Trading 212 Guide For Beginners

**UPDATE 11/2/21** If you get put on a waiting list when you try and sign up, do not worry you will still get your free share! You can enter FMA3SCnL under the Promo Code options to claim your share. Even if you have already signed up before. **

First of all, what is Trading 212? Here is my Trading 212 guide for beginners. I will outline what Trading 212 is and how you can get set up using it. Before you know it, you will own your first shares in a company or maybe you decide to start with an Exchange-Traded Fund.

Trading 212 is a free or zero commission brokerage investment platform. Inside the mobile app or via their web app we can purchase and sell shares of individual companies or ETFs if we choose.

Typically, in the past brokerages have charge heavy fees in order for you to purchase stock. Putting off new investors, especially those with a smaller budget.

Hargreaves Lansdown, for example, charge up to £11.95 per trade. Investors with larger budgets are not concerned by this obviously. However, those of us with shallow pockets are.

That’s where Trading 212 comes in and saves the day. Making it easy for a new investor with even the smallest of budgets to start their investment portfolio today.

Stick to the plan and follow along with Trading 212 Guide For Beginners. It will ensure you have a smooth ride.

If you are just getting started into the world of personal finance and investing, I would look into getting a book or two to read. Here are my personal favourites I think everybody should read.

Want a nice way to track your investments and dividends? Checkout my Dividend Tracking Spreadsheet

Trading 212 Web App is now live. Giving us the ability to create and manage PIEs from a browser on a desktop computer. More room to manage your investments.

My Trading 212 PIE Library

UPDATED* Trading 212 have now introduced a PIE Library.

See dedicated post here.

Now I can share my PIEs here they are. Note this will only work on mobile for now. Click the link and the PIE will be displayed withing the Trading 212 App.

My PIEs are working well. They have been broken down into small PIES as discussed shortly. Click the PIE link on mobile to see the PIE inside the Trading 212 app.

Hopefully, we will soon be able to the same on a desktop. At least, for now, it’s mobile-only.

How To Open A Trading 212 Account

Before you sign up for Trading 212, make sure you sign up with a referral link to get a free share. Deposit just £1 to get the free share.

When you sign up you will likely be asked to fill in a W8-BEN form. You will want to sign this as it will reduce any withholding taxes on US-based dividends.

It’s a simple form to fill in and you just have to tick a few boxes. It will be dependant on your country of origin if you are asked to fill it in or not.

Once you have opened your account. You will want to download the Trading 212 app from either the App Store or the Play Store, dependant on if you use an iPhone or Android. I’m team Android!

Now that you have your account and the app downloaded to your phone. The first thing you will want to do is fire up the app and deposit some money. For now, I recommend just putting £1 in to claim the free share.

To do this, simply click the three little horizontal bars on the bottom right corner of the app to bring up the settings. You will see a big Deposit Funds button. Choose this and add a suitable debit card or you can use Google Pay.

You may be able to use Apple as well, but seeing as I’m Team Android you’re on your own with that one.

So, you have set up your account, linked your debit card or Google Pay, and deposited £1 or more is you choose. Now stop, wait a minute…

Trading 212 Practice Mode

Before we get carried away and the reason I recommend to just put £1 in for now is Practice Mode. Once again click the icon with three little horizontal bars.

Scroll all the way down and below the Deposit Funds button, you will see Practice Mode as a big green button. Hit it.

Practice mode will be your best friend. Especially for those of you that are a little nervous. In practice mode, you have £50,000 to have a play around with.

One day we will have that in our real accounts if we stick at it though.

We can use practice mode to get a feel for how things work inside the app. Go ahead and choose a couple of random stocks and buy some shares (it’s not real remember, so go crazy if you wish).

How To Buy Shares On Trading 212

I’m going to start with Coca-Cola. Click the little magnifying glass to search.

You can search for anything you like.

Now we have found Coca-Cola – Ticker symbol KO.

A ticker symbol is just a shorthand code used to identify different stocks on a stock exchange such as the NYSE New York Stock Exchange or the LSE London Stock Exchange.

Do not worry about the order types for now just use market order – it is the default anyway. I’m buying 50 shares how about you?

That’s £1826.13 at the current share price of $45.12. Trading 212 will handle the currency conversion for us. It will display in your local currency below the number of shares. Hit buy. Confirm the order.

Congratulations you just purchased your first 50 shares of Coca-Cola.

The order will execute within a few seconds normally.

Assuming the stock market the stock is listed on is open. Do not be alarmed if it takes 30 seconds or more – this is rare it’s normally a couple of seconds.

When you select a company it will say if the market is currently open or closed just below the buy and sell buttons.

Want a nice way to track your investments and dividends? Checkout my Dividend Tracking Spreadsheet

How to Sell Shares On Trading 212

Depending on your style of investing you may never want to sell your shares in real life with real money (that is me). However, for the purposes of this guide. Let’s go ahead and sell those 50 shares of Coca-Cola ticker KO.

You can now hit the little pie looking icon next to the magnifying glass.

This will show all of your holding in your portfolio.

Hopefully, some of you experimented a bit more and made a few purchases of different stocks and varying quantities, etc. Bravo if you did.

If not you will just see Coca-Cola and the 50 share we have.

Note it will display your total loss or gain in either red for loss or green for gain.

Seeing how Coke is a major company it is unlikely if the shares have moved more than a couple of pounds either way.

In my case -£2.30 in the red. On our £1825 investment. Of course, we would never ever do this with real money on such a stock buy it then sell it straight away. Unless you know what you are doing obviously.

So, now we can click on Coca-Cola in our portfolio and from here we can hit sell.

It will give us the same window as when we bought them. Choose how many shares you want to sell and hit sell.

Confirm the sale with the Send Sell Order button. You just bought then sold your first shares!

Do you want to get a free stock share worth up to £100?

Create a Trading 212 Invest account using this link www.trading212.com/invite/FMA3SCnL and we both get a free share! A free share to get you started on the Dividend Investing journey with me.

Trading 212 2FA 2 Factor Security

What I strongly recommend you do now is go back to the same menu with the three little horizontal lines. This time select the settings menu.

From here you will want to enable password lock. With a password lock, you can set a password along with an inactive time for it to trigger.

Personally I have it set to use my fingerprint with immediate for the timeout.

This will stop prying eyes from opening the app. If someone is looking at your phone or god forbid you to lose it.

Security is a high priority, that’s why I thought it best to include this section in my Trading 212 For Beginners guide.

Recently, Trading 212 2FA or 2 Factor Authentication was released.

I have enabled it immediately as you should too. You will to download Google Authenticator to be able to use it.

Once enabled your Trading 212 is now much more secure.

I hear the question a lot. Is Trading 212 secure? Yes, even more so now that 2FA is can be enabled.

I did a dedicated post on how and why Trading 212 is safe – go an have a read, it should put to bed any fears you have.

Treat Practice Mode As Real Money

Pretty easy to buy and sell shares within the Trading 212 app right?

Indeed it is, I encourage you to have a play around in the app and or on the web app. Get comfortable with the buying and selling process, double-checking the amount is correct before committing.

Start using the practice money as if it were real money.

If you have a budget of £500 then only spend £500 of the practice money.

Use the practice account as long as you need it.

Before switching back over to real money. You do not want to accidentally buy 50 shares when you only meant to buy 5 for instance.

It’s pretty unlikely this would actually happen as you do have to confirm the orders – just pay attention to every real order and every practice order.

Now, are you ready to switch back over to real money? Take as long as you need.

Switch To Real Money

Once you are ready, hit the three little horizontal bars again and scroll down to Switch To Real Money.

You should now be feeling confident in buying and selling shares. Deposit some real money and buy your first real shares! Exciting isn’t it.

Once again, just take it slow at first. You can always deposit more capital later – it is instant and there are no fees to worry about. So just dip your toes in the water for now.

Hold your horses though, a couple more things, Trading 212 For Beginners next section is of the utmost importance.

Want a nice way to track your investments and dividends? Checkout my Dividend Tracking Spreadsheet

Check out my Portfolio and posts on Trading 212 Growth Investing, alongside my main goal of Dividend Investing.

Stock Research

Now that you have a real-money funded account. You must do some research to determine what companies your wish to invest in.

Some great information on each company can be found within the Trading 212 app its self.

Another great resource is Seeking Alpha. Whatever path you choose in your investment portfolio, whether you choose to base your portfolio on Trading 212 Dividend Investing. Maybe a portfolio structured around Exchange-Traded Funds or even a more growth-focused portfolio.

Doing research and evaluating the risk is a crucial part of investing and not to be missed.

New investors will often chase a high dividend yield but there is normally a good reason the yield is so high so be cautious.

Now you have read my Trading 212 For Beginners guide. You should be more confident in using the platform to its fullest, putting the basics of using Trading 212 into action you will be an investing master in no time.

Trading 212 Free Share

Importantly, make sure you do sign up with the referral link to claim the free share. You can always enter my code in the promo code section of your app as well if you already signed up without claiming a free share. FMA3SCnL

Do you want to get a free stock share worth up to £100? You only need to deposit £1 to get the free share!

Create a Trading 212 account using this link

We both get a free share!

Freetrade Free Share

Freetrade is a competitor of Trading 212 that also runs the same Free share promotion. The platform is nothing compared to Trading 212 but you might as well put £1 in and grab the free share of them!

Invest in stocks and ETFs commission-free. Sign up here with your email and get a free share worth up to £200 to get started.
https://freetrade.io/freeshare/?code=2KMSDN703F&sender=qLkZ36Uf

Grab your free share while you still can. You may get lucky and get a £200 one.

I keep Freetrade as a backup. Potentially I may use it when they have matured some. For now, though, do what I did and sign up just for the share.

None of the above should be used as financial advice, I am not a professional. Always do your own research.

Thanks,

Sean