Response to a video about Trading 212

Just as a point of clarification:ā€¦
If the worst did ever actually did happen to 212 (hoping it never does)

My stocks are totally safe and fully owned by me, right? Just a case of someone else picking up responsibility for them.

However if there should be cash left in there, that is protected to a certain amount depending where you live?

We should all be fully protected by the regulatory bodyā€™s I understand.

If something did happen to Trading212 I would imagine that they would notify everybody and we would probably have to sell up.

Why sell up, we should be able to get certificates of our holdings. I mean t212 is only holding on our behalfā€¦ Do I miss something? The 85000 k protection is only for cash held. But the shares would remain still ours wouldnā€™t they, even if in the unlikely scenario t212 goes bust?

Please someone correct me

The 85k is mostly if fraud or misuse of the assets from the broker as I understand it (everything cash+stocks that is misused, lost and shouldnā€™t). Otherwise you will probably be forced to liquidate them as they have no access to the shares (they use the IBKR api).

Waiting until they offer in-specie transfers, then maybe a backup scenario that does not involve liquidation might exist.

Fractional shares are also considered cash as 2 people cannot own the same stock. So the 85k is for cash and fractionals if T212 goes bust.
You cannot have the official certificate of ownership because T212 is not the custodian, ibkr is with a big T212 omnibus account. But they can send you an email stating that you are the beneficial owner of the stock.

If the official certificate is important for you than i suggest you create an account with ibkr and make your purchases there.

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They arenā€™t legally obliged to tell everything to their customers, specially as they are a private company. I suppose that you also donā€™t tell everything about your internal company life to the public. :wink:

No one like delays, including in financial reports, but it could happen, not meaning that is due to a huge problem, sometimes is due to simpler reasons.

Financial reports are important and legally mandatory. But history as shown us that, they arenā€™t 100% accurate. They have a (lot) creative accounting. It must be taken with a pinch of salt.

Besides, financial reports can be late due to numerous reasons, not always for serious reasons, some due to technical reasons, or complexity (several subsidiaries, several countries, several currencies, types of asset valuation, tangible and intellectual property, financial assets, etc.)

Also financial companies are more heavily scrutinized and have special reporting requirements, including specialized accounting standards.

Companies as persons have their (trade/business) secrets, but in this information age, it seems that everyone want to know everything about the others.

Weā€™ve already discussed it somewhere, but I donā€™t remember what the final conclusion was. In my opinion that Ā£85k refers to money in the bank only in case the bank fails. I suppose cash is in a separate bank account and the broker canā€™t use it to pay his expenses, salaries, etc. If there is no money for salaries, garnishment, etcā€¦ the broker goes bankrupt, but the clientsā€™ money remains intact. If you have Ā£200k in cash position in t212, and t212 fails, the bank (Lloyds) will transfer that money to your other account. In case Lloyds fails, you will get Ā£85k from the state agency.

Iā€™m not sure about shares, because they are under the Trading 212 name, can creditors take them as T212 assets.

I think someone mentioned that IB offers option to have shares on a private account, but it costs $8000 a year or so.

Why not going to FSCS site to understand it better, instead trying to guess or speculate? :wink:

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From the site above:

Without a doubt itā€™s best to read the regulations, but for the (above) average user they are too extensive and complicated, so itā€™s useful if someone explains in simple language.

I watched the video, but I didnā€™t find answers to the questions what happens to shares if a broker goes bankrupt. What happens in case the broker goes bankrupt and the user has Ā£ 200k in the broker account. What happens in case the bank where the broker keeps clients money fails?

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As FSCS is for UK financial institutions (soon the EU customers will be out of T212/FSCS/UK scope), Iā€™m not too familiar, but my understanding of other EU protection schemes, they have a limit, a 100% protection up to 100k EUR/person/bank for bank deposits and a 90% protection up to 20k EUR/person/broker or bank for financial securities, that are the legal minimums for EU financial institutions (e.g. Portugal has a 90% protection up to 25k for financial securities). EU is actually discussing rising the protection limits.

FSCS protects up to 85k GBP and for FSCS eligible institutions (institutions that regularly contribute to the protection scheme, accordingly to their AUM, the same method also in EU protection schemes). And that includes both bank deposits and financial securities (besides other financial products). (The EU counterparts separate in different protection schemes according to the financial products, bank deposits and financial securities.)

Both EU and UK protections are always limited to their own financial resources.

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Someone said he has at least some background in finance so some knowledge of accounting (or just common sense) would say itā€™s better to submit records on time. Probably you are investing in random companies with ā€œno actual experience in the spaceā€ and experience in accounting is more relevant than in fintech here

The ā€œtheyā€™ve been operating 20 yearsā€ is irrelevant. Majority of that time was not as an share dealing platform. Just because gamestop stores have been around doesnā€™t mean they can have a successful online business. So far all we know about their share dealing time is that they were Ā£300k in the red in 2019 which is a tiny amount of debt as a growing tech company but still it would be good to see how the 2020 postings look when eventually published.

Have no plans to change anything though. Not worried but itā€™s not a fully click bait topic

ā€œSome background in financeā€ could mean anything at all though, couldnā€™t it? Call centre, life policies, insurance claims, teller at a bank, credit chasersā€¦

None of that screams accounting, does it?

If he doesnā€™t have a background in Risk, Legal or Compliance I really couldnā€™t give two hoots. But you knock yourself out, off you go and give him his clicks.

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Not really.

If you knew you could submit accounts, but were only happy with 80% of the content, why would you not suffer a small ā€˜fineā€™, to submit accounts at a slightly later date that were 100% complete and correct?

It happens a lot, and one example could be structural changes to a company that are imminent, so you wait an extra few days/weeks/month until complete and then submit a complete set of accounts with any and all material changes captured.

Well, accounting isnā€™t a guarantee for knowledge in investing. Even finance and economics academics (e.g. PhDs) arenā€™t a sure knowledge of good investing, as some are mostly theoretical experts, that like to use nice finance and economics theories, with most of them lacking adherence to nowadays reality in the financial markets. If theoretical knowledge were enough, only quants and AI were enough to dominate the financial markets.

I mean Joey has no experience in X industry but still chooses to include it in his pies

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Are you guessing or are you stalking meā€¦ ?

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Heā€™s off promoting stake in exchange of free shares when you use his link :rofl:

It has almost been another month. I think situation like this warrants at least a biweekly update.

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