Hi,
Just wanna know , if someone can give me an idea please. When I buy a stock through trading 212 and order execute By trading 212 . Do I get the ownership of the stock instantly or does it take 2/3 days to get the ownership registered on the company book? Thank you
1 Like
Youâre the beneficial owner of the shares but Trading 212 are the nominee. So youâre not going to be on the company books. Only if you close your account and ask for share certificates you can be the owner of the shares. But trust me, thereâs no difference really between the two, it doesnât change your experience
1 Like
Does that mean that T212 can then lend the shares out via CFDs? Just wondering.
Thank you so much for your reply
1 Like
They (Trading 212) can earn income if and when Interactive Brokers lends the shares out. But it has nothing to do with Trading 212âs CFD platform.
1 Like
Thank you for your reply.
Who might âtheyâ be please?
Sorry⌠Just seen the answer to my question.
I would like to slightly disagree with you on this. There is a difference between being a Beneficial Owner and a Registered Shareholder on the company securities register. Beneficial Owners are entitled to basic benefits such as dividend, risk/benefit from share price appreciation/depreciation etc, however those benefits are based on the existing contract between them and the nominee, the nominee can place limits as they have control over the relationship they have with the Beneficial Owner. What is an example of this? Attending AGMâs, voting on decisions etc. Beneficial Owners struggle to exercise these rights or cannot do so at all as they 1. Do not get direct correspondence from the company (letter to shareholders etc) and 2. They do not appear on the share register. I can bet that very few Trading212 clients have been able to participate in voting. The Invest account is more like a very complex self controlled ETF, you get the benefits financially but you cannot influence the company.
2 Likes
Well yes of course, Trading 212 are aiming to make it easier for investors to exercise these rights in the future.
I usually try and keep things less confusing on here, and donât go too far into the details because people get confused and fearful unnecessarily (think about when they introduced share lending).
From a regular investors perspective, most wouldnât be interested in exercising their voting rights. On top of that I would assume most investors on here donât have significant investments to even make their vote meaningful. Of course every little bit counts but really wonât make a significant difference unless you have a lot of money in a ÂŁ50,000,000 company or something. Most people are on here to invest. If you want to make larger investments where you own the shares etc. most people would go a more traditional route.
1 Like
Iâd like to know how Revolut works when compared to T212. I first started buying shares on Revolut and had the opportunity to vote on decisions.
2 Likes
It is important for every Investor, regardless of the size of their account, to understand all the various legal principles that affect their money. It is in fact irresponsible not too.
Having the ability to influence a company, no matter how insignificant it is, is part of being an investor. A company is a group of shareholders who all take a risk together, it is not betting that a management team will do well and you should sit on the side lines, people who treat it as such will eventually suffer when bad management fails due to lack of investor activism in the company. ETFs, ETNs and the current legal structure that Trading212 uses pose a systemic risk to the market as voting rights and influence gets concentrated in a few hands that cozy up to each other.
How does Trading212 know how it members would vote? Eg: A company has to decide to hire a Chairman who wants to drop fossil fuel usage and adopt green energy which doing so will result in a decrease in revenue for 7 years and there after the company will return to previous revenue levels, the second option is a Chairman who wants to keep fossil fuels. How does Trading212 vote or the assigned nominee vote? They cannot possibly know the sentiment of shareholders since they do not ask, yet it is the shareholder who must live with the consequences. It may seem insignificant to own 0.01% of a company but multiply that by all the members and the stake starts to be serious. The reason some brokers love this structure is that it gives them influence just like ETFs, pension funds etc and this is on going research by various regulators on how to balance the influence of large funds as shareholders. A Stock Market that functions by proxy is no longer a Stock Market.
If someone just wants to bet on how well a stock will do and does not care about the company then they should just be offered an ETN that tracks the share price or an unleveraged CFD,
3 Likes
Again I agree, voting is a good part of investing but I argue that it isnât significant to small investors. To put it into perspective, if everyone on Trading 212 invested all their money in a ÂŁ1T company, letâs say thereâs ÂŁ3B in assets currently, they own 0.15% of the company. And thatâs putting all the assets in one company. Weâre the small guys. As nice as a vote would be, it really wouldnât make much of a difference in the decisions of a company which is why I donât argue itâs essential, but we will get it someday.
Wouldnât it be nice to own so much as 0.01% 
My largest shareholding is PG, 7% of my portfolio. But there would need to be at two more 0s to the right of that decimal point to measure my fraction of ownership. The largest owner of PG is Vanguard, with about 9% of the company.
Before Internet existed, I used to receive proxy voting forms in the post. I usually voted. But was it worth the price of postage stamp?
As far as I understand itâs not that they donât want to give investors their voting rights. Itâs the actual technical situation that is difficult.
They have 1 account with IKBR and can vote for 1 for that account. I would assume itâs more a technical issue for the IBKR, to handle their Broker clients differently. But again this an assumption and maybe they would give us more info on that.
That is what make you an investor, owning shares on a company, exercising your voting rights on it and being able to move it if desired.
There are various solutions used by different brokers, but I again I would assume each case is different. For ex. Robinhood uses Mediant judging from their website.
I would have to disagree, every vote counts. Just like when you vote for in elections.
Numbers add up collectively and every vote is important. If every investor on every platform thought the same and didnt vote, then the result of the vote would be from the few and not the many. The results would be skewed and misrepresent investors.
Even if it only changes a 70/30 to a 60/40, that extra 10% is an important signal.
They have 1 account with IKBR and can vote for 1 for that account.
Is this actually true - Interactive broker does not allow connected parties to act as a trustee on behalf of many?
3 Likes
Some CEO and administrations play with a huge factionated free-float. The more fractionated is the ownership, more freedom they have to decide what they want to do with the companies. In economics is called as the agency problem.
1 Like
However, shareholders votes are not binding.
I agree that in a fractioned shareholder base every vote countsâŚ
However I donât agree with it for cases where there are one or two large shareholders that between them account for over 50% of the votes and hence agree decisions among themselves.
1 Like
IBKR offers DRS transfer, in which case the shares are in a personal name, separate from the broker.
P.S. somewhere (on this board) I read that IBKR has previously offered a service to keep shares in a personal name, but the fee was high (a couple of thousand usd or even tens of thousands), but now I canât find that comment. Does anyone maybe know what this is about (or I dreamed it all 
).