Self Trade www.selftrade.co.uk Review

“I signed up with Self Trade because I wanted a low...”

Written on: 04/06/2009

Good Points
Friendly website

Bad Points
Can't deal at peak / profitable times.

General Comments
I signed up with Self Trade because I wanted a low cost broker option without an annual charge or inactivity fee (I'm a private individual who wanted to invest on an occasional basis). Self Trade seemed to offer all this and more through a range of accounts and what looked to me to be a good website. However several times in the recent turbulance they have gone offline or the website has crawled to a snails pace as it struggles to cope with a relatively small demand level. Then you have the fall back of calling in or sending a secure message. Usually though, secure messages are replied to within a few days giving you little confidence that they will be processed. And the phone lines jam up the moment you want to trade. They've recently introduced an annual account fee and having been unable to place a couple of important trades recently, I've decided to move my account and ISA to another broker.