Advantages: Efficient, keen prices
Disadvantages: Not for occasional dealers

...I have been receiving mailings from Hargreaves Lansdown for some months. I have also been looking for an online broker to hold my share dealing account and it looks to me as if HL have the best offer in the marketplace. Each deal costs £9.95 regardless of its size (of course you have to pay the stamp duty on purchases) and there is a quarterly charge of £12.50 to maintain the account. Interest is paid on the balance at a reasonable, but not generous, rate. If you deal regularly, the saving on each transaction will quickly cover the acount fee; if you only deal rarely, this account is not for you. in all my exchanges with Hargreaves Lansdown I have found them friendly, efficient and helpful; they are clearly an ambitious outfit and I would not rule out a float of HL on the stock market in the next year or so.... Read review

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Advantages: Excellent service. Cheapest in UK.
Disadvantages: Absolutely none.

...I currently conduct ALL my share dealing with Hargreaves Lansdown on-line. Setting up the account was very easy on-line. The basic dealing account costs £40 per annum for which you also get 36 monthly publications relating to share tips, broker comments etc on FTSE and AIM stocks. These alone are worth some £120 per annum at normal client prices! Share dealing is carried out AT A SET £9.95 PER DEAL!! A price that is definitively the cheapest available anywhere in the UK. Trading is supported by a BOS high-interest account at approx 4% interest at present. Hargreaves Lansdown charge £12.50 for management of the Securities Account. This is more than paid for if you have an average of £1500 in the account! Dealing on the net is essentially instantaneous from an easy to use transaction page, supported by real-time prices. Confirmation... Read review

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Advantages: Very cheap, Very efficient, Very reliable. Very professional.
Disadvantages: Absolutely none!

...I started my share dealing years ago with several brokers including Charles Schwab. All of them gave me problems of poor availability, delays in processing deals and paperwork, and occasional errors. About 5 years ago I switched to Hargreaves Lansdown and have received 100% satisfaction ever since. Their telephone dealing was absolutely excellent, and their on-line dealing has bees completely without fault. A good web site, with real-time prices and share quotes, accompanied with an extremely easy to use dealing page, and high security levels, are complemented bt an e-mail return to confirm allk deals within a minute or two, and contract notes received in the post the followiong day. They also operate a high interest BOS account to make the movement of funds extremely easy and cost effective. Their dealing price of a fixed £9.95 per deal... Read review

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Advantages: None with TD waterhouse
Disadvantages: TD waterhouse has had it's day

...Following my earlier comments on the downhill quality of TDW I have just learnt that Hargreaves lansdown offer a free nominee account transfer service to them. They also allow you unlimited online trades in the first month that you openthe account for only 5 pounds per trade. Following that, I believe that all trades are at a set price of 15 pounds per trade. That beats TDW hands down as TDW are planning put up the frequent traders rate to 19.95 per trade. I am sure that this is a good deal and that it would be wise to shop around for more deals. if anyone has a view, please let me know.... Read review

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Advantages: Cheapest Execution only stockbroker
Disadvantages: Takes upto a few days to get everything set up.

...Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) was my second experience with an online stockbroker, my first being with Barclays. The fact that I didn't have to maintain a bunch of paper certificates was a major factor in chosing HL, coupled with the low charges. From an extensive search of many online brokers which offered the paperless CREST system (including Barclays) I decided upon HL. At £9.95 per transaction, plus about £50 a year management free (for the CREST system) HL were the cheapest. Upon setting up the account, which took a few days, I found dealing easy and worry free, there is even a limit option to prevent you from buying (or selling) at unwanted prices. Once completed you will recieve the contract note by post and the deal is done. One irritating point I found was that, you are unable to buy if the money hasn't cleared through your... Read review

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Advantages: Good discounts, excellent service and useful publications.
Disadvantages: Sorry, but I've yet to find any disadvantages.

...I joined the Savers' Organization, run by Hargreaves Lansdown, many years ago as a founder member. The investment information they sent me on a regular basis was of outstanding quality and has just got better. I love to do my own research and don't see why the fund managers should be allowed to keep the commission for themselves that they would normally pay to a broker or an IFA. So, when HL offer a discount, often equivalent to the initial charge, I'm delighted to take it. They have two web sites - hargreaveslansdown.co.uk and h-l.co.uk that provides loads of useful information and provision to requests application forms on-line. Alternatively, ring them at their Bristol based office, on 0117 900 9000 and they will send the forms by the next post. Return the form to them with a cheque made out to the fund manager in the sae... Read review

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Advantages: Excellent management, very good performance.
Disadvantages: Now a fairly large fund.

...At just over a billion pounds, this fund is three times the size of the average for the sector but only a third of the size of the largest in the sector. With 225% growth over 5 years and 525% over 10 years it has outperformed the sector average by a factor of 1.5. Richard Pease's management has kept this fund in the first quartile for most of the last eight years, not returning less than 15% annual growth since 1992. It currently forms a small but growing part of my portfolio, with my main European funds being T.U. European and Invesco GT European Growth. Jupiter have an extremely good reputation and, (according to the Jupiter Report from Hargreaves Lansdown) despite recent occurrences, their managers have been secured for the foreseeable future, and are not expected to defect to anything set up by John Duffield, Jupiter's former... Read review

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Advantages: very cheap and reliable
Disadvantages: ? high management charges

...... Read review

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Advantages: Excellent long term performer and likely to stay so
Disadvantages: A volatile sector that varies considerably in the short term.

...I bought into Aberdeen Technology in January this year. I was influenced by its consistent outstanding long term performance and after a discount from Hargreaves Lansdown the units cost me £28.11 each. The price rocketed to £42 or so and then fell back to around £30 in the correction. They recovered quickly and now stand at very nearly £36 which is well over 25% gain since I bought them. The fund has temporarily been knocked of its pedestal, no longer being in the "Top Ten" performance chart, along with many others in the same sector. The fund, however, was built on excellent solid foundations with investments in the fundamentals of technological development - well established companies making the components and providing the networks rather than the dot.com companies - and so will continue to rise at a very pleasing rate and, in my... Read review

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Advantages: Excellent management, excellent performance to-date and great prospects.
Disadvantages: 5% initial charge, but with 1% Artemis' discount and 4% from a broker this can be eliminated.

...At £91 million this fund is less than a third of the size of the average for this sector. Mark Tyndall's management skills are perfectly suited to this fund. Not only does he look for the right investments, but it must be the right time to invest. His skill at picking stocks that are undervalued but with good growth potential has seen this fund achieve 120% growth in the two-and-a-half years since launch. With well over 60% in the last year, it is in the top 5 funds for that period. It's up there with Solus UK Special Situation, ABN Amro UK Growth and Manek Growth - all well known high fliers - not quite as much growth but much less volatility than any of them. It's hotly tipped by Hargreaves Lansdown in their Investment Times publication, and the Artemis management team have their own money and their pension funds invested... Read review

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