Hey guys, it's sasha steak is a relatively new entrance to the growing number of investing apps available in uk, and it is something a little bit different first launched in australia. Stake has recently migrated over to the uk with a very unique proposition that i actually really quite like. So in this video i will tell you all the key details and features of the app things i like about it and things i quite dislike about it and then i'll go and do the entire application process live, load some money into the app and buy. My initial stocks, so you can go and get a feel for what the platform looks and feels like and how exactly it works.

But before i do a really important disclaimer, i am not a financial advisor. I am not providing financial advice in this video. If you do need financial advice, please make sure you go and seek the help of a suitably qualified professional. This is purely for informational and educational purposes.

Only. Let me get started by telling you everything about stakes features now stake is an investing app. That only allows you to invest in u.s stocks, for people who live outside the us and in that they're not unique in a sense. But if, like me, the vast majority of your investments are in us companies which for me is over 90, then this can be really exciting.

You can get access to 4 500 over 4 500 u.s stocks, and that includes about 200 adrs, which are american repository receipts receipts which allow you to invest in companies not based in the u.s, but that do indirectly trade on u.s stock exchanges. They also do include some uscts, although these are only available to professional investors and the requirements for that are pretty tight. You need hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of investments to qualify, so the likelihood is you are probably not going to be one of those people. So you won't be able to invest in uk companies or any other companies using this or etfs like vusa, which are very popular.

This is just for investing in u.s companies, so it's important that you understand that they do offer fractional shares, which is good and advanced order types in the free account, which is very good and all the stocks are available without having to pay a premium to access. Some of the extra ones like you do with free trade and the platform only has one fee. You have to pay not 0.5 foreign exchange fee when you load money into the platform and then take it back out, but that's it. There are no transaction fees within the platform once the money is loaded and the money within the platform is in us dollars, because you're only investing in u.s stocks that actually makes a whole load of sense.

You can deposit using us dollars directly if you have an account where you can do so without having to pay the fee. For example, if you have a transferwise wise account or if you have a revolute account, but you will have to pay a five dollar fee for doing that, so actually, the 0.5 is cheaper if you're, making a deposit of anything up to a thousand dollars in one. Go so for the vast majority of people, it probably doesn't make sense to try to circumnavigate it. They do have the option of speeding up the process, because normally money actually takes a bit of time to arrive.

It's not like with free trader trading 202, where you put the money in and it's immediately there and you can go and use it straight away. You have to wait a bit and, as i understand it, it's going to be about a day but we'll see later in the video. But if you want it quickly for the next trading day, you can pay an extra 0.5 percent, although i don't think that's worth it at all, because you will need to guarantee that all your stocks that you're going to invest in are going to go up by More than not 0.5 for it to be worthwhile to accelerate it, so i don't think most people probably will choose that option. Another big downside is that, unlike the other, apps stake does not offer a stocks and shares isa.

Isis do require that accounts are based in pounds anyway. So that means that if you earn more than 12 300 pounds and capital gains or 2 000 pounds in dividends, you will be liable to pay tax. However, if you do use an isis somewhere else or you're not planning to get that many gains, then there are massive benefits, because this fee only applies up front and that makes stake the cheapest platform in the uk at the moment for investing in u.s companies. If you're investing companies repeatedly using the same money over time, because you see, if you use trade into one two - which i personally use a lot, their new 0.15 foreign exchange fee applies on every transaction.

So if i put some money into trading 212 and then buy a company and sell that company later, i will lose roughly 0.3 percent of the value and if i then go, invest in a second company and pull the money out again, then i've lost 0.6. In total, so the more times you do that the more money you're going to lose. However, with stake, you only paid up front a bit like with etoro. However, unlike itaro, there is a much broader range of companies that you can invest in.

There are a lot more u.s stocks available. So that's why i am particularly excited about this proposition. One other major negative to note is that, unlike trading 212 in free trade and etoro, you cannot trade using unsettled funds, and this is really important. This means that you have to wait two full business days for your money to clear when you sell out of a company before you can go and reinvest it back.

This is something that people have kind of forgotten was the case with every investing app and because all these new companies allow you to do it. This is something you might not be aware of. There is a way of bypassing it. They do have a black plan which costs nine dollars per month, which does let you trade immediately, like other platforms do and it offers you some other benefits like it's got analyst ratings price targets and full company financials, but it is incredibly expensive.

108, a year is a lot for something that other companies give you for free. So i don't expect most people to pick this, so you just need to be aware of this limitation, especially if you're investing smaller amounts like me, because this is a fixed fee. Last before we dive into the application process, steak is fully authorized and regulated in the uk by the financial conduct authority and your money is protected by the fscs, just like all the other apps, and they also give you a free share. If you use the link in the description below to sign up, if you go and create your account and make a minimum deposit of 50 pounds, you will get a free share of gopro, nike or dropbox within a day.

So that's at least ten dollars for free. As i'm filming this or a hundred and thirty dollars or thereabouts, if you get one of the nike shares, so that's a nice little incentive to try them out as well. Remember you have to use my link in the description in order to get that free share, because you won't go and get one if you go direct. Thank you so much in advance, because i will also get a bit of commission for sending you their way.

But let's get started, let's get into the application. So, as of a few days ago, stake has both a web and a mobile version of their application, which i'm really happy with, because i'm not a fan of app only investing. However, you can only apply using your mobile phone. You can then go and use the web version once you've applied it, but you have to use your phone for doing the application.

So that's exactly what i'm going to do so in order to get a fee stock. Make sure you use the mobile device if you use your desktop, you'll have to go and scan a qr code, which is a bit more cumbersome. So all you do is click on the link in the description on a mobile device and hit the red button for claiming your free stock. Then you need to go and download the app and once you've done that and once you then go through the process of actually signing up, you will be able to go and get one of those free shares.

Let's open the app and get started with filling out the application form once you do have the screen open, it will tell you that you are getting that free stock, which is very, very good, and you can go and hit the button underneath in order to get Started make sure you read the privacy policy before you get started, and then you need to go and check your email and put the code to make sure that your email is verified, and now we get to the actual personal details. First screen asks you for your name, which should be easy enough. Next, you need to go and put in your address typing your postcode select. Your address is a really interesting thing that i haven't seen in any other app.

They have a separate field for street type. You can select from ali avenue, acre there's a lot of interesting options here. I live on a road, so if you live in a road select that option next, you have to go and type in your phone number. The country code is already preset, which is very useful type in your date of birth, and you are good to go.

The next set of questions you need to make sure that you put in whatever is the appropriate set of answers for your situation. Do not try to game it, because you might run into trouble with being verified. You might run trouble with not being able to access or use the app properly so make sure you answer these in the correct way for your situation within this section. In order to prove that you're, not a us tax resident, you need to go and type in your national insurance number and the last bit is you need to go and read the terms and conditions, it's not very obvious, but you can go and click the link To actually read them, and you really should i always encourage anyone signing up for one of these apps to make sure you really go and understand what you're signing up for once.

You've done it go and click create account now, while it's processing, it probably is important to note that some people might have slightly different variations of this. This app is very young. It will change over time, so there might be a few different situations and different questions asked to what i had, and it might be that you will be asked for additional information. If you can be automatically verified, they might ask for additional proof of address additional proof of your income or something else.

So if that happens, don't panic. This is very common and this happens to a lot of people who don't have things happen automatically and our account is created so now it is time to go and add some funds. Let's hit the green button, a really important point that you can see on the screen over here is that the express option is pre-ticked and that's the option. That's going to cost you 0.5 extra again.

This might change in the future, but just in case make sure you double check, because i don't want to be paying the extra amount now remember the the amount that you're depositing is nominated in pounds and the amount you're going to be receiving will be in dollars. So you need to go and do the math over here as to how much you want to put in. There are preset amounts or you can go and type it in by clicking over here onto the number and typing in how much you want. So, let's go and put in a thousand to get us started at the current exchange rate.

I get about thirteen hundred and eighty dollars by doing it, so i'm gon na go and make the deposit using my bank account and that's it. You have to wait for your money to arrive now, because i chose the cheaper option. I have to wait a whole business day in order for my money to turn up. If i chose to pay the extra 0.5 percent, i would have been able to trade later today, as i'm filming this i'm filming this on a friday and my money should be available on a monday.

The good thing is, you can go and claim your free stock before your money actually arrives, you're going to hit the claim free stock button, and then you get this gamified spin wheel. So, let's see what i get for doing this, let's hope that we get the nike, but i am pretty certain that that's not what i'm gon na get now gopro is the cheapest share that you can get at just over ten dollars and i'm gon na have To wait a few days for it to turn up, and the next portion of the video will be filmed in a few days when my money actually turns up. So it's monday and my money has actually arrived a couple hours ahead of schedule and i can now go and show you exactly how the process of buying selling shares works. Unfortunately, i got my gopro share just after they declared some, not particularly positive results, and so, as a result, i am already nine percent down on that share, but that's okay uh! We can go and write it off against some of the proceeds, hopefully at the end of the tax year.

So if you go and click on your share as i'm doing right here, you can go and buy and sell more now. I do have my 1 000 pounds that just turned up and we're going to be doing some buying later, but i want to go and sell this share because it is not going to be doing very well in my personal opinion in the future. So the way you do that is, you hit the sell button here and the interesting thing with stake, which is different to all the other. Investing apps is that the default setting for order type is limit rather than market, which is what everyone else goes with.

Market is the setting you would normally have for just buying and selling things at whatever the rate is at the moment, limit is a separate type of order where you go and decide. I only want to sell when i get at least the price that i am happy with and in some cases, if that price is not available, you might have to wait and in some cases, if the price is never available, you might have to wait a very Long time so anyway, i'm going to sell at the market rate, because i just want to get rid of this thing and to show you how it works so bang i selected market, i selected my one share and i'm roughly expecting to get 9.84 for the privilege Hit review hit sell so now that's done hit the small back button and i have 9.83 in unsettled funds and 1 383.45 in buying power. So these unsettled funds. They are the ones that i was referring to earlier in the video where i said, you're gon na have to wait two business days before you can go and use that money.

But let me show you how you would actually go and buy a stock using some of the buying power money. There's a few different ways that you can go and find these. You can set up a watch list. You can go to the wall street tab or you can just go and type the thing up here.

So i'm just going to go and type in the first chair, i'm going to show you how to buy just to show you how the process works unless tesla tesla's not been doing particularly well today, which is exactly why i'm excited to go and buy some now. I have only about 1300 at the moment in this portfolio and i'm gon na go and buy a fraction of a share just to show you how it works. Now, in order to buy a fraction of share, i actually have to go and select market, and then i can go and type in the amount. What i can't select the exact number of shares, but if i want to say by roughly half of a tesla share, i can go and select 325 dollars worth and i'm going to get roughly 0.5 shares of tesla.

If i go and do that, so i'm going to go and click ahead, so you can see that i bought 0.5028 shares and the beauty here is there is no transaction fee. So the amount that i paid for the shares is exactly the amount that i got in those shares, which is very, very nice because at the moment pretty much every other provider charges you a fee one way or another, whether it's a foreign exchange or a commissioner Or something else for the privilege, so that's pretty nice. So now, if i go back to my dashboard, i can see that my tesla share's sitting here as well. Another stock that is down at the moment that i'm particularly uh wanting to go and buy, is amd.

Advanced micro devices and they're not doing particularly well, the price is very low again, so i'm gon na go and buy a round amount of them at a limit just to show you how that bit works as well, i'm going to hit buy, and instead of selecting Market i'm going to select limit, i'm going to go and buy, say two or let's say three shares of amd, and here i get to select the price and at the moment the price is 76.88 ish, and i want to make sure that it's gon na go And execute - and i want to make sure that the price that i buy it is is going to be reasonable, so i'm gon na go and and put in something like, let's say: 76 85 and typically what happens is the lower you go versus the price? That is current. The longer you might have to wait. You might be lucky enough ski quickly, depending on what the market makers are doing and how the spreads are working, but you might have to wait and if the price continues going up, it might never actually go and fulfill and just a few moments later, the price Has come down and if i go back, i now own three amd shares and i pay slightly less than the price was at the moment when i was looking to buy. So if you are happy to gamble on that, maybe not being able to buy the share.

But, potentially being able to buy a slightly better price, you can go and use the limit order, just like i have in order to do so. So i'm gon na go make a separate video where i go through exactly what i'm going to be buying within my state portfolio and exactly why and i'm going to release that slightly later. But i hope that helps you understand how the platform works. I hope that helps you make a decision as to whether you want to go and try it out and if you do want to try it out, don't forget to use my link to get your free share.

Thank you so much for watching. I really really appreciate it and, as always i'll see you guys later, you.