our customers and their ability to make their own investment decisions.

We'll do our best to make sure our customers have a reliable platform to invest the way they want. Also, the hedge funds, and over time i have seen a lot of comments where free trade highlighted that they do not engage in nefarious practices like share lending because they are better than everybody else, so much better that they now have over 1 million customers. Who thought that these guys were different? But lo and behold it looks like free trade have been busy getting rid of any mention of share lending from the past. I trolled through their twitter account website and everywhere else, and it's just all completely disappeared.

I've had multiple people reporting today that their posts in the free trade community asking about this were deleted. Specifically, here is one thread that i found that was deleted from the community, because someone had the goal to ask whether free trade should have maybe allowed customers to opt in how dare they so now, free trade is showing their true colors. The company is just like everybody else that they said they are not like at all. They will now lend out your shares.

Their ceo says in their community that they want to offer new features like the ability to short stocks. Remember this is the same guy who said hedge funds on his twitter account and hey. They are a business that wants to make money, and these things all make money. Absolutely no problem with that.

I just have a personal dislike for companies that pretend that they are different and better than everybody else, and then do a complete u-turn and show that actually, that is not the case. This is my personal opinion for free trade, legal department, members, personal opinions - are perfectly legal in the uk. My personal opinion is that perhaps, if you were going to start doing all of these things, eventually, you shouldn't have marketed your company as being different on those particular points in the first place. But then i guess you probably wouldn't have a million customers.

If you said upfront what was going to happen in the future, so there is that, but here is where it gets worse. Most free trade users are probably not aware that free trade is in serious trouble with the fca. All you have to do to find this out is look up. Free trade on the fca register.

Fca is the financial conduct authority and they are the uk regulator of all financial services firms. So if you go and look up free trade on there, you will see a giant yellow banner at the top that says, restrictions, slash suspensions, not great for an investing company right and if you scroll down there are two recent notices. The first one is from the 22nd of december 2021 and it's called restriction on financial promotion activity. Hmm interesting.

The very first point says the firm must not communicate or approve any financial promotion, except those financial promotions originated by the firm and in relation to which the firm exercises exclusive control in relation to form and content. So on the 22nd of december, or actually it was on the 14th of december, we'll find out later the fca banned free trade from advertising through third parties. You might have noticed this because, at the same time, free trade was scrambling and getting all of the youtubers and bloggers to go and remove all of their content and affiliate links. This notice specifically says that the firm must not communicate or approve any financial promotion.

That is generated by the user of a social media service and uploaded to or shared on that social media service. So pretty black and white and very clear. But it appears that free trades try to object and tell the fca that they are indeed compliant, because on the 8th of february 2022, barely a few weeks later, the fca published a second supervisory notice. They say in the original notice that free trade must, within 24 hours of the date of this first supervisory notice, remove all paid for sponsored, influencer advertisements and posts from across all social media platforms, including without limitation, instagram, tick, tock, facebook and youtube.

And then they must confirm to the authority that it has done so together with a list of all advertisements and posts removed. There is a link at the bottom of the second supervisory notice to a really big document feel free to go and read it. If you want to, it is all there on the fca website. From the summary of the reasons for action, it sounds like free trade advertised through influences that targeted vulnerable customers.

The fca considers that the promotions provide consumers with the impression that they could reduce debt by following the steps taken by the social media influencer and use the firm as a mechanism to make money. So that doesn't sound particularly great. But hey. That's just one influencer, and maybe it's not the company's fault.

Maybe the fca is overreacting, but wait here in point 10. It says that the fca have already spoken to free trade, about misleading advertising back in march 2020 and in march 2021, specifically in relation to breaches of the financial promotion rules in april 2021. The firm was advised that if the authority identified further breaches of the financial promotion rules in the future, it would consider further supervisory enforcement action, which could include use of the banning powers under section 137s of the act. So here we have it.

This has happened in black and white from the uk financial conduct authority. Free trade have continuously broken financial promotion rules and misled their customers for the free trade legal team, the supervisory notice. I just showed specifically states that the fca found your advertising to be misleading. On five separate occasions now, these notices do not provide any guidance on the potential future actions by the fca, but remember that the fca is the regulatory body that has the powers to take further action up to and including banning companies from trading in regulated industries.

If they decide that the company is in serious breach of their obligations, so i hope that free trade sort themselves out and turn things around, because this is really pretty bad. If you found this video useful, please don't forget to smash the like button for the youtube algorithm so that you can reach more people. Thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it and, as always i'll see you guys later, you.