Reviews

Trading 212 Review 2023 - The Good and the Bad

By Stefano Treviso, Updated on: Apr 07 2023.

Trading 212 in a Nutshell

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Trading 212 in 60 seconds

• Over 10,000+ real stocks and ETFs with no comissions
• Amazing mobile and web trading platforms. Friendly, responsive and smooth.
• No commissions on stocks and ETFs

Trading 212 is a global broker headquartered in the U.K specialising in real stocks and ETFs investing along with CFD trading.

Trading 212 Full Review

Here’s what we’ll talk about during our review: 

• Is Trading 212 Safe?
• Trading 212 Minimum Deposit and Withdrawal
• Trading 212 Account Types
• Trading 212 Trading Fees
• Trading 212 Available Assets
• Trading 212 Mobile Trading Platform
• Trading 212 Web Trading Platform
• Trading 212 Research and Analysis Tools
• Trading 212 Educational Tools
• Verdict

Is Trading 212 Safe?

Trading 212 is a reliable and safe broker that holds the following financial licenses:

• FCA (UK’s Financial Conduct Authority)
• CySec (Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission)
• FSC (Bulgaria’s Financial Services Commission)

From the above list we can see that their total financial licenses amount to 3 being one of them from a high tier financial institution (FCA).

Another positive point is that Trading 212 was founded in 2004 and also offers traditional investing in equities to its customers.

Trading 212 Minimum Deposit and Withdrawal

Trading 212’s minimum deposit varies as follow:

• 1£ for their investing account
• 10£ for their CFD trading account

Being honest, there is not much difference between both deposit options as both of them are extremely low.

Below you’ll find a list of Trading 212’s deposit and withdrawal methods:

• Visa
• Mastercard
• Bank Transfer
• Paypal
• Neteller
• Skrill
• iDeal
• Apple Pay

Always remember to double check as payment methods can vary based on your physical location.

Base Currencies

Trading 212 supports the following base currencies:

• United States Dollar
• Euro
• Great British Pound
• Romanian Leu
• Polish Zloty
• Swiss Franc
• Swedish Krona
• Norwegian Krone
• Czech Koruna

When it comes to depositing or withdrawing funds from Trading 212, it’s a very straightforward process that barely requires a few clicks once a user’s identity has been verified.

Trading 212 Account Types

Trading 212 offers two different account types, yet both can be accessed seamlessly from both their web and mobile platforms:

In the below image, you’re able to see the great design they did for allowing customers to quickly switch between the two different account types.

Definitely one of Trading 212’s greatest selling points is providing real equity along with CFDs.

Trading 212 Trading Fees

Trading 212 charges spread, overnight fees and a currency conversion fee. Here’s how the fees are usually charged:

• Spread, the difference between buy and sell prices, is present on all instruments in both account types.
• Overnight fees are charged only on CFD accounts when leveraged trading occurs.
• Currency conversion fees are charged when the price of the instrument you’re trading is noted on a different currency than the one of your account and vary per account type: In the INVEST account, the fee is 0.15%, in the CFD account, the fee is 0.5%.

Spreads

Measuring spreads on all assets can be difficult if not impossible as most of the brokers nowadays have variable (dynamic) spreads that either are marked up from their side or just regular market spreads determined by price action and market makers, especially in equities.

Here are Trading 212's spreads compared to similar competitors:

When it comes to currency spreads, Trading 212 is definitely one of the most expensive choices out there as they don’t provide any type of account with Raw spreads or ECN liquidity and their average spreads are extremely marked up when compared to other competitors.

When it comes to stocks, Trading 212 is definitely a winner in their spread as their markup levels are very low when compared to the majority of brokers. Clearly, they honor their unique selling proposition of being a shares and ETF broker.

Commissions & Fees

Trading 212 does not charge commissions (such as in-and-out or per share basis) on any of their account types.

When compared to similar competitors, the no-commissions standard offer is quite similar.

Trading 212 Available Assets

Trading 212 is definitely a shares and ETFs broker, here are their available assets compared to similar competitors:

Trading 212 definitely boasts a wide asset offering, especially in stocks and ETFs. Their main weakness is lacking cryptocurrencies and the fact that despite offering 179 currency pairs, their spreads make them too expensive to trade when compared to other choices. 

If you’re looking exclusively for stocks and ETFs, then Trading 212 is a great choice.

Trading 212 Mobile Trading Platform

Trading 212 did an excellent job when crafting their own proprietary trading platforms. You can definitely feel that their development team was synchronized with someone that has trading experience and this can be felt very quickly. Let’s go over each of the mobile platform’s areas:

Mobile Home

Trading 212’s mobile platform home serves as a landing place for users to scroll through a couple of popular asset categories while viewing the different prices of several assets and creating watchlists.

From here, users are able to monitor their account type / balances and also access the different areas of the platform through the bottom menu.

Asset View

If you click on the magnifying glass, you’ll be able to search the whole assets database of Trading 212. If there is something we can say is that definitely it’s one of the best and most intuitive filtering and searching options available out there. Most of the assets are precisely categorised, for example: Canadian stocks relating only to energy. 

Clicking on the plus symbol on the right side of an asset on this search option will add it to your watchlists. Otherwise, clicking on the symbol itself (regardless if you do it here or from the home area) will land you in the asset view.

Everything about Trading 212’s platform is definitely well built, responsive and smooth. The asset view area is no exception to this. Scrolling down will allow you to view all sorts of relevant information to a stock, for example:

• Value Change
• Highs and Lows
• Percentage change in 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months.
• Company details
• Financial Summaries
• Income Statements
• Balance sheets
• Cash flow

And the most beautiful part is that as you scroll down, the order placement panel remains attached to the top of your screen in case you want to create an order.

Order Placement

The order placement panel also works very smoothly by allowing you drag and drop a slider to define the quantity of the asset you want to trade.

To turn on either a take-profit or a stop-loss order, all you need to do is simply flip a switch and input the value of your desired order. The system will automatically display your order's value in price, distance and a potential expected result if your order is hit.

Portfolio

The mobile portfolio option also presents a very complete set of choices to manage a position in the form of tabs. To access the view, click on the particular position that you need to manage and you’ll enter the individual portfolio section.

From here it’s possible to:

• Add take profit, Stop-loss, Trailing-Stop or modify active ones
• Netting or hedging a position
• Executing an independent market order on the same instrument
• Viewing information on a particular asset

Again, we can definitely say that Trading 212’s platform is a work of art, very intuitive and friendly regardless of a trader’s experience level.

Social and Copy Trading

One of the most interesting features of Trading 212 is their Social and copy trading capabilities. One very important point to note is that they’re only available from within their INVEST account, when using the CFD account, the option will not show on the lower menu of the app.

There are 3 main areas inside their Social section, the first one is designed to provide the user a customisable feed with comments of users made from within the community on any particular thread or category.

The second area serves to navigate the full community area and view new auditions, hot topics or top rated ones.

The third area is where things get really interesting, they offer a copy trading service called pies. Users can create portfolios with several assets and organise them by several categories such as top rated, dividends, growth,etc.

When a user wants to explore one pie, simply by clicking on it can see the percentage composition of that pie and choose whether to copy the same investment strategy on their account.

Another interesting thing about this pies is that anyone can create them and program automatic functionality so that Trading 212 invests a particular amount from your account on your pie on a certain frequency and distributes it accordingly to the percentage you set for each equity inside the pie.

It still lacks many interesting capabilities like other competitors’ copy trading platforms provide, yet it’s a very efficient and clean way to let users engage in mirroring strategies of other users without much hassle.

Economic Calendar

The economic calendar is a standalone area of the platform where users can explore the different upcoming events with economical significance and access detailed information about each of them with historical charts.

Charting Tools

When a user accesses the asset view for any particular instrument, all they need to do is rotate their mobile device horizontally and they will immediately gain access to full-screen charting capabilities.

Trading 212’s mobile charts are responsive, clean and they allow for different indicators and studies to be applied efficiently.

Video Tutorials

Last but not least, there is a section inside the apps settings that contains several video tutorials for beginners to understand the basics of trading.

By general law, most of the tutorials in every broker are the same and we don’t find them that useful. Nothing better than actually investing in proper education before trying to enter the financial markets.

Trading 212 Web Trading Platform

Despite having a very innocent and gamified appearance, Trading 212’s platform is a great choice for both beginners and experienced traders or investors. Let’s go over each of their main areas:

Web Home

At the platforms’ home you’ve got everything you need at first hand. To the right side of the screen, a menu that allows you to access the search engine for assets, economic calendars, video tutorials and notification center.

At the bottom right corner you’ll be able to find the portfolio view, on the center you’ll have your trading charts available. A great positive point is how responsive the charts are regardless of being used in a multi-chart capability.

To the right side, you’ll find details on any asset that you have currently selected, the above image is a sample of the great job that Trading 212 did on visually showcasing important data of each stock.

Notifications

The notification centre is a standard feature of the platform which informs you of anything important happening.

We would definitely appreciate a customisable notifications centre with the ability to filter or select more important notifications.

Asset View

The asset view is the same as the one found in the home of the platform, where information is displayed on the right side about each asset. The most relevant part about this section is how to get to any particular asset and that is by using the search function on the left of the platform (the magnifying glass).

We can’t mention this enough, they did an outstanding job in having their assets categorised properly for users to be able to find them quickly.

Order Placement

The order placement window is an exact replica of the mobile app as well.

Users can select the quantity of an asset that they desire to trade using a drag and drop slider and additionally set their stop-loss or take-profit orders. 

Web Community

When it comes to the social capabilities, the web platform provides access to a separate subdomain of Trading 212 where users can find the community forum.

Compared to the mobile app, the lack of integration is quite noticeable. The community system is not part from the platform itself but rather an external element.

Web Calendar

Trading 212’s economic calendar is definitely a great tool. The web version provides an amazing overall view on what’s happening and key data on a particular event along with historical data from it.

Charting Tools

Trading 212’s charts are completely customisable and have a layered approach to handle all the different studies or indicators that any user applies.

The most important advantage to point out is that the charts allow having different bigger sized tabs for each chart or to automatically activate the multi-chart capabilities.

Trading 212 Research and Analysis Tools

Trading 212 does not provide any research and analysis tools with the exception of some tools mentioned before such as:

• Detailed asset data on every stock
• Economic calendar

When it comes to stronger capabilities such as having a stock screener or a strategy builder, Trading 212 falls short to some of their most well-known competitors.

Trading 212 Educational Tools

In the realm of educational tools, Trading 212 had one edge over their competitors: A unique youtube channel packed with amazing insights and tutorials. For some strange reason they stopped investing in their own youtube channel and it hasn’t received any new uploads over the last 2 years. 

Our best assumption is that after they positioned themselves as one of the strongest brands in the U.K for investing, they simply saw no need for extra marketing.

Verdict

Trading 212 is an amazing broker for users looking to trade or invest in both stocks or ETFs with no commissions while using one of the most intuitive and user friendly platforms out there.

Our favourite points after reviewing them are:

• A smooth, friendly and responsive mobile and web trading platform
• Multi-charting capabilities
• Over 10,000+ equities to choose from
• Real stocks along with CFDs
• No commissions

We consider them an ideal choice for:

• Traders looking to invest passively into stocks or portfolios of stocks on a recurring basis
• Active traders looking to day-trade equities in their offering
• Experienced traders looking to trade stocks or ETF CFDs

When it comes to other asset classes, despite providing them, Trading 212 falls short when compared to their competitors as their spreads are very high and they lack assets such as cryptocurrencies.

Another point where they should definitely strengthen their position is in their regulatory framework, to compete against major brands which hold more than 5+ high reputation licenses.

The best way to use Trading 212 is to take advantage of their stocks and ETFs offering, their smooth mobile app and their investing pies set up.