Please offer Options trading in the future

đź’ˇ Feature suggestions & ideas
1

I saw posts about this in 2020 with a clear lack of interest in the subject response from Trading212, and last saw it spoken about in 2021 on here, which very disheartening as we have been seeing our US counterparts using these tools on zero commission “new-school” trading platforms for years now. I am posting this in hopes that Trading212 as a platform can understand just how beneficial options can be to all (or at least most) users.

Trading212 is a legitimately good stock trading and investing platform, it’s ease of use for newcomers and more experienced investors is it’s strength. In the ISA section of the platform I have thousands of pounds tied up in really good, solid stocks and ETFs that offer quarterly dividends, I’ve been growing my portfolio since 2020 and have been seeing pretty good returns so far, because of this I’ve been thinking of adding substantial funds to these long term investments.
However I am very hesitant to add more money to this account as I believe this platform is missing a very key feature that investors can use, this feature is Options.

The ability for me to sell covered calls or cash secured puts on investments that I am in long term would add so much more to your platform.
The way youtubers such as “Investing Sensei” combine their investments with options strategies adds an extra dimension to investing that can be extremely beneficial to the correct wielder.
I’m not going to go ahead and say that options are safe, however using them intelligently in conjunction with long term share investments can reduce a significant amount of potential risk, at least if you compare it to Trading212’s CFD section.

The CFD section is pretty bad/basically useless imo and does not even slightly cover the amount of depth and strategy that options trading can offer for investors. The CFD system you guys currently have implemented on your platform is essentially a gambling section imo, this is because you’ve just made options trading 10x easier by only having buy and sell orders, similar to how crypto derivatives trading works, CFDs are trading, not investing, way more dangerous than what options are.

Learn from the mistakes of RobinHood and only allow cash covered options, no stupid margin/borrowed credit or whatever that will ruin lives.
From what I understand Webull are doing it the right way atm, they offer the ability to combine share investments with options strategies which is ideal, and Trading212 has the prime ability to be the Webull of the UK.

There’s next to no competition in the UK for options trading, Plus500 is a scam, idk much about IG and AvaTrade, TastyTrades are popular and good for options but since they are US based they charge obscene fees for non-US people to cash in and cash out funds from their bank. You guys have such a massive opportunity to implement this on your platform as one of the first in the UK, and because of your reputation as a good and popular stock trading platform already, options would work great with the userbase.

Please, I implore you to not sleep on this. Remove the CFDs section and replace it with options that can combine with the “invest” shares section of the platform.
I want to have most of my money/investments in one place as I’m not planning on investing a huge amount of my total wealth in stocks, which means that if I want to options trade correctly, a significant portion of these funds would have to go somewhere that facilitates options trading.

I really don’t want to have to go somewhere else for this, but I will. I know this sounds hostile but this is the reality of what a lot of investors like myself have to do to get the most out of the investments/money we have. You guys are losing out on a lot of money here and it’s a real shame.

That’s my two cents anyway. Sorry for the tangent, see you later and good luck!

14 Likes
2

Dear 212 please remove the section that generates 99.99% of your revenue, profit and subsidises the whole business, I have a feature I want.

11 Likes
3

Welcome @LucasGood - perhaps you would be best to include a vote, to see how many of 212’s users would like to see Options. That way it might get more of a priority.

Personally it is not for me, but thats not to say it won’t be for others.

For me, the main ones would be to:

  1. Inspecie Transfers.
  2. More Markets - Japan for one.
  3. Include an average trade execution time on 212, only include market opening times in this.
  4. Remove stock trade limits. It would close the thread on people asking for limits to be adjusted, and the work required to monitor/adjust. Instead have a low trade volume marker on the stock AND/OR show the users holding as a % of the lowest daily traded volume.

Good luck!

7 Likes
4

Like a twitter poll or something? I can only judge it by the amount of users who options trade in the US so obviously my opinion has a bias as many people do it over there, truthfully I don’t know if this will be of interest to many people in the UK, but if I were to base myself off of the userbase of RobinHood & Webull and the demand for those platforms to come over to the UK then yeah I’d say there is a lot of demand for this.
Also yes, I think all of the things you’ve listed should be at the top of the list of things to do aswell, I don’t care whether their priorities are elsewhere for now I just really hope that they plan to do options in the future, whenever that may be I don’t care too much.

5

You should note that a few years ago, Robinhood planned to enter the UK market (2021 debacles put an end to it). But even them had no plan to serve options there.

There is quite a bit of research and scholarly articles around gauging the option interest in EU, and while it is rising, it is much lower than in the US. Your own observations may be subject to sampling bias, as you will mostly consume content/connect with people sharing into the same activities than you.

2 Likes
6

I actually would like some simple options functionality, or rather just calls. Would be happy for there to be quite sensible limits etc so no one does anything stupid they dont understand such as you could only have say 5-10% of your ISA value spent on call premiums or something so you dont have people spending it on things they dont understand.

However its not a must have but in future that may be one thing that would sway me to another platform all other things being equal.

3 Likes
7

Agreed, limits are important.

8

I agree I have a bias, however in the past year RobinHood have actually began their interest and eventual expansion into the UK by purchasing a London based crypto platform named Ziglu back in April.
And the only reasons why Webull have had to halt their exansion is due to legislative and US tax reasons.
Both platforms have expressed active interrest in expanding to the UK even recently as they’ve stated (especially RobinHood) that there is a large untapped audience in the UK.
I could get the direct quote but I’m lazy lol.

1 Like
9

I’ve probably posted in most of those topics you’ve mentioned, but as someone who trades actively in options (just shy of £150k this FY since April) I can, honestly genuinely and with all good intentions in my heart say: I would never use T212 for option trading even if they offered. I’ll give 3 bullet point reasons, and I can write pages of explanations for this but want to cut it short:

  • execution speed on T212 is barely acceptable for regular stocks, it’d be unimaginable for options
  • arbitrary rules and limitations that are ever changing with short or no notice and the power T212 gives themselves with their current T&C
  • the interface! I know, I whinge about how bad it is constantly (except for tapping on a mobile phone in a coffee shop) but if you take a look at some of the screen shots I’ve posted before option trading is another beast, and will be comical to it on current UI.

and out of curiosity, how many users of T212 owns 100+ shares for those covered calls you mention? An option contract is for 100x underlying assets, this may change for LEAPS but usually does not. (in fact I just checked NY Arca, there is not a single one)

I will have to agree with @Dougal1984 as I understand he was trying to imply there are many more missing things in the platform that people value and desperately need.

6 Likes
10

We definitely want to offer options trading, we just can’t provide an adequate ETA yet.

17 Likes
11

Agreed with all the points you’ve mentioned, I guess I don’t really notice the clunckiness of the interface and execution speed as I use the platform mostly on my phone and only for very long term dividend investments where I basically don’t care too much if it fills slightly above the entry I wanted or takes a while to process.
For what I’ve used it for I’ve always found the platform has functioned well but I totally understand it wouldn’t work for high velocity trading. I have done day trading aswell but on other platfroms.
Just out of curiosity, what platforms do you use for options trading?
Many thanks

1 Like
12

Good to hear thank you for the response!

2 Likes
13

I would like to see either options trading available in T212 for selling covered calls or the ability to transfer a portion of shares out of T212 for use on platform that do provide options trading. As covered calls is a great way to generate passive income on your long/large positions.

2 Likes
14

I refer you to this post from 10 days ago. Nothing much has changed in those last 10 days.

2 Likes
15

Any updates on the plan for options

16

Currently, we don’t have any updates, but we’ll keep you posted.

1 Like
17

Is there an update on this?

Would options trading be available in ISA’s?

18

There is no news on this topic for the time being. Of course, we’ll notify everyone should there be any progress :pray:

3 Likes
19

Fairly certain you’re not able to trade derivatives in an isa so options wouldn’t be allowed.

1 Like
20

I would like to see options more than CFD, but, despite that I don’t trade CFD’s, I would not get rid of the CFD’s.

2 Likes