Choosing an investment app in the uk has become complicated. There are so many different options. There are new companies entering the market all the time. It can really get quite confusing with so much jargon and various terminology that these companies use fees and charges that are sometimes not quite as transparent or easy to understand, as perhaps they should be, and just a general understanding of what are the actual differences between these Different companies not being as easy to get to as it really should be.

I get asked this question a huge amount of time. Pretty much every single day get several people asking me the question of what should they go and start with? What is the best investment out there, so i thought i'd make a video covering this so that it can go and answer this question. What is the best investment app available in the uk in 2021? Now, as always a really brief disclaimer, i am not a financial advisor. I can't provide you financial advice, because i don't know your circumstances and if you do need financial advice, please go and seek it from a suitably qualified, professional somewhere else.

First, let me define some criteria that i used in order to select the companies that are going to be on this list, and this is really critical. Some people will say immediately: hey sasha, you didn't include my favorite one they'll go write in their comment and just before those people do i wanted to explain exactly why i have picked some and why i haven't picked others and the likelihood is the one company that You think should be on the list, but isn't is probably not on this because of these criteria that i'm outlining i'll keep it really simple. There are only four different criterions that i use in order to select people to be on the list in the first place, and the first one is the general availability of investment options. This is one where a lot of the platforms actually fell flat on, and this is what i mean by it.

If you are investing your money in the stock market, it is my personal opinion that you should have the freedom to invest that money in whichever way you choose you shouldn't be restricted in those choices by the investment platform that you're using and what i mean by That is some of these investment platforms. Talk the same language and talk in exactly the same ways as others, but provide you far less options and far less actual opportunities to invest in money than it might seem to somebody who is new to this, who has never invested before, who doesn't really understand how The investment world works, some of them are not an investment platform at all. They just give you a very, very small number we're talking something like in single digits, maybe as many as 10 different options, based on the risk level. That you're happy with you will hand over your money and then those people will manage your money for you and give you some returns every now and then, whenever they decide to do it now, the problem for me is that that isn't an investment platform that is Basically, a glorified wealth manager who, in many cases, isn't even as good as your average wealth manager and even your average wealth manager, is generally not that good and the data is there to back that up as well.

Let's take the example of nutmeg a very popular and fast growing investment company. Now, aside from the myriad of different weird and wonderful fees and charges, the funds that numeric offers according to them are expertly designed and proactively managed by their experienced investment team. Now, what is it that i don't like about them standard and poor's? The smp themselves will tell you that, as many as 90 to 95 percent of active fund managers will actually underperform the index against which they are managing funds on a long-term basis, and they show the data to prove this on their website now helpfully. If you look at numbnec's website, they will show you the returns that you can go and get and they show you the numbers over the last 12 months, which i went and looked at and over the last 12 months you can make between 0.5 percent and 5.3 Depending on the level of risk, you're happy to take by investing your money with nutmeg now, my problem is that if you go and invest in what most people would agree, is the relatively standard very, very easy and pretty safe way, because you're divesting in investments between Huge numbers of very large established companies by investing in the s p 500 in the last 12 months, you would have been 17.6 up.

So that's in the same time frame that the maximum you could get from nutmeg is just over five percent but hey. Let's look longer over five years, the highest number that nummeg delivered was 43.7 percent. The s p 500 in the same time frame went up 95 sure there will be some funds that you can go and find that over the last 12 months or over the last five years or whatever period they choose to show, you will be beating an index Like the s p, 500, but the problem here is that past performance will in no way indicate future performance and given that the vast majority of these funds will underperform the index in the long term, just looking at a short term when one of them is over Performing in my opinion, is no good indicator for the fact that that index will continue to be beaten by the active manager. Once you've invested your money going forward and the fact that some of these very popular platforms are not only underperforming but underperforming by a huge margin and then charging you a huge amount of fees for the privilege of being able to earn less money than if you Just went and stuck it all on the s p.

500. I think it's just not great for the average investor and that's why i am excluding companies that only offer you managed funds as the exclusive option criteria. Number two that i decide is another one that kicks out a lot of different options for consumers, and that is the accessibility of investment. And what i mean by that is the availability of fractional shares and the ease of use of those fractional shares as well.

A lot of the old school, a lot of the established companies like how grease lands down or other giant behemoths like that, where you can go and invest large amounts of money and pay lots of fees in the process. Don't have this feature at all, and the problem here is that, if you're, the average investor, if you're, just a normal person who wants to go and put your 1 000 pounds into something that is better than a savings account paying you 0.5 interest. This is not an option that will work for you in any way, because you can only realistically invest in an etf by doing that, you can't ever go and buy actual shares of companies that you like, because they are too expensive. You have to have at least 3 200 to go and buy one share of amazon, and if that is all the money you have, then the only company you'll be invested in is amazon, because you need another 500 to go and invest in tesla and another whatever It is to go, invest in something else, it is impossible and as a result, most people will not be able to go and use those platforms unless they have huge amounts of money, because you can only buy whole shares.

So, for me, if a platform is good for the average typical person, who only has maybe a thousand - maybe two thousand, maybe ten thousand pounds to go and invest in the stock market. Fractional shares are a real must because without them, the investment platform is just not usable and the only thing you can buy is maybe one or two etf stocks that track the index. But the moment that happens, you are then not able to go, invest your money. So that goes against my number one criterion.

So that's why i have this limitation in place as well. Now. Number three criterion is something that is really important, because some people will go and point out that i'm missing huge portions of what some of these companies are doing and i'm not mentioning all the fees and charges as well. And that is because i have absolutely no interest in the leveraged trading cfd side of trading.

I am not a day trader. I am not an active trader where i'm trying to play on swings or time my investments or anything like that. That is completely not what i'm about. If that sort of thing is what you're interested in you won't find the right information here.

What i'm all about is investing for the long term by finding great value, but finding companies that, in my opinion, their products and services will make the companies valuable in the future and the share price will grow as a result of that and they'll pay, high dividends And everything else like that, so on the back of that, i won't be talking about the cfd element at all. I won't be talking about whether the pricing is good, whether people should use it should not use it. In my opinion, for the average regular normal investor, who is not a professional who doesn't really know what they're doing they shouldn't be going in cfds at all, because the majority, the vast majority of people who do will lose their money, including people who do know what They're doing that is why i'm not going to be going there at all, which brings us nicely to criterion number four, which is platforms, not charging a huge amount of fees. This is something that was incredibly prevalent, very, very common on all kinds of investment platforms.

Only a small number of years ago, very very recently, but with the advent of new disruptors coming on board and changing how the regular investor is able to invest their money. This has become a real problem. So when a platform goes and charges, you various kinds of annual management fees and onboarding fees and has huge minimum deposit requirements and charges you for withdrawing your money and then charges you per trade, it can become hugely expensive for somebody who isn't there to invest large Amounts of money now, let's look at a typical example of this: there's a one really quite good platform called interactive investor and that very decent platform costs 9.99 a month to use. So if, for example, you decide to go and put in a thousand pounds of your money, which is quite a lot for a lot of people into your investment portfolio, that monthly fee alone will cost you 12 of your entire fund, and then on top of that, You still have to pay trade fees.

You only get one free trade per month. That's right! You can only go and buy say one stock every single month without having to pay additional fees on top of the 120 pounds that you're already paying so now that all of that is out of the way. Let me talk about my top three platforms and at number three. My list is a company i haven't talked that much about, but probably should be talking more and that is etoro etoro have been around for a little while they are one of the older disruptors in the space and they offer some really quite interesting products.

Now they are free to use in the sense that you don't have to pay any annual management fees, they don't have to pay per trade, and you don't have some of the expensive monthly account fees or anything else like that. However, there are still some charges that you do have to pay with them. The main charge you're gon na have to pay if you're, using just their regular investment account, is the 0.5 currency exchange fee. So, every time you go and load money into the platform or withdraw money back you'll have to pay 0.5 on top of the exchange rate for the privilege of converting your pounds into dollars.

Now that's relatively expensive because in the process of loading, your money from your uk pound based account into etoro and then we're drawing it back at the end. You're, essentially going to be losing one percent of that money before you've accounted for any gains that you might get. So that's not hugely expensive. That isn't really bad, but it's just something to be aware of the other fee that they charge.

Is they charge for withdrawals deposits into the platform are free in the sense that there's no fee attached, although you have to pay that exchange fee, but when you're withdrawing money, you have to go and pay a five dollar fee for the privilege of getting your money Back but having said that, those are the only two main charges that you're gon na have to pay by using the platform. So still that is a really good proposition. Having said that, there is one other fee that you need to be aware of, and that is a 10 per month inactivity fee. If you go and leave the platform alone with your money sitting there, without touching it without doing anything at all for a year or longer, they'll begin charging you this fee, so make sure you don't do that, make sure you go and manage your account.

Every now and then so that you don't have to pay this admin fee for leaving an unused account on their platform. Now the one big advantage that etoro has for me is their very, very good user experience. It is incredibly easy to use. Everything is very well laid out.

The colors are bright, it's just nice, it's just easy to use, it just works, and i really like that about them, but in the process of making things work they also have built something that i think, is the biggest disadvantage of the platform, and that is the Cfd, the leveraged trading side of the platform is not separate from the regular investment like it is with, let's say, trading 202, that i've made a few videos about recently. So that means every single time you go and do a trade. The options for using leveraged cfds are there, and, although you don't have to use them, it is a little bit too easy to accidentally get into it if you're just beginning and you're, not quite sure what you're doing or to be tempted. If you are that kind of person, so i think i understand why they're doing it, because that's where the platform makes a lot of their money.

But i kind of feel it is not quite as good from that perspective for the regular average casual investor who doesn't ever want to get into trading leveraged products, but back on the advantage side. They have one feature that nobody else has managed to get even close to, and that is their copy trader feature. This is super neat. Etoro generally has this social element to it.

That is very unique. You can go and look at what other people are doing. You can go and follow them. You can go and look at what they're saying and you can go and get a few stats about the risks of their investments and some other performance data from the past, which is really really incredible and again very well laid out.

But the best thing here is: you can go and copy the investment portfolio and strategy of that person, and not only do you get to benefit from their distribution of funds and various different things at the point in time when you're copying them, but you can go And essentially go and copy all of their future trades as well, and this is where it becomes really mind-bogglingly amazing, because you can then go and do the trades as often or as rarely as that person. Your copying is doing and benefit from any growth. That person is getting without you needing to necessarily understand exactly what is happening or exactly why those trades are being made. However, you are then entrusting your money and the ownership of the trades and the ownership of potentially losing all that money to somebody else, and that is a massive risk that you need to be extremely aware of if you're, letting somebody that you don't really know that You don't really trust, or even somebody that you do trust and something you do know, go manage your entire savings amount or whatever it is that you have in your torah portfolio on behalf of you.

They can go and accidentally lose all of your money. That is how investments work. If you go and invest in the wrong things, your money can go and disappear overnight, so be extremely cautious and careful with how you go and use this feature use the right way. It can be really powerful.

It can be really useful and it doesn't cost anything to use it, but just make sure you go and pay attention to exactly what you're doing and how you're putting your money into it coming in at number. Two in my list is free trade, a relatively new platform. They have been expanding massively in recent months. They are now open in some other european countries as well as in the uk, and they are doing some really exciting stuff.

This platform is pretty much entirely free to use as well. They charge you one fee. They charge you 0.45 percent load on top of the exchange rate whenever you're buying stocks and shares or buying etfs in currencies other than pounds. So, if you're buying something priced in dollars, which almost all of my investments are, then you're gon na have to pay that 0.45 percent in order to buy that stock and then again when you go and sell it.

So in essence, you're going to be losing 0.9 percent of any money that you don't invest in something and then withdraw at some point later. So that's the one fee that you do have to pay and it is somewhat expensive but again just like with etoro. It is far less and far cheaper than anything you're gon na get with all the other big mainstream platforms out there. The best thing is that not only is the platform pretty much free to use if you go and sign up using my link in the description below you'll be able to get yourself a free share worth up to 200 pounds.

Sometimes these shares are in companies other times they're in some kinds of etfs you'll get some random distribution and i'll get one as well. So if you're interested in setting one up and just checking the platform out, you can go and do it and make sure you go and use the link in the description below to get that free share. Because, if you don't use it, you won't get anything at all on signing up. However, in terms of the features available to you, free trade is somewhat more basic and a little bit more simple than etoro or the company that i'm going to get to in just a second.

That is number one on my list, and some of these features are actually available if you pay for the free trade plus account now, the free trade plus account is something that gives you a load of extra features for 9.99 a month. You get the benefit of being able to do stop orders and limit orders and various other features like that. You get three percent interest on cash and you're able to access a larger number of shares in the platform as well. Now that 9.99 a month is on the expensive side.

I've got to say it is really quite pricey for people who don't have that much money to invest, because it's going to be a large proportion of your overall portfolio value. So for most people it probably doesn't make much sense to go and use it, so you won't have access to any of those features. I think, although the three percent on cash is a nice feature to advertise, it isn't really particularly useful, because if you have an account with free trade, the likelihood is you want to do investments. You know, because it's an investment platform and you're not using it.

As a savings account, so although it is nice to have, i would expect most people to not just have a load of cash sitting around in that account for long periods of time. So i don't think those kind of features are really adding as much value as they might seem on the surface. If you want to open an iso account, you'll have to pay three pounds a month unless you have the free trade plus account, in which case the iso bit comes free with it. So that's a little charged there and it is more expensive than the option that i'm going to come to in just a second, but it's still way cheaper than almost every other option you have available.

Some of the user experience in using the app is actually really neat. It is really really nice and i'm going to get to exactly some of the details about that in a review that is coming out very very soon, i'm going to link in the description below to that review as soon as it comes out, if you are not Subscribed yet make sure you subscribe, so that you don't miss it because there'll be some really interesting details in there there's also a few things where i think they really could improve. Again, i'm going to mention the very exact details of that in that review as well. Let's get to number one and number one: i have you probably guessed it.

If you watched any of my videos recently, you probably know exactly who's going to be there, and that is trading two one two, this company has been around for quite a while, but they are relatively new to the uk market and in the last 12 months they Have exploded, they have grown from just about 100 million managed assets at the beginning of the year to something like 1.6 billion at the end of the year. The growth has been astronomical and there are really good reasons why the platform is completely free to use for basic isa or regular investment accounts. Very recently, in the last few days they did announce one fee which is for deposits made using a card, but if you're making a deposit by transferring money into trading to one two, you don't have to pay anything at all. Ever that's right! There's no management fees! No account fees, no trading fees.

There are no loads, no extra fees. You have to pay on top of the exchange rate, you get the spot exchange rate every single time, you trading currency in any kind of currency that you like. It is incredible value for the regular investor and the minimum amount you have to deposit is just one pound best than being free. If you go and start up with trading 202 and go and set up that free account and deposit your minimum amount of one pound or more, you might want to send more in a bank transfer than just the one pound.

You will also get a free share if you're going to use my link in the description below you need to use that link, because otherwise you won't actually get a free share, so make sure you go and hit it before you go and sign up now. The platform is really nice to use. I use it for my personal isa account that i sometimes go and share the details of in my updates on my investment portfolio, and i really like some of the features. For example, i really like the fractional shares, because, unlike some other companies, you can get fractional shares on pretty much anything.

You'd actually want to go and invest your money in all. The popular stocks in etfs have fractional shares we're trading two and two and the fractional shares go to very, very granular levels. So that means there's lots and lots of decimal points that you can buy and, as a result, you can buy very precise amounts. So, if you're, only investing very small amounts of pounds into a particular stock you'll be able to get that exact pounds worth of shares, because that's how far the shares are broken up with trading zone 2, which is really really useful.

They recently introduced this new feature called pies. It is still very raw, it isn't the best implementation because i think they've only just started doing it. This is, in my opinion, a very early part of their strategy. Do something similar to what etoro is doing with their copy trader feature, although at the moment it doesn't do pretty much any of those you can go and look at some of the pies that some other people have created and go and look at the distributions and Copy them to your own portfolio and then go and distribute money from your portfolio into these pies, and then that money will be automatically distributed between the various different investments within that pie.

What it doesn't do is it doesn't really allow you to properly search them or find people based on any kind of criteria, and it doesn't let you go and follow what the change to that pie in the future will be. So what trades that person is then doing afterwards, so it doesn't really have as much utility. In fact, i don't think it's particularly useful. It's just somewhat of a gimmick at this stage, but if they work at it and make it better, this can be an incredibly great feature on top of what is already a really great product.

Again, i'm going to be doing a very detailed, full review of trading 212, where i'm going to mention some really interesting points about how it works and a few things that really infuriate me. A few things that i really don't like about the platform which i hope they will fix and make better in the future. So i will link that in the description below as soon as that comes out as well, make sure you look out for that and if you are interested in getting it make sure you are subscribed and hit that bell to get notifications. If you're interested in checking any of these options out make sure you go and use the links in the description below to check them out, you'll get those promotional shares that i mentioned, which is really really great when the platforms are already offering amazing value.

If you think that there's something else that should be on this list that i haven't mentioned, make sure you go and leave a comment below. Let's see what i have forgotten to talk about. Thank you so much for watching. I really really appreciate it and i'll see you guys later.

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