Halifax Share Dealer Review

Costs:

FREE registration
No regular fees
Trading costs:
- UK transactions: £11.95
- International transactions: From £17.50
- Phone transactions: £15
- Sharbuilder scheme purchases: £1.50
Trade plans: £2

Prices are subject to change. For the most up to date information, please refer to the actual website.

Features:

A simple and easy use share dealing account
- Manage your shares online or over the phone
- 24/7 performance tracking, statements and valuations
- Online market research centre with UK and international share prices, news and analysis
- Share price alert tool allows you to keep a constant eye on the stock markets
- Trade tools allow you to set automatic sell and buy points
- Interactive demo suite
- Competetive quotes
- FREE access to company reports
- FREE tutorials to help you decide your own trading strategy
- UK based call centre
- Online instant chat helpdesk
- Convert your paper share certificates into electronic format

Editor's Verdict:

Halifax allow you to buy and sell shares in public limited companies on the UK stock exchange and various international markets. As a nominee system, you are actually buying shares but in the name of Halifax. This makes buying and selling shares far easier as normally when you buy shares in a company, you recieve a certificate in the post up to a month after your purchase. When you want to sell you have to ring around stock brokers and counterparties in order to find the best price. Overall, quite a laborious and time consuming process which has, understandably, been confined to those quite committed to investing in the stock market. However, Halifax make this process accessible to everyone as they get quotes from 24 market counterparties which are available to you 24/7 allowing you to get the best price when buying and selling. You can also check up on your shares, buy and sell online with a click of a button and have acces to tools, information and features that allow you to make informed decisions.

Registration does take some time - you must fill in several forms and take these, along with your national insurance number and driving licence, to your local Halifax branch. A week or so later you will receive your password and registration information in the post with which you can set up your account. Your share dealing platform with Halifax will actually consist of two accounts; one for your cash and one for your shares. Cash can be transferred from any other Halifax acounts you may have, or paid in from another bank via direct debit at no cost to you. With this balance you are able to purchase your shares which will then remain in your share account until you decide to sell and return their value to your cash account. Upon each transaction you will be charged a flat rate of £11.95 which rises to at least £17.50 on international transactions. This means that, unless you invest a lot, frequent, short term transactions will not be profitable.

For those of us looking to invest small amounts of less than £2500, we really liked Halifax's Sharebuilder scheme which allows you to purchase shares on a set date for a transaction cost of just £1.50. Basically, this works by Halifax purchasing shares in bulk on a selected day up to 7 days after your request. This does mean that prices may drop in these 7 days and hence you would have been able to buy your shares for less, but also prices may rise resulting in savings for you. Overall, although you must sacrifice a small amount of flexibility, this is still a great deal for small traders looking for medium to long term investments. You can set up the sharebuilder to make regular purchases for you on these specific dates so that you can slowly but steadily build up your stock portfolio at a small cost. It must be noted that transaction costs remain at £11.95 whenever you decide to sell. In this case, it will be necessary to balance the diversity of your portfolio: a more diverse portfolio will require more transactions and hence higher costs yet will be more steady as risks are spread, reducing potential losses (as well as profits). Reducing the diversity of your portfolio is like putting all your eggs in one basket but will also reduce your transaction costs.

We found the additional features that Halifax offer to be useful and accesible. The information available is extensive although you do not get any guidance on how to interpret it. Halifax basically offer an executive service which, as opposed to a stockbroker, does not advise you in anyway on your purchases. Once you click to buy shares a window pops up giving you the current quote and 15 seconds to make your decision. The Trade tool allows you to set up automatic buy and sell points which can be great for more advanced users to take advantage of rapid fluctuations in the market as well as avoid dramatic losses. Finally, we found the customer service to be excellent with a UK based call centre and a live-chat online help desk. On the negative side, we have read reports that the system can freeze during periods of high stock market activity which may cause you to miss out on potential profits or even lose money. However, this seems to be an unavoidable downside of present day online stock trading which will hopefully be resolved throughout the industry in the future. Also, there is no trial or demo that you can access before registration which means that you will have to be quite committed from the outset.

Overall, Halifax offer an excellent solution for those who have a reasonable understanding of stock markets and would like to try their luck buying and selling shares rather than leaving their money to sit in their account. This is not a quick and easy short term speculation platform, but rather a sensible medium to long term investment solution.

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Halifax Share Dealer Reviews