Stake Trading Platform App Review | Complete Guide to US Stock Trading
Hey guys, welcome back to the channel.
Today I’ll be going through a complete review
or is it a tutorial, we’ll work that out
later, welcome to a complete review slash
tutorial of the US trading platform Stake
who don’t charge any brokerage fees when
you trade, which is just awesome.
So trading on Stake gives you access to the
most famous US stocks like Google, and Apple
and Tesla, and Netflix, and chill.
And as of now, it’s available to users in
Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and Brazil,
with more countries coming later and you can
go on the watchlist to get notified when they
add another.
Now let’s get straight into the review slash
tutorial.
1 – The Sign up
Signing up is a relatively straight-forward
process.
So click the link in the description below
to get started.
Choose your country and enter your name and
email.
The referral code to get you a free stock
should automatically appear if you used my
link below.
Then enter all your profile details.
The next section will ask for your employment
details, to make sure that you’re not a
stock broker, company director, or a public
official.
So the answer to that is most likely
and no.
Unless you are one of those, then yes.
Finally, you’ll need to verify yourself
with some ID scans and that’s pretty much
it.
Now if you’re worried about the legitimacy
of Stake, let me just say that Stake is authorised
representative of Sanlam Private Wealth who
also run the ASX broker Superhero, and they
are regulated by the ASIC.
Its brokerage partner in the US Drivewealth
is also regulated by FINRA and the SEC. and
in the UK, Stake is regulated by the FCA.
So that all means that they are watched by
many government watchdogs and they won’t
be running away with your money at all.
2 – Transferring Money, Fees
Now to start trading on Stake, you’ll need
to convert some money into US dollars, and
this is where Stake makes its money.
They charge 0.7% of the funds you transfer
and they make this quite transparent which
is a very good thing.
To do this, just go to the Add Funds page,
and choose Online Banking as the method and
select your bank to do a Poli payment.
You can use a credit card to fund it but there’s
a card fee for that.
You can also use the Express option to get
the funds into your account a day earlier
than normal but you need to pay about 50%
more fees to do this.
Let’s also compare the exchange rate to
what Google is saying, and it’s pretty close
so I’m happy with this.
Also be aware that any money that’s just
sitting in your trading account doesn’t
accrue interest for you, it does for Stake
though and that’s how they are able to offer
zero brokerage fees.
In fact, I’ll just transfer some money over
right now just to show you the process.
So right now the AUD to USD is decent so let’s
add say $2000.
And I’ll fast forward a day so the funds
will seem like it arrives instantly to you.
3 – Stock Research
So now that you’ve got funds into the account,
how do you choose what to buy?
Well, the best and free place to start is
either the Yahoo Finance site which is quite
comprehensive or the Google Finance tab when
you just type in the stock ticker and the
exchange that it’s on.
Otherwise, Stake can also provide you with
this information within the platform itself
for a fee of $9 per month when you upgrade
to Stake Black.
You also get analyst ratings, price targets
and instant buying power with this package.
But is it worth it?
For beginners, it’s a good starting place
to have an idea of what the analysts are saying
about a particular stock.
But for the more experienced, we all know
that even analysts can be completely wrong
with their price targets as well.
4 – Buying Stocks, Fractional Shares
So now if you know what stocks you want to
invest in, now we just need to buy it.
To do that, type the stock code at the top
to bring up the stock page.
On the right, choose the limit, stop or market,
I recommend limit so if we choose that, then
select the number of shares to buy and the
price that you want to buy it at.
If you choose market, then type in the amount
of money you’re willing to invest, and Stake
will automatically convert this to how many
shares you can buy at the current market price.
This will give you a fractional share if you
don’t have enough for a whole integer share.
Now I’ve fast forwarded a day so since I
moved that $2000 in from earlier, I’m going
to try and buy a stock.
Now I was going to get some AirBnB in but
I don’t like that they are still not profitable,
so let me try buying something a bit better,
like maybe a Netflix.
Now Netflix has pretty good fundamentals so
if we look at their earnings you can see that
it’s been steadily increasing, and so has
its EBITDA from 2 billion 2 years ago up to
almost 4 billion this year.
And its earnings per share has been going
up quite well and so has its balance sheet
in terms of its assets.
So if we look at Netflix, we can see that
it’s trading at almost $500, so with my $1500
US I’m going to put in 3 shares to buy at
a limit price of say $485.
Now because of the time difference, I’ll
be asleep when the US market opens so it’s
always better to put a lower limit order on
your stock so you can pick it up when it dips.
And even if it doesn’t reach your price,
you can always try again the next day.
5 – Dashboard and Watchlist
Once you’ve successfully bought the stock,
go to your dashboard to see your current holdings
in your portfolio.
This will tell you your return for the day
and overall return since you bought it.
Hopefully it’ll all be green.
If you just want to keep an eye on any particular
stock, type the stock ticker into the search
bar again, and click Add to Watchlist.
Go to the Watchlist to see the list of stocks
that you’ve added to the watchlist.
You can also see how many other people have
put this stock on their watchlist which is
a handy thing to know.
Oh and the Wall St tab is updated daily with
index charts, the biggest gainers and losers
for the day and the latest news articles,
which can be handy from time to time as well.
6 – Day Trading
Now if you’re thinking free brokerage?
Hehehe, I’m going to day trade 50 times
a day for free.
Well then I’ve got bad news for you.
Stake has Day Trade Protection which restricts
you from day trading stocks more than 3 times
in a rolling 5 day period.
A day trade is defined as a buy then sell
of the same stock on the same day.
This tab here doesn’t stop the day trade
restrictions, only to turn on or off the notifications
for pattern day trade detections.
There is a way around this though, and that’s
to keep your account balances more than $25,000
USD.
This will include both your cash and stock
portfolio value, and you’ll then have freedom
to day trade as much as you want.
7 – Referral
Stake has probably one of the best referral
programs out there.
If you sign up using an existing user’s
code, and then add some funds into your account
within 24 hours of opening your account, both
of you will receive a free stock in either
Gopro, Dropbox or Nike through this wheel
of fortune thing.
I’ve only ever gotten Gopros in my spins
but maybe you’ll have better luck.
I’ll leave my signup link in the description
below to help you get started.
And then you can invite your friends and family
to get even more free stocks.
8 – Integration with Sharesight
You can import your Stake holdings into the
Sharesight, which is one of the world’s
leading stock portfolio manager that allows
you to keep track of your capital and dividend
gains for tax purposes in your country.
At the end of every financial year, Stake
will email you a list of transactions in CSV
format.
Download that, then go to Sharesight and click
Add Holding.
Select Stake, Choose the CSV file that you
downloaded, and then click upload and you’re
done.
Or if you can’t wait until the end of financial
year, you can just manually enter in your
transaction or even forward your purchase
confirmation emails to Sharesight.
There’s a link below to get started with
Sharesight, which gives you 4 months off an
annual subscription should you decide to do
that, or you can just use it for free forever.
9 – The Stake App
And finally, let’s talk about the Stake
phone app, because most of the time that’s
probably what you’ll end up using.
The app is really well designed and intuitive.
And all the functions that we just discussed
are available there in the menu at the bottom
in a really simple and clean format.
You can do everything easily from transferring
funds to the actual buying and selling of
stocks.
And if you have the Stake Black package, the
full company financials and the analyst ratings
are all there on each stock’s page.
So that’s pretty much everything you need
to know about the Stake platform to get started
trading US stocks.
Hopefully that gives you enough of an overview
to get started.
If this was helpful to you, please hit that
like button and let me know your experience
with Stake in the comments below.
I’ll come out with plenty of investing and
finance videos just like this so also subscribe
so you don’t miss anything.
Thanks for watching guys and I’ll see you
in the next video.
