We have a new home You may have noticed it’s been a little quiet here these last few weeks. That’s because we’ve moved our blog to its spiritual home on the Freetrade website. We’ll be writing lots more stories over there in future, including: Market news ? Investing guides ? Product updates ⚒ Interviews with the team ?‍? We’ll also move all of our old stories back over to the new blog over time, too. We hope you’ll join us. Say hello to our brand new blog was originally published in Freetrade Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversat ..read more

As the lockdown eases, investments are changing Cheers! The last month has seen the UK start to move slowly out of lockdown and make a cautious return to normality. We’re even allowed to exercise with other people now! The stock market has reflected this trend to a certain extent. Aside from a minor dip mid-way through the month, the FTSE 100 was trending upwards for most of May. Some companies on the index have been performing better than others, particularly those that may get a boost as more restrictions are lifted by the government. Freetraders haven’t been immune to these d ..read more

Almost everything in modern life is made or provided by companies. As they innovate and grow, these firms are the primary way wealth is created in the world. Freetrade’s goal is to give everyone access to benefit from that wealth creation. We believe we can make the world a more equitable place by giving access to the markets. The United States is the world’s largest economy, and it’s home to the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, the two largest stock exchanges in the world based on total market capitalisation. From global tech to health to fashion to energy to entertainment, we a ..read more

A steady increase in online shopping has seen the tech firm’s share price soar Coming to a computer screen near you At the end of last year, Nike made headlines in the retailing world when it announced that it would be pulling its shoes from Amazon. That decision was part of a wider strategy that the sports brand has undertaken to boost its direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales. Nike has said that it wants to make half of its revenue from D2C sources by 2021, whether it be its own stores or website. The sports company is not alone in trying to sell straight to customers. Advances ..read more

We speak to the person responsible for making Freetrade look cool You joined Freetrade in March of this year. What made you want to work here? I had been following Freetrade’s progress since the first round of crowdfunding (as an old colleague of mine had invested) and eventually signed up for an account about a year ago. It became an app that I checked constantly and I loved the simplicity. I always wanted to work for a company where I was a user of the product, so when I started searching for my next opportunity, the perfect role opened at up Freetrade and everything fell into  ..read more

We raised £7m from 8,559 investors And smashed our £1m target along the way Flying high Another day, another round of crowdfunding smashed! Only five days after going live on Crowdcube and we’ve closed our latest funding round, having raised £7.1 million. More than 8,500 of you invested in this round and we raised our first million in just four minutes, from our previous investors only. We’d always planned on going back to Crowdcube in 2020 and the meteoric growth we’ve seen so far this year only strengthened our belief that this was the right thing to do. Maleek knows Still, it’s be ..read more

And why do companies do them? If you read the financial press then every once in a while you’ll see that a company has bought back some of its own shares. Take Barclays. Until COVID-19 struck, the UK bank had planned on buying back a billion pound’s worth of its own shares. On the face of it, this may seem like a strange thing to do. After all, a business usually issues shares so that it can raise money from investors. So why sell them back? Like so many things related to investing, this question seems simple but actually leads down a rabbit hole full of intrigue, supply-a ..read more

In our mission to get everyone investing, commission-free investing was only the start. A number of US stocks cost upward of a thousand dollars for a single share, and many cost hundreds. A lot of people can’t afford that and miss out on investing in companies due to the share price being outside their budget. Even if the share price is lower than that, sometimes you want to start small and build up your stock ownership in steps, or diversify your portfolio with smaller amounts of money. That’s what we are solving with this latest upgrade. Investing in fractional shares o ..read more

Perry Blacher, serial entrepreneur turned VC, is joining Freetrade’s board The former entrepreneur will be Freetrade’s non-executive director Perry Blacher, our new non-executive director We’re very happy to announce that serial fintech entrepreneur Perry Blacher is joining Freetrade as a non-executive director, with a view to becoming chairman pending regulatory approval. Freetrade’s mission has always been to get everyone investing. To do that, we’ve designed and built an award-winning app, created our own brokerage platform and provided our customers with commission-free trading. Making all ..read more

The battle for supermarket customers is on Loading up the trollies As most of us mope around at home, talking to people on Zoom and cooking way more than usual, supermarkets’ revenues are booming. People across the UK made an extra 79 million shopping trips in March compared to last year. Those shops generated an extra £1.9 billion in revenue for supermarkets (and a lot of long queues for shoppers). One of the companies that benefited from this surge in spending was Morrisons. Market research firm Nielsen found that the chain saw a 19.4 per cent increase in sales in March compar ..read more