Trade Republic Test & Experience 2020

My experiences with Trade Republic in test

Buying shares is fun, collecting dividends is even more fun, who does not know that? One always pays attention to the dividend yield, the higher, the more shining the eyes. But a single word can destroy everything. Fees. Trade Republic is supposed to eliminate the problem. How and if it works, I am testing now. Here I share my experience with the App Broker Trade Republic with you.

Before we get started, a few personal words. When I came across the app, I wanted to read experiences and tests myself, what I found was not very helpful in my eyes, or you could read it officially. It seemed to me that the authors of the pages describing the tests and experiences had not tested this broker and the app themselves. In other words: it looks like advertising with a pro and contra list. Paid or not, but where are the pictures? Where a settlement? I missed all this, so as always a test of mine in my own way.

Initial situation and comparison with comdirect

My current account is through comdirect. There are no guide fees if you make a few purchases per quarter. This is usually done immediately with an ETF savings plan.

The question is, why should you buy only one share? Well, in my opinion, it’s not so far-fetched. Perhaps because the economic situation is uncertain, as it is at present, people only want to make small purchases. Press the price every few days and don’t wait until the paycheck comes in. By then it may already be too late and the low prices may be gone.

Trade Republic Fees

Order commission: 0€

Flat rate for external costs: 1€ (here, if necessary, external expenses are added, how much is unfortunately not there, this is not so good)

Custody account management: 0€ always also without purchases/sales

Are there any other fees at Trade Republic?

Of course there are still fees and they are not exactly cheap. If you are very classical and old school, you will get a lot of money here, but if you live modern and own everything digital, you will have no problems here. I link to the complete list of fees here.

What is and how does Trade Republic work?

Trade Republic is an online broker. In the meantime, however, a new platform has emerged from the online brokers, because until now online brokers simply required a PC/laptop and Internet. At Trade Republic there is a further development. Here the solution does not work with PC and laptop. Application or in short App is the new wonder. So without a smartphone nothing will work here.

Very modern and pleasant, especially for someone like me who lives very digitally. Disadvantage of the thing: Without a mobile phone you are stuck. Without the Internet, everything is lost, you can no longer react. At least not in a free way, written/telephone intervention is possible, but at very high fees. Digitalisation sends its regards here.

The Trade Republic app is available for iOS and Android and is of course free.

How does the registration with Trade Republic work?

Registration via app is easy and requires the usual KYC (know your customer) requirements. This means that the broker wants to know who he is dealing with in order to be able to react immediately in case of possible theft/crime or other criminal activities. Nothing new, nothing exciting.

Finally you come to the identification, that means you need a mobile phone (optionally also possible via PC/laptop, as a third party is used here) good light and the identity card. As usual this is done by video identification, a staff member asks if you are really you (you have to show that you are real and not a played video) and that you know what you are doing and it is over, a matter of 3 minutes.

At corona times the process unfortunately takes about 18 minutes. Annoying, but understandable. After that you have to wait until you are unlocked by Trade Republic. At the moment, this step also takes a long time, possibly due to the corona crisis.

The login is done by a pin or by fingerprint/face recognition. It is quick and uncomplicated. The first screen welcomes you with the request to transfer money from the specified account to the Trade Republic account (which takes up to two days, which is really too long if you want to make spontaneous purchases like me). Once a sum has been transferred, nothing can stand in the way of the purchase.

What can I buy at Trade Republic?

The worst thing about a broker is that you cannot buy your favorite stocks or ETFs because they are not listed. First, the securities are bought and sold on the electronic trading system LS Exchange operated by the Hamburg Stock Exchange. This platform also uses comdirect and S-Broker. The spreads and realtime prices are retrieved from XETRA. The times are limited to Mo-Fr 7:30 to 23:00.

But what can I buy? According to Trade Republic, you can find more than 6,000 shares, almost everything from Germany and a wide range of international companies. Even my hydrogen darling Nel ASA is here.

The ETF is limited to 600 contracts.

Crypto currencies cannot be bought or traded at Trade Republic. The portfolio of shares and ETFs will continue to be expanded. Accordingly, one cannot now rule out the possibility that the crypto-currencies will come at some point.

Derivatives can also be traded, but I will leave that out of this test.

In my opinion, the offer is perfectly adequate, considering that the app and the company are fresh and everything is still in development. In a few years, the range of products will certainly be bigger.

Does Trade Republic also have a savings plan?

Savings plans are a good way to buy stocks or ETFs during difficult times like now or generally on a monthly basis, this is of course also possible with the Trade Republic App. Here you can choose from over 300 ETF savings plans. The savings plans start from 25€. What I think is a pity is that you can’t run savings plans on shares. This means that even “expensive” shares like Amazon cannot be bought in several months without spending several thousands of Euros.

How is the security at Trade Republic

Trade Republic App? Everything digital? That’s cheating! Certainly not! The Trade Republic app or company is managed by HSBC Germany. The deposit is also secured by the BAFIN with 100.000€.

Who needs more information: https://www.traderepublic.com/help/

Let’s buy a share with Trade Republic

The probably most exciting part comes now. I buy exactly one share and then immediately show the statement so that you can see the fees and what this dubious foreign expenses are all about.

First you should deposit your money into your account, wait until the PUK of Trauer Republic arrives on your account. This will be in the form of a small bank transfer (see image gallery under this section). The speed at which the money is deposited from your account to Trade Republic depends on your bank and the Solaris Bank. I got it in under 10 minutes. When making a bank transfer, make sure that you really deposit the money from the account that you entered during registration. Other accounts or PayPal are not accepted. The money should then be transferred back in a few days.

I made a tentative deposit of $100. Picked Royal Dutch Shell ,meanwhile at 15€, which annoys me a lot, but you will never catch the perfect moment. So when you have selected a share, you click on buy and that’s it. As you can see in the screenshots, everything is kept very simple and straightforward. The minimalist design convinces me.

What are the fees?

As always you can see everything in the screenshots, I have documented this as good as possible. The purchase is in fact only charged with 1€ fee and that is the madness for me! In my eyes, this opens up so many opportunities for me to buy. Note that I only really bought one share for 15€! You can now buy more every day and thus set your personal purchase price. From me a very clear one: Download App and trade only with Trade Republic. Apply here for the Trade Republic depot!