How to Invest on Trading 212: A Beginner’s Guide

When investing, your capital is at risk. Investments can rise and fall and you may get back less than you invested. This article is not financial advice.

This guide will simplify buying shares and funds through a Stocks and Shares ISA on Trading 212.

We’ve broken down the process into easy-to-understand steps you can follow — even if you have no idea what you’re doing.

We’ll be opening a Trading 212 account, completing the onboarding process, navigating the website’s dashboard, and making our first investment.

Please note: the share and ETF we buy is shown for example purposes only — it’s not a recommendation.

How to Register for a Trading 212 account

1. Click ‘Open account’

On the Trading 212 homepage, click ‘Open account’.

2. Confirm your country of residence

This will default to the United Kingdom if you’re based in the UK. Press the ‘Next’ button.

3. Select the Trading 212 ISA account

This will allow you to access shares and ETFs through and Stocks and Shares ISA, where you have a tax-free investment allowance of £20,000 a year.

It’s the same as the Trading 212 ‘Invest’ account, but your profits are secured inside a tax wrapper – there’s no Capital Gains Tax when using the ISA.

4. Create your login details

Make sure you create a secure email and password combination.

Trading 212 requires passwords to have at least seven characters and one number — as well as an uppercase letter and a lowercase letter. Once these requirements are met, hit the ‘Create account’ button.

If you’re happy to receive alerts related to your transactions and dividends — as well as promotional offers — click the ‘Allow’ button.

5. Verify your identity

You’ll now need to complete three steps before you can start buying shares.

The first, ‘Set up your account’, will ask you to verify your email address.

Once you’ve done this, you’ll be returned to Trading 212’s dashboard — and will need to click on the blue ‘Start investing now’ button in the top right-hand corner to continue.

Next, you’ll be asked to enter your:

• Nationality
• First and last name
• Date of birth
• Tax residence
• National Insurance number
• Residential address
• Annual income
• Value of savings and investments
• Where your funds come from
• Primary investment goals
• Risk tolerance level
• Estimated annual deposits
• Employment status
• Primary currency

You’ll also need to complete a questionnaire, which Trading 212 is legally required to do when assessing whether it’s appropriate for you to open an account. Questions include:

• What type of financial instruments are you most familiar with?
• Do you have any previous experience with investing?
• What’s the purpose of a stock exchange?

From here, it’s time to verify your identity. Accepted documents include passports, driving licences and residence permits.

After submitting a photo of your ID, you’ll need to take a selfie too.

Once complete, you may have to wait for your application to be manually reviewed. This took less than five minutes for me — with an alert popping up on screen and in my inbox.

6. Deposit funds

Trading 212 gives you the choice of investing with “ready-made pies” — in other words, existing investment portfolios. But given we’re looking to buy shares and index funds directly, let’s click ‘Invest manually’ and then the ‘Deposit funds’ button instead.

You’ll now be able to choose whether you want to make an instant bank transfer or add funds using a debit card or Google Pay.

It’s recommended to use the bank transfer options as there are no fees for these methods of funding.

Once topped up, you can start investing.

7. Claim your free share

After depositing, you can claim a free share worth up to £100 by navigating to ‘Use promo code’ via the menu, then input code ‘FIN’. Terms apply.

How to Buy Shares

1. Find the shares you want to buy

On the Trading 212 homepage, you’ll be presented with a watchlist of major stocks by default. You can personalise this by adding the companies you’re interested in.

Stocks can also be filtered based on ‘top winners’ and ‘top losers’.

To find a specific company, hit the search icon at the top of the page.

This opens up an additional section where stocks are categorised in multiple ways, including:

• Which shares are most traded, bought and sold
• Their industry — like big tech and banks, for example
• Where they’re traded — such as the US or UK
• Companies with upcoming earnings results

You can browse this list freely, or type in a specific stock by using the search bar.

For the purposes of this example, we’re going to search for Alphabet, the owner of Google. This is not an endorsement of this stock. Do your own research, reach your own decisions, and consult a qualified financial advisor if you’re unsure.

That’ll open up a page where you can:

• Check how the share price has evolved over multiple timeframes
• Read news stories related to the company
• See what other Trading 212 users are saying about the stock
• Examine the share price range over a 24-hour and 52-week period
• Explore key metrics about the company, such as its market cap, price-to-earnings ratio, revenue and earnings per share
• Set up price alerts, meaning you’ll be notified if the stock falls or rises by a certain level

2. Hit ‘Buy’ and place an order

Once you’re happy, you can hit the blue ‘Buy’ button. 

Trading 212 offers fractional stocks — meaning you don’t have to acquire a whole share. This can be especially useful if you want to gain exposure to a company that has a stock price in the many thousands of dollars.

You can select the cash value of your investment using the sliding scale provided.

You can also click the keypad on the right hand side, or change the ‘Value’ dropdown to ‘Shares’ if you know exactly how many shares you wish to purchase.

The four types of orders available are:

• Market: Purchases are executed at the best available price when the market is open
• Limit: Shares are automatically bought when prices fall to or below a certain level. Orders can last for one trading session, or never expire
• Stop: Shares are automatically bought when prices rise above a certain level
• Stop Limit: This ensures shares are bought within a specific price range

If you’re investing in US stocks, you’ll also be asked whether you want to activate 24/5 trading. This means that the value of your investment will also fluctuate outside of Wall Street’s main trading hours of 9.30am to 4pm ET (2.30pm to 9pm UK time).

While this can allow you to take advantage of price swings after earnings results, there are things to consider:

• Pre-market and after-hours trades may take longer to fill
• There can be higher levels of volatility
• Trading 212 may quote different prices to other platforms

Once you’ve decided the order type, how many shares you want to buy and whether you’re interested in 24/5 trading you’ll be able to review the transaction and click ‘Send buy order’ to confirm.

You’ll receive a notification when an order has been filled.

And that’s it! You’ve now bought a share using Trading 212.

To keep track of your investments, click on the pie chart icon at the top of the dashboard to see your portfolio.

Each company whose shares you own will be listed here — enabling you to make further purchases or sell your stock.

How to Buy ETFs

Exchange-traded funds are traded on the stock market just like shares, but there’s a key difference.

Why? Because ETFs means you can invest in multiple assets — all in one go.

A good example of this is an S&P 500 ETF. This fund tracks movements in America’s largest stock market index, and gives you exposure to hundreds of major companies. If the S&P rose by 5% in a single day, that means the ETF would as well.

Through Trading 212, a wide range of ETFs are available for your Stocks and Shares ISA. Here’s how to add one to your portfolio:

1. Find the ETF you want to buy

You can browse the ETFs available on Trading 212 by hitting the Search icon at the top of the homepage, and scrolling down to the ETFs section. 

Here, you’ll see funds categorised based on popularity or whether they track things like real estate, commodities or the money markets.

Alternatively, right at the bottom of this page, you can choose to browse all ETFs. 

Thousands are available — covering industries including technology, healthcare, utilities and financials. You can search for a specific ETF here, or browse the menu to learn more about each fund.

For the purposes of this example, we’re going to search for the Vanguard S&P 500 (Dist) ETF. Once again — this is not an endorsement.

That’ll open up a page that looks like this:

It’s very similar to the page for stocks — but has slightly less data. 

One very useful resource can be found if you click on ‘Instrument details’ at the bottom of the page. 

This allows you to access a Key Investor Information document that sets out: 

• The ETF’s risk profile on a scale of one to seven
• How the fund has performed in recent years
• The charges that are paid by investors 

No matter which ETF you go for, it’s well worth doing your research and scrutinising these documents before you make an investment.

2. Hit ‘Buy’ and place an order

Once you’ve found the fund you’re interested in, you can hit the blue ‘Buy’ button.

As with stock purchases, you’ll have the option to make a fractional purchase — or use Limit and Stop orders to time your entry into the market.

Once you’re satisfied, hit the ‘Review order’ button to confirm the details — and if everything looks correct, click ‘Send buy order’ to complete the transaction. If you’re attempting to do this when the stock market isn’t open, it’ll be finalised at the start of the next session.

And there you have it: a comprehensive guide to buying shares and ETFs within a Stocks and Shares ISA on Trading 212.

If you’re looking to set up a recurring weekly or monthly investment into your Trading 212 portfolio, we have a separate guide that will help you navigate this slightly confusing process: How to Set Up Recurring Investments on Trading 212.

And if you want to make the most of the Trading 212 app, check out these tips.

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