Greetings of the season to you all.

New year, new sale.

UK investment platforms are cutting fees again.

Flat fees trimmed. Percentage caps lowered. Zero-commission language rolled back out like a boy band reunion tour nobody explicitly asked for but everyone vaguely remembers.

Interactive Investor. AJ Bell. Freetrade. Dodl. All dropping prices at the same time, just as the government launches its latest attempt to turn Britain into a “nation of investors”.

Internally this must feel like progress. In reality, the race to the bottom is just getting faster and there’s no winner.

Let's pop this thing open.

A wave of UK platforms has announced fresh fee cuts aimed squarely at retail investors.

The logic is sound. Make investing cheaper and more people will invest. It fits nicely in a spreadsheet and sounds good in a press release.

The problem is that this assumes cost was the reason people stayed on the sidelines.

But most retail investors are not running calculations on platform costs. They are too broke to be interested. And they’re watching their mate turn £5k into £400k on 0DTE Puts on WallStreetBets.

Fee cuts are appealing to platforms because they are easy. Confusion, boredom, and a customer base feeling poorer and harder to fix.

This is the financial equivalent of putting TG Jones on a big sign outside, but it’s still the same shitty WH Smith inside.

The industry obsesses over fees because they feel safe.

They are familiar. Quantifiable. Something you can point at and say “see, we fixed it”. When markets wobble and flows stall, everyone reaches for fees like a comfort blanket and hopes that is enough to calm things down.

Meanwhile, retail investors are not dreaming of shaving 0.2 percent off their platform charge. They want to ride the next Bitcoin wave. They want the story. The upside. The feeling that something interesting is happening.

What they absolutely do not want is a Warren Buffett strategy without the Warren Buffett returns. Slow, steady, sensible growth is only exciting when it actually grows.

Lowering fees assumes the investor is already sold and just wants a cheaper ticket. Most people are ignoring the merry-go-round in favour of Nemesis.

Here is the uncomfortable reality.

Most retail investors do not care about fees because they cannot calculate them. And the ones who can have no idea how to compare them properly.

Ask what they pay and you will usually hear “not much” or “isn’t it free”.

Fee structures are opaque and inconsistently explained. So when platforms announce fee cuts, they are fixing a problem most investors cannot see or feel.

Fees matter in theory. In practice, they sit below clarity, confidence, and excitement in the decision stack.

Fee cuts mainly benefit people who were already investing.

The Sheldon Coopers of the world. The ones who know exactly what they pay and use physics models to hypothecate on future returns. The ones who actually use Microsoft Excel…at home…for fun.

For everyone else, the change barely registers. They are not comparing basis points. They are weighing fear against confidence.

This is why fee wars never trigger a rush of new investors. They just make existing ones slightly happier.

Cost savings are not a growth strategy. They are a new sign above the door.

Platforms are starting to look like the Sports Direct of investing. Loud pricing. Endless offers. Very little excitement. Mike Ashley would be proud.

Fee cuts are fine. Necessary, even. But they are not belief. And they are not demand.