Thank you to everyone who provided valuable insight on last week’s Freetrade article. I echo the thoughts of matt365:

I enjoy reading everyone's thoughts and comments. They really are a great source of learning.

And so with that in mind, this week I have attempted to harvest some of those insights and delve a little deeper into the platforms available for stock pickers in the hope that together we can help more people make the right choices.

Fees are important

Starting with a more comprehensive overview of the fees.

Clearly fees are not the only consideration for private investors choosing a platform, but investors should be aware of the extent to which they can eat into returns.

Last week I compared some of the cheapest providers available and concluded that for a regular trader looking to buy international and domestic companies, IG, Freetrade and Dodl offer the best value. But there are problems with all of these platforms, which you can read about here.

And so I have started to gather a more comprehensive overview of the prices available from a wider field of platforms in this spreadsheet. Alternatively as sevwarn suggested, Boring Money’s fees calculator is a very useful comparison tool. You can find that here.

One thing is clear - picking a platform is a very personal decision and investors should take care to make sure they find the option that is right for them. To help, here is a run through of some of the platforms and who they might suit:

1. AJ Bell has no ongoing fee for portfolios greater than £500,000. You’ll pay 0.25% on your first £250,000 of investments and 0.1% on your next £250,000. But you’ll also make 0.25% interest on cash above £100,000 which chips a little bit off your ongoing fees. Trading charges are £4.95 per stock no matter how often you trade.

These fees suit: Investors with large portfolios who aren’t planning on buying and selling shares regularly.

2. Degiro is a Dutch brokerage with no ongoing fee for any portfolio size and relatively cheap trading costs for shares in the UK and US. Foreign exchange fees are also very competitive at 0.25% above the spot rate.

These fees suit: Investors with a large portion of their portfolios in the US 

3. Freetrade’s basic account is…

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