Very Difficult Question

I have been using this article to help explain how CFD providers can make money, for T212 treat the commissions section as free.

But why doesnt Trading212 block new people from entering a buy instead of blocking it for everyone? This way people would understand it better dont you think?

Example,

100 People are selling Tesla

100 People are also buying Tesla

And then 20 New people Also see Tesla and want to Buy Tesla,
(Trading212 says: //Sorry Max Amount of Tesla shares have been taken by the Trading212 users, You cannot enter a buy at this moment, try again later*//)

This way people would understand it better i think

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very interesting information this all is :+1: :+1:

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the biggest bulk of clients who are already long in a stock, will often get more funds to go long further. T212 canā€™t manage its risk for an instrument if a portion of clients are allowed to keep expanding their positions while denying others entry. Itā€™s also not fair to the new clients that only existing ones be allowed to keep opening more positions in a profitable direction. :man_shrugging:

too many people think that T212 is against them profiting, when CFD providers want as many people to succeed as possible as the risk warnings they must share on the front page can act as a form of bragging against other platforms. the providers make no claims themselves, but when a potential client is choosing where to trade, most will go for the platform that says only ā€œ70% of traders lost money on this platformā€ instead of the one that says ā€œ76% of traders lost money on this platformā€. :money_mouth_face:

ideally an instrument so well balanced would be ideal for T212 and they could afford to let more people buy or sell, this will be the case for many of the instruments T212 offers. however if say 30% of all ongoing trades made in T212 are in Tesla, their risk exposure is unmanageable and they have to prevent new positions until its scale is reduced. this is where you would see leverage and margins adjusted so that the other 70% of trades can be supported even if tesla continues to run without few people closing their positions.

what T212 is likely seeing is perhaps a ratio of 30 people are selling tesla, but 200 are trying to buy tesla and due to the size of funds involved this is a very risky instrument for T212 while the market continues to go up as more people will only want to buy and not sell. this is happening across so many instruments right now that T212ā€™s only option is to restrict access to them. but they leave plenty of other instruments unchanged that you can still make money from, since if people trade these other instruments then the overall risk for T212 goes down and they can sooner return things to normal. the problem here is the lack of diversification of client interest in the CFD platform.

I think most people given the time to think about it would rather make a reasonable amount of money in a short time, but continue to get a great service to make more money with into the future, over fleecing the service to get rich quick now, sending it under and no longer being able to ever make money with them again.

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Must be a stressful time for the team, the markets is hyperbullish, theyā€™re happiest when sentiment is equal

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The commission is contained within the spread though. Widening the spread is increasing the commission essentially.

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I see, now I understand what they mean when I see Trading212 admin say: ā€œWe need to manage riskā€ very interesting, thank you for sharing this with us Dao!

This Business model only works best when everyone is balanced in both buying & selling (losing & winning),

It sounds very weird, but would it help Trading212, if a Person is selling Coca Cola Stock, and that they hedge that against another person Buying Tesla? This way they create much more room for more people to buy everything. instead of only hedging Tesla sellers against Tesla buyers in the same group that is smaller.

spread is spread, commission is commission. they arenā€™t the same thing and they have different implications for the client at the end of the trade. taking away commission encourages people to trade more often with smaller, safer amounts. this works for T212 because they profit from the slight spread markup. it works out for the client because this only changes the price they buy/sell at and the position close determines their profits or losses. they donā€™t need to then account for funds lost to commission so its both easier to manage and report and cheaper because they arenā€™t having to earn back a commission just to turn a profit, the price was already baked in during the opening of the position so smaller swings in price can be acted upon than would be needed with a position that has to earn back its commission.

As someone noted elsewhere, this does make trading large amounts more frequently, a bit more expensive than if you were to just pay a commission however, so itā€™s not a perfect solution for everyone. If you plan to manage a large pool of funds, then a platform/broker that charges a small commission may still be the more sensible place to be making your trades if you make less of them. providing execution speed and all other factors remain the same.

@RedSnow all of their instruments would be counted together to determine their exposure, but to effectively hedge a position there needs to be correlation between the instruments, the main correlation is between long and short positions since its the same instrument in different directions, when one goes up the other drops etc so a hedge is effective.

coca cola and Tesla have no correlation between them, so at any time both could increase, decrease, in the same or different directions regardless of what happens to the other. this means you canā€™t use them to hedge as itā€™s just another liability. what if both coca cola and tesla go bullish and everyone decides to go long in them at the same time? you now have 2 positions that are increasing the risk for T212 and not offsetting the other in the least. additionally, you canā€™t really hedge between companies in the same sector either because sectors often change in price at the same time. just because coca cola went up, doesnā€™t mean pepsi or dr pepper have to go down, they can all go up just by different amounts.

the most important factor though is ā€œhow large are the positions in each directionā€. if the impact of long and short are similar then there is a low risk for the provider, but if there is a greater volume on one side the risk increases proportionally to the size difference. if half of everyone who is currently long and profiting on Tesla were to close their positions and take their profits, the risk would drop a great deal and T212 could potentially allow more people to go long or have higher leverages in tesla, that seems to be the situation we are facing.

it really is a case of a stable market is the best market for a provider and in many cases the client as well. T212 at least has constant margins and leverages, other platforms tend to reduce your limits as you use larger sums of money as a way of restricting impact to their risk exposure.

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I disagree if your reply relates to CFD, the Majority of positions are more expensive via T212 no matter how small the positions are, and as T212 often opt for ā€œFloating Spreadsā€ when the stock is volatile, more positions end up in the red

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I would disagree. You can more or less call it what you want. T212 say theyā€™re commission free, but really theyā€™ve just put the commission in as increased spread. So is that really commission free? Iā€™d say not. Itā€™s just given a different name.

if its not charged as a commission it is ā€˜commission freeā€™. why bother distinguishing between spread and commission if you will lump them together anyways?

This is very clear, I can almost taste the problem now, thats how good you explained it :+1:

it sucks too many people have bought Tesla and are not letting go, and thus if it stays like this, nobody else can buy Tesla nowā€¦also the other 74 Stocks that are blocked same story.

Thank you for all the shared information! :green_heart:

Thatā€™s my point. And Iā€™m sure thatā€™s the conclusion T212 HQ came to as well. ā€˜why lump them together anyways?ā€™ From a business perspective it sure sounds better saying ā€˜weā€™re commission freeā€™, when in reality, to make up the deficit of being commission free they increase the spread, which as you said above is more expensive.

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Visual appeal and simplicity in tax calculations.
Seeing no feeā€™s is attractive and usually the additional spread mark-up isnā€™t much. Since you canā€™t guarantee a price upon entry itā€™s of negligible influence to the client. The difference in spread is often just a measure of if you had gotten in a bit sooner/later than normal and can be written off as bad timing for the market at large. (present circumstances being the exception where the spreads are larger due to volatility and increased cost & difficulty for T212 to hedge their positions)

Often simplicity comes at a bit of a cost.
There is possible benefit for tax declarations as commissions have their own tax implications in different countries I believe, so if the price is part of the transaction its easier to know how your tax office will treat your returns. It is possibly better for T212 to not take commissions and instead have the money come in primarily through spread as it may also mean less paperwork when handling their own taxes. But thatā€™s just a possibility I consider.

What it means is that for CFDs, T212 essentially makes the bulk of their money in just the spreads, as most interest often passes between the clients who are long/short, they cut out ā€˜commissionsā€™ and have slim feeā€™s for the FX rate when closing a position. T212 like other platforms relies on trades to be made to earn money. The more trades the better which is why itā€™s ideal to present such an appealing service. As long as the market is balanced it doesnā€™t impact the CFD provider whether an individual is up or down as that money mostly goes between the clients.

If everyone who found themselves unable to trade the most popular instruments, started trading other instruments in the meantime, we could possibly see a short-lived set of restrictions placed on those popular instruments.

I havenā€™t personally done a cost comparison of spreads versus commissions yet, just noticed that someone else had mentioned it with a few example calculations in a previous topic. I will look into the specifics later. Too many topics saying ā€œswap feeā€™s increased againā€ which then just show further details from back in November and not current at all. :man_shrugging:


The hint of T212 providing further services for a price is appealing as it opens up their revenue stream somewhat and provides those of us interested, with an opportunity for better returns.