There’s no free lunch in investing, right? So how do all those zero commission brokers make money?

How do they pay for their staff and equipment? How do they cover the cost of accessing the markets themselves? Not to mention complying with financial regulations?

Well there are many ways an enterprising broker can earn a living from your business.

What matters for us is:

• How are they doing it?
• Do you know about it?
• Are you paying a fair price?

It’s a bit like the magician who pulls money from your ear. The money’s coming from somewhere. Distraction techniques are a trick of the trade.

You just gotta look past the word FREE!!!

So let’s click on those fee links in the smaller, fainter font to find out how zero commission brokers make their money.

Zero commission is freemium

A freemium pricing model gives away a basic service for nothing. Some customers keep the business afloat by paying for extra features.

That’s a reasonable explanation of how free trading platforms work. That, plus the finance industry’s habit of hiding costs in plain sight.

Zero commission brokers are regulated, so they will tell you somewhere how they make their money.

But you might sometimes need the persistence of Columbo to dig it out of information architecture that’d befuddle Escher.

One way to find out how a trading app makes money is to ask them.

Google: How does [insert zero commission broker name] make money?

From there we can follow the breadcrumbs.

Each operator exploits a slightly different niche. When choosing a free trading platform your goal should be to pick a broker that serves your needs but doesn’t harpoon you like a whale.

Swim away from operators who make most of their profits by exploiting your investing habits.

Hooked

Talking of things that are a bit fishy, we need to delve into the bait-and-switch tactics used by some trading platforms.

Or, as it’s more politely phrased in Powerpoint presentations around the world: “cross-sell / upsell”.

The Financial Times wrote a good piece on zero commission brokers. It asserts the free trading part is just bait on a hook.

The argument is that 0% commission stocks are designed to reel you in as surely as the bright lights of a Vegas casino.

But the real profits are made on other financial instruments.

That would explain why some free trading apps dazzle with ‘Bet now!’ opportunities on Contracts For Difference (CFDs), crypto, and foreign exchange.

Higher spreads

Trading 212 for one will happily tell you that its main gig is CFD trading.

Its ‘How does Trading 212 make money?’ page states:

Our platform is making money from its CFD business, where the main revenue comes from the spread and the interest swap.

The spread is the difference between the price you pay for a financial instrument versus the lower price it’s sold for.

As with buying foreign dosh for holidaying abroad (remember that?), the intermediary pockets some of the spread for making the deal happen.

There’s nothing intrinsically dodgy about this. It’s just useful to know:

• It’s the spread on CFDs and not stock trading that’s the main source of profit here.
• Zero commission does not mean free.

We’ll come back to the interest rate swap business in a sec.

Same difference?

Elsewhere, the typographically-curious eToro does not publish a ‘How does eToro make money?’ page.

But eToro cites the spread as a charge on the CFD and crypto tabs of its fees page.

eToro’s partners programme also pays affiliate commission on spread revenues generated by customers’ trading (minus eToro’s expenses).

On page seven of its terms and conditions document – in the Conflicts of Interest section – eToro states:

We are responsible for setting the price of instruments and products which can be traded on the eToro platform.

This means that our prices will be different from the prices provided by other brokers and the market price, as well as the current prices on any exchanges or trading platforms.

On page 30 of its T&Cs eToro explains that it controls the spread for CFDs…

…with respect to CFD trading: (a) we set both the sell price and the buy price of CFDs, both of which are quoted on our platform.

…whereas it notes on the 0% Commission Stocks/ETFs section of its fee schedule PDF:

This spread is determined by the market and not by eToro.

eToro doesn’t mention the spread as an explicit charge on the stocks tab of their fee page, but it does for CFDs and crypto.

That might suggest that at least some zero commission brokers aren’t profiting much – if at all – from stock trading spreads.

Spreading the net wider

I read another good piece that tested whether spreads for stocks are wider with commission-free brokers than traditional investing platforms.

The author struggled to pin down exact spreads due to a lack of transparency from some zero commission brokers. But they concluded that stock spreads probably weren’t unusually wide on free trading platforms.

That’s because the price paid per share was similar to other online brokers.

It’s worth mentioning you can’t test this with just a few test trades. Wider spreads show up in aggregate rather than on every transaction.

An individual may barely notice a penny or two spirited away occasionally, just as a mosquito sneakily siphons off a few drops of blood.

This product may damage your wealth

The FCA requires CFD platforms to display warnings about how many retail investors (that’s you and me) lose money trading such instruments.

Trading 212 says 68% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs on its site. (At the time of writing).

And eToro also says 68% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs on its site. (At the time of writing).

Consistent and perhaps disturbing, huh?

Meanwhile, eToro adverts now follow me around the internet trumpeting the platform’s social trading technology.

This feature enables customers to automatically copy the moves of top-performing traders on eToro.

Great idea. What could make more sense to a beginner? Just mimic the experts and you’re golden!

Except we know it’s extremely hard to pick winners in investing.

What’s even less obvious from the ads is:

• If a large chunk of eToro’s profits are from CFD trading then it could be that many of their investors are also into CFD trading.
• If I copy their CFD trades then I also pay CFD fees. Automatically.
• Remember, 68% of retail investors are losing money in CFDs.

Overnight fees

CFDs are a financial derivative that enables you to make a leveraged bet on the price movements of underlying assets such as crypto, currencies, commodities, and stocks.

eToro charges fees to finance your CFD position if you leave it open overnight or at the weekend.

Trading 212 does the same but calls it an interest swap.

You can avoid the charge by closing your position before the platform’s daily deadline or, alternatively, by not trading CFDs.

Currency conversion fees

Some zero commission brokers make money by charging above the spot price for currency conversion.

These fees are triggered when you trade instruments priced in US dollars, for example.

You can avoid excess currency conversion fees by:

• Trading in GBP-denominated assets.
• Choosing a broker that charges the spot price for foreign exchange (FX) – or very close to it.
• Using a broker that enables you to hold multiple currencies in your account.

Freetrade, Trading 212, Revolut, and eToro all charge currency conversion fees in various scenarios.

In the case of eToro and Revolut accounts, you can only trade in US dollars. So you pay currency conversion fees to deposit and withdraw pounds.

Interest rate arbitrage

This next one is a nice little earner that’s easy to overlook in our age of near-zero interest rates.

Customers park cash in their stock brokerage account where it earns nothing. The broker then sweeps the cash to more profitable locations.

It could be temporarily stored with their own banker or popped into a money market fund – anywhere that earns a smidge more interest than the broker pays its customers.

Do that at scale and suddenly interest gets interesting.

I don’t think this one is particularly an issue with commission-free brokers, mind. It’s an age-old industry-wide practice.

But clearly this is an income stream that benefits from scale. That’s typically achieved when your offering achieves mass adoption – say because it’s free, or feels like it is.

Cash withdrawal and deposit charges

Some zero commission brokers explicitly charge to deposit or withdraw money from your account. Maybe with an FX conversion fee tacked on because they only deal in dollars.

It’s an odd charge in the age of electronic money, but I’ve no issue with it because it’s completely transparent and therefore you can manage it.

Premium services

It’s a bit old skool but zero commission brokers may also charge a set price for a given service you might like.

According to Freetrade’s ‘How does Freetrade make money?’ page, this is how it earns most of its corn.

You might pay it a platform fee for an ISA or a SIPP. Or maybe you’ll pay a subscription fee for a better service than the freebie account.

Freetrade Plus lets you play with a wider choice of stocks, ETFs, and order types, for example.

Fine – there’s no more mystery to that than you see with a premium bank or Spotify account.

Sometimes you really do get what you pay for.

Payment for order flow

Payment for Order Flow typically occurs when a broker directs orders from its customers to a favoured market maker who then executes the trades.

The broker does this because it’s handsomely rewarded by the market maker for all that lovely business.

The FCA banned payment for order flow in the UK. The FCA believes such kickbacks create a conflict of interest between brokers and customers – specifically in the form of wider spreads than you’d pay for ‘best execution’ in the open market.

FCA-regulated brokers are obliged to obtain best execution for UK customer’s orders. As opposed to funneling trades to whoever pays the chunkiest backhander.

Infamously, the trailblazing zero commission broker Robinhood makes money in the US from payment for order flow.

It’s worth noting that difficult-to-dupe passive investing champion Larry Swedroe for one believes the payments – combined with low or no commission fees – may indeed reduce costs for ordinary investors.

In any event, the FCA’s 2019 paper on the practice noted some UK brokers outsourced orders to overseas affiliates that still took payment for order flow.

The FCA added that this workaround is still deemed a conflict of interest.

Its report further mentioned that the FCA:

…expect firms to consider the findings of this report and improve their practices.

All very British and understated.

Let’s hope the FCA’s disapproval shames any miscreants into compliance, lest they not be invited to the next Christmas party.

It’s a free country

The good news is zero commission brokers aren’t going to starve because of their 0% fee generosity.

So if you like their services, you needn’t fear they’re unsustainable.

Indeed, they have even more revenue streams to wash their face with. There’s securities lending, rehypothecation, inactivity fees, and hedging against the trades of their own customers.

Not all the free trading platforms tap into all the money-making schemes discussed in this article.

But it’s useful to know what to look out for.

As I said earlier, different trading platforms target different market niches.

The right choice for you may be one that doesn’t profit excessively from your specific investing foibles.

For instance I don’t trade much, so I don’t care about zero commission. But I do need a SIPP.

Together that means I’m probably best off with a broker that’ll provide a SIPP for a low platform fee. I can take the occasional hit on dealing fees.

Costs and consequences

As a group, retail investors lose money the more they trade.

Perhaps zero commission is not an absolute no-brainer then – even if it’s close to free – if it encourages more trading?

That’s something else to think about.

Ultimately, zero commission brokers know what they’re doing. What we care about is that the investing public does, too.

Take it steady,

The Accumulator

P.S. Make sure that your investments and cash are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Your broker must be authorised and regulated by the FCA (or PRA) for the specific service or product you use.

What caught my eye this week.

The speculative stock sell-off I flagged up at the start of December has started to chip away at the markets more widely.

The US Nasdaq index is more than 10% 14% off its highs.

Several mega-cap tech shares – a big chunk of the US indices, and hence a meaningful stake in global tracker funds – are down about the same, too.

Microsoft and Meta (née Facebook) are 10-20% off their highs. The biggest, Apple, is getting there.

And ‘FANG’ stock Netflix1 plunged more than 20% overnight on earnings suggesting pandemics don’t last forever and growth is slowing hard.

Other former blue-sky high-fliers have already lost more than three-quarters of their value.

Look at price graphs of Peloton or Zoom2 for a taste of what happens to story stocks when the story changes.

The first cut is the cheapest

So far the declines only amount to about a 6% drop in a global tracker fund, from a UK perspective.

Pretty piddling. Could it get worse though?

Who knows – but veteran investor Jeremy Grantham is sure it will.

The founder of GMO and a self-styled witcher when it comes to bubble bursting, Grantham warns:

Today in the U.S. we are in the fourth superbubble of the last hundred years.

Previous equity superbubbles had a series of distinct features that individually are rare and collectively are unique to these events. In each case, these shared characteristics have already occurred in this cycle.

The checklist for a superbubble running through its phases is now complete and the wild rumpus can begin at any time.

Read Grantham’s entertaining note for more, including graphs like these:

As Geralt Grantham sees it, the bottom-right corner is about to get… interesting.

Now, you should know that Grantham has been calling the US overvalued for years. In 2013 Grantham foresaw the market going 20-30% higher before crashing. He’s been using the word ‘bubble’ since at least 2014.

Timing is the perennial curse of those who’d oppose a runaway market – but eight years is still a long time to claim you weren’t wrong but early.

With that said, anyone who lived through the Dotcom bust will recall the pattern of the frothiest stocks falling first.

We’ve seen sufficient crazy madness over the past two years to tick Grantham’s ‘euphoric’ box, too.

Add rising yields (even in Germany), expectations of rate hikes in the US – roiling growth stocks and government bonds alike – and a flattening yield curve, and Grantham might have all the ammo his bubble-bursting needs.

Steady as she goes

Naughty active investors (like me) will act as we see fit, for good or ill.

Wiser passive investors shouldn’t panic. Not least because they’ll probably do better than most active types just by sticking with their plan.

Think how often our Slow & Steady portfolio updates begin with The Accumulator shrugging off some brouhaha, then detailing further gains.

As Aswath Damodaran – dubbed Wall Street’s ‘Dean of Valuation’ – conceded this week even as he calculated stocks were 10% overvalued:

If you look at history, it seems difficult to argue against the notion that market timing is the impossible dream…

The most important thing is to have a well-constructed, diverse portfolio.

You could have owned almost anything up until late 2021 and seen it go up.

Everyone is a genius in a bull market.

In a bear market we all feel like idiots. Crashes come with the territory of investing, but don’t make it harder on your future self than it needs to be.

Put yourself in a position to hold – and ideally buy more – in a slump.

For now: have a great weekend!

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1. Disclosure: I hold. [↩]
2. Disclosure: I also hold Zoom. Alas. [↩]

What caught my eye this week.

Will we or won’t we? Go back the office that is. Although I say ‘we’ to give the vibe that we’re all in this together. But rather like a backyard reveler in Downing Street during a pandemic, I walk to my own beat.

More than 20 years ago I discovered I could mostly do my job from home, and more efficiently too.

“Sod the office!” quoth I. “And be damned with the commute.”

Perhaps I capped my (traditional) career prospects, but I never looked back in terms of quality of life. Working from home was like playing the game on easy mode. More time, fewer distractions, chores done incidentally during screen breaks, and always in for deliveries.

Most of you also now know that drill now.

Indeed, one good thing about lockdowns – bar the parties, natch – has been the world discovering how practical it is for more people to live this way.

Well, I say ‘good thing’ to again hit an inclusive note – but for me it’s been a step backwards.

More people in Waitrose at lunchtime. Everyone wanting to Zoom instead of just leaving you to get on with it. Double-digit house price growth in my fantasy rural retreats. The world has changed.

For many workers all this freedom is a revelation.

Bloomberg reports this week that 55% say they will quit if forced to return to the office.

No wonder we’ve all asked how long it will last.

Life’s too short

US cheapo broker Robinhood is just the latest firm to offer most of its staff permanent work from home, saying:

Our teams have done amazing work and built a strong workplace community during these uncertain and challenging times, and we’re excited to continue to offer them the flexibility they’ve asked for by staying primarily remote. 

Facebook and Twitter are two other big tech firms that have pledged to enable staff to keep working from home.

But Google has just taken a step in the other direction. While stressing it was forging a hybrid model rather than enforcing office labour, it nevertheless just plunked down $1 billion in additional commitments to its UK offices.

Reuters reports that:

Google plans to refit the building so it is adapted for in-person teamwork and has meeting rooms for hybrid working, as well as creating more space for individuals.

The new refurbishment will also feature outdoor covered working spaces to enable work in the fresh air.

Google says it will eventually have the capacity for 10,000 workers at its UK sites, including the one being developed in London’s King’s Cross.

Rishi Sunak, UK chancellor, even put his name to a quote that celebrated the move as a commitment to the UK tech sector.

On that political note though, I did wonder as I watched Google executives do the interview rounds whether this was in part a PR move?

The company was rolling out huge office buildings around King’s Cross before the pandemic. It was already pretty all-in.

Why not give the UK government something to cheer about ahead of the next furore over corporate taxes or some dodgy militants on YouTube?

Extras

A $1 billion is a lot to spend on PR though. Clearly Google is serious about its 6,400 UK workers having at least a foot in office life.

However this vision couldn’t stop Google postponing its global return to work plans last month, as the Omicron wave hit.

Many others have done the same. And of course in December it became official UK government guidance again to work from home if you could.

Those who believe the traditional office’s days are numbered think these delays have put the final coffin in things returning to how they were.

Nicholas Bloom, professor of economics at Stanford University, told the BBC that any hard return-to-office dates are dead:

“Endless waves of Covid have led most CEOs to give up, and instead set up contingent policies: if, when and how to return to the office.” 

Bloom believes that at the least the future will be hybrid now.

I see pros and cons. For example I chose to go into a client’s office a couple of times a week for a few years, which also gave me a bit of social contact. But it also meant I couldn’t exactly leave London for the Orkney Islands.

Hybrid working takes wholesale geographic reckoning off the table.

Perhaps that’s why the populations of UK cities have held up better than some predicted during the so-called ‘dash for space’.

After Life

A scattered workforce can make the office seem a bit of a nostalgic throwback, like wearing bowler hats to work.

As one worker told the BBC:

“I won’t come in regularly until there is a critical mass of people here.

There’s no point in leaving the house if I end up doing video calls anyway.”

The bottom line is I still don’t think we know what will happen next.

This week veteran commentator Barry Ritholz pointed out what a weird recovery we’re seeing across the spectrum.

No wonder those April 2020 thoughts of two weeks at home and we’re done seem so quaint these days.

Hubble is maintaining a long list of big or famous companies’ back-to-office strategies. What’s your favourite firm doing?

Wherever you are, have a great weekend. The evening’s are getting lighter!

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