Risk Disclaimers
Stake is the trading name of Hellostake Limited (no. 11676409), authorised and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FRN: 830771). This notice aims to provide you with important information about the risks associated with the services that we provide to you.
Stake provides clients with the ability to buy and sell various financial instruments on a non-advised (i.e. execution only) basis, and transmits those orders to a Third Party Broker (i.e. DriveWealth LLC (“DriveWealth”). Before investing in financial markets, you should consider whether you have understood the risks detailed in this notice. If you have any questions or are in any doubt about the content of this notice, you should seek independent professional advice.
When trading in financial instruments, your entire invested capital is at risk. The value of your investments can go down as well as up and you may receive back less than your original investment. As investments carry risk, before making any investment decision, please consider if it’s right for you and seek appropriate taxation and legal advice.
When opening an account with Stake you confirm that your details will be shared with DriveWealth and an application for a DriveWealth brokerage account (Limited Purpose Margin Account) will be made.
Stake’s US broker-dealer, DriveWealth, is a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), which protects securities customers of its members up to $500,000 (including $250,000 for claims for cash). Explanatory brochure available upon request or at sipc.org. Check the background of DriveWealth on FINRA’s BrokerCheck here.
Information on Stake is not an offer, solicitation of an offer, or advice to buy or sell securities or any financial product, or to open a trading account in any jurisdiction where Stake is not registered to do so. Upon opening an account with Stake from a jurisdiction where Stake is not registered or able to market its services, you confirm that Stake did not make an offer, solicit an offer or provide any advice to buy or sell a financial product. If you are based in a jurisdiction where Stake is not registered (or regulated) you are responsible for ensuring that you comply with all local laws and regulations that you are subject to and for obtaining your own financial and legal advice if you are unsure.
No advice
At Stake, we’re focused on giving you a better investing experience but we don’t take into account your personal objectives, circumstances or financial situation and needs. We offer a non-advised (execution-only) order transmission service and therefore we do not offer any advice or provide you with any recommendations regarding the appropriateness of any particular financial instrument. Whilst we may from time to time provide you with factual information or market commentary about financial instruments, this information is not, and should not be interpreted as, advice or recommendation. Any advice is of a general nature only and any decision to submit orders is made solely by you. If you are uncertain as to whether any particular instrument is suitable and/or appropriate for your individual circumstances or needs, you should seek independent professional advice.
Provision of Information
We may provide financial and market data, news, analyst opinions, research reports, graphs or any other data or information (“Information”) to you from third party providers. Any Information we display is for informational purposes without taking into consideration your individual financial circumstances, objectives or particular needs. It is provided solely to enable you to make your own investment decisions and it is not intended to be and does not constitute a personalised investment advice or recommendation. Historical data displayed on past performance of an instrument is not a reliable indicator of future results. Future forecasts are not a reliable indicator of future performance.
Pricing
The provision of services from Stake to you is subject to fees which are available at all times on our website. Before you start trading, you should familiarise yourself with all the applicable fees. Other fees may still apply including (but not limited to) foreign exchange, account, alternative dispute resolution, securities and exchange commission & FINRA (regulatory sell side) fees. Please refer to our pricing page for more detail. Pricing may be updated at any time and customers will ordinarily be provided with 20 days notice.
Tax
You should be aware that various tax regimes may apply to your trading depending on your personal tax status and the rules and regulations in force from time to time. You have the sole responsibility of determining the relevant tax impact to your trading and you should consult an appropriate professional advisor if you have any questions or doubts in this regard.
Market Fluctuations and Volatility
The market price of financial instruments is influenced by a broad range of factors and can change rapidly and unexpectedly, meaning the value of those instruments, and your related profits and losses on your positions, can also change rapidly and unexpectedly. For example, the value of securities can fluctuate due to a variety of factors such as economic conditions, industry trends, company performance, and geopolitical events. These fluctuations can result in gains or losses in the value of securities.
Amongst other things, prices of instruments can be subject to gapping (where the price of the instrument opens significantly above or below the previous day's closing price) and slippage (where the price an instrument is executed at is different to the price which was quoted at the time the order was submitted), especially in periods of market volatility. You have the sole responsibility of monitoring the value of the positions you hold.
Liquidity Risk
Liquidity risk is the risk that you may not be able to sell an investment easily or quickly enough to avoid a loss. In other words, it's the risk that there may not be enough buyers or sellers in the market to complete a transaction at a fair price. Whilst certain financial instruments can be very liquid, you should be aware that others, such as the shares of smaller companies or of companies located in other geographies or territories, can be less liquid. Therefore, you may not be able to realise your investment or realise it at its actual market value.
Technical Risk
Whilst we will try to make the Stake app and website available to you without interruption, we cannot guarantee that they will always be available to you. In these circumstances, your orders may not be able to be submitted and you may not be able to monitor your positions via our app or website.
Legal and Regulatory Changes
Changes in applicable regulations or laws governing the instruments offered by Stake can affect their value or the ability to trade them. The impact of such legal and regulatory changes can be material and unexpected.
System Availability and Data
System availability and response times, data, liquidity, execution speed and price are subject to market conditions, order size, order types, any connection limitations and various other factors.
Please note that market data is provided courtesy of DriveWealth and Tiingo and FX data is provided by Airwallex. No representation or warranty is made as to the timeliness, reliability, accuracy or completeness of the material and Stake does not accept any responsibility arising in any way for errors in, or omissions from, that data.
Orders and Execution
Stake offers different order types, including market, limit and stop orders.
A market order is an order to buy or sell a security at the current market price as quickly as possible. Market orders generally prioritise successful order execution over order price. They are not guaranteed to execute at the last price at the time you submit an order. Due to volatility and other factors, market orders may execute at a significantly different price. Market orders are not guaranteed to execute, due to illiquidity for example.
A limit order is an order to buy or sell a security at a specified price or better. Limit orders only execute if the security’s market price reaches the limit price set by you or better. If the specified limit price is never reached, the limit order will not be executed.
A stop order is an order to buy or sell a stock once a specified trigger price is reached. If the trigger price is reached, this triggers a market order to be placed for the desired trade to execute at the best price immediately obtainable. Stop sell orders are often used to limit the amount of losses if a stock price falls, however they are not guaranteed to execute, and may execute at a significantly worse price than the trigger price. Stop orders may reduce your trading risk, but they do not completely eliminate it. For example, in a highly volatile market the market price may drop so quickly that there is no opportunity to liquidate your position at the stop price designated. You should monitor the status of your stop orders, especially once the trigger price has been met.
It is important to note that the limit price or stop price specified by you may not be reached and your order may expire or be canceled beforehand. The exchange, Stake, or the broker, may need to cancel your order due to causes including (but not limited to) corporate actions, market statuses, or your specified price becoming too far from the market price. Even if the limit price or stop price specified by you is reached, your order may still not execute for a range of reasons, for example due to a lack of liquidity or technical error.
You may also place specific order types with different ‘time-in-force’ instructions or expiry periods that indicate how long an order will remain active before it is executed, canceled or expired.
It is your responsibility to monitor and manage your orders and instructions. You may not always be able to amend or cancel your instructions related to certain order types before the order is executed in full or part.
With all orders, factors such as market conditions, price volatility and liquidity may mean that an order is only partially executed, or not executed at all. Orders are not guaranteed to be submitted by us or guaranteed to execute in full or part, at a certain time or at a particular price. Orders may expire or be canceled or purged by Stake, our Service Providers or the market operators or participants.
Stake will not execute your orders, but rather will transmit them to our Third Party Broker Dealer, DriveWealth, who will be responsible for execution. We cannot control the execution of your orders once these are transmitted to DriveWealth and there is no guarantee that either we or DriveWealth will accept your orders.
Whilst we or Drivewealth will do our best to execute your orders as quickly as we can, the prices of Instruments can move quickly. This means that the price at which you submitted your order may not be the price at which your order is executed. In some circumstances, your order may be executed at a "better" price and in other circumstances it may be executed at a "worse" price than the price quoted to you. If your order is executed at a "worse" price than the price of the instrument at the time you submitted the Order, we have no liability to you to provide you with the difference in those prices. Please refer to the best execution terms of Stake’s US broker here.
Extended Hours Trading
Before placing instructions to trade US securities in pre-market hours (4.00am - 9.30am Eastern Time (ET)) or post-market hours (4.00pm to 8.00pm ET) (Extended Hours Trading), an investor should consider that trading outside of standard US market hours (9.30am to 4.00pm, Monday - Friday Eastern Time) carries additional risks due to lower liquidity, price volatility, news announcements, higher volatility and wider spreads. Extended Hours Trading may not be suitable for all investors, and investors should carefully consider their own risk tolerance, objectives, financial situation and needs to determine if Extended Hours Trading is appropriate for them. Stake does not make any recommendations about whether Extended Hours Trading is suitable for individual investors.
During Extended Hours Trading, there may be lower liquidity and wider quote spreads. This means that there is less trading volume which can make it more difficult to execute trades, and wider spreads between the bid and ask prices for securities. As a result, instructions to place trades may not be executed (in full or part) during Extended Hours Trading and investors may find it difficult to get as favorable prices as they could have during standard US market hours.
Typically, many participants of Extended Hours Trading are professional traders from large institutions who may have access to more information than individual investors. We recommend that investors always research securities before making any investment decisions.
The price of securities may fluctuate more during Extended Hours Trading than standard US market hours. News, information and market updates announced during Extended Hours Trading may significantly impact the price of securities. Such announcements, if combined with lower liquidity and higher volatility, may cause sharp price swings of securities. Additionally, the price of securities may not be calculated or widely disseminated during Extended Hours Trading for certain securities whose value is derived from an underlying index or calculated at other predetermined levels. The prices of securities traded during Extended Hours Trading may not reflect the prices at the beginning or end of standard US market hours. Consequently, you may receive an inferior price when using Extended Hours Trading.
During standard US market hours, trading quotes, last-sales reports and prices are consolidated across electronic communications networks and trading facilities. Stake, via its US broker, may not have access to every, or any, facilities that participate in Extended Hours Trading. This means that quotes and prices will only represent the prices available at that time through facilities that Stake’s US broker has access to. Quotes and last-sales reports can vary widely between facilities, so you may not receive the best bids and offers available on every facility during Extended Hours Trading.
Instructions for orders designated for Extended Hours Trading are not guaranteed to be executed in full or part, and our US Broker may reject certain orders at their discretion.
For more information about Extended Hours Trading and the risks, see our US Broker’s Extended Hours Trading Disclosures here. This contains important information about how Extended Hours Trading works and important considerations, including the order types available and how our US Broker will handle them. For example, DriveWealth uses a practice referred to as ‘Market Order Collaring’ to limit losses for market orders where the market price has drastically changed.
Analyst Ratings
Stake sources information such as financial data, market data and depth, course of sales, analyst ratings and stock ratings (Information) from third party vendors. Data is not delivered on a real-time dynamic streaming basis. System availability and response times, data, liquidity, execution speed and price are subject to market conditions, order size, order types, any connection limitations and other factors. No representation or warranty is made as to the accuracy, completeness or timeliness of the Information and Stake does not accept any responsibility arising from errors in, or omissions from, the Information.You agree that such Information is for informational purposes only and is not intended to constitute a recommendation or general or personal financial advice and that as a result of having access to or using the Information, no agency or advisory relationship is created between you and Stake. Neither Stake nor any third party provider is responsible for any investment decisions or for any damages or other losses resulting from the use of the Information.
Over the Counter Securities
Before investing in an Over the Counter (OTC) security, an investor should be aware that OTC securities are securities that are not listed on a major exchange. An investor should consider whether investing in OTC securities is appropriate for them, taking into account their investment objectives, the risks of OTC securities and associated charges.
OTC securities may be more illiquid than securities listed on a major exchange, which may impact the execution price and an investor’s ability to buy or sell such securities within a reasonable period of time. OTC securities may be subject to higher volatility in price and spread. Further, OTC securities in certain companies may trade at a lower volume and any trade may impact the stock price more heavily.
Certain OTC securities may not be subject to the same minimum listing standards and regulatory requirements as listed securities on major exchanges. Companies may not be required to report and disclose certain information. Publicly available information about the company may also be difficult to obtain. There may also be business risks associated with OTC securities, including that the company may be new, have no assets, operations or revenues, or have products or services that are still in development. Investors should thoroughly research the relevant company before investing in an OTC security. For more information about the risks, please see here.
Waitlist and Early access to features
Getting “early access” to a promotion with Stake is defined as signing up with a valid email address on a waitlist for an upcoming feature or promotion. Early access to the promotion or feature with Stake is not an offer or solicitation of any financial services or any confirmation that a trading account with Stake or any account with any of its partners has or will be opened. Priority on any waitlist or promotion may be given to existing customers of Stake. Stake may from time to time run promotions or programs offering incentives. If you elect to enter such an offer, you agree to the terms and conditions that apply to such promotion or program.
Third Party Links
Links on our website, the Stake app or any Stake related website may take you to a third party site. These sites are not affiliated with Stake and may have a different privacy policy, level of security and terms & conditions.