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Updates

New UK discount broker and Prague trading from Saxo Bank

There have been a couple of updates to broker details on the site. In the UK discount stock brokers table, I have added a new service from Clubfinance, previously known as a fund supermarket and the cheapest way for self-directed investors to access the Skandia platform.

This is quite an unconventional service in terms of fees. It charges an account fee of 0.35% per year, with a minimum of £25 per quarter, but online trades in UK shares are priced at just £0.5/trade. Quite a few UK brokers are likely to adjust their fee structure in the run-up to RDR and the platform review, so we can expect to see some others experimenting with unusual arrangements like this.

In the international dealing area, Saxo Bank has added the Prague Stock Exchange for cash equity trading. It’s always encouraging to see a major broker adding another awkward-to-access market, but in practice the significance of this one is limited – there are just  15 stocks listed on the Prague exchange and many of them are cross-listed in Vienna.

The Czech Republic also has an over-the-counter market, RM-SYSTEM Czech Stock Exchange, but that isn’t part of Saxo’s new service. Foreign investors interested in that could look to Fio Banka, which owns RM-SYSTEM and offers an online trading service.

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Updates

Updates to UK stock brokers

There haven’t been many recent updates to the site due to a combination of other commitments and few major changes that I’m aware of among international stock brokers. However, we have seen a couple of UK stock brokers change their fees and this is likely to become more common in the run-up to the Retail Distribution Review and the ongoing Platform Review.

In particular, we are likely to see more providers introduce explicit account maintenance charges for both fund and share accounts, since they will no longer receive trail commission rebates from funds. The advantages and disadvantages of this change can be argued – certainly the improved transparency on exactly what clients are paying seems good – but it will probably mean a net increase in costs for smaller and less active accounts, which have traditionally been subsidised by the fees received on larger and more active ones.

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FAQs

The best ISAs for international stocks 2012

The tables in this post have been updated with new fees and brokers in the Best ISAs for foreign stocks – October 2012 update.

[Updated 23/04/2012 to include the ISA available from Saxo Bank on its Modern Wealth Management platform]

As we saw previously, the mark-up that many stock brokers put on currency conversions can be a very significant extra cost when trading international shares. And while you can’t ignore these hidden fees at any time, they become an especially  awkward problem for UK investors who want to buy foreign stocks within an individual savings account (ISA) tax wrapper.

While the ISA rules allow a reasonably large number of overseas stocks, they do not allow you to hold any foreign currency – so you need to go through the conversion between sterling and foreign currency every time you trade. As a result, excessively high FX commissions can become costly even more quickly than usual.

So what are the most cost-effective ISAs for dealing in foreign stocks? The table below shows the charges for the main UK execution-only brokers that offer ISAs and allow foreign stocks in them. (Some major firms – eg Interactive Brokers – don’t offer an ISA at all, while others – eg Barclays Stockbrokers – currently only allow UK shares to be held in one.)

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FAQs

The hidden cost of currency conversions

When you’re trading international stocks, it’s not only the charge for buying the shares that matter. The charge for buying the foreign currency the shares are quoted in can also be very significant.

At some stock brokers, this FX commission can be higher than the commission on stocks. And many brokers try to make their rates look better by hiding it deep in the small print or even not mentioning it at all.

This is particularly a problem in the UK, although investors everywhere should watch out for it. For example, take TD Direct Investing (formerly TD Waterhouse UK). It charges a standard rate of £12.50 per trade for international stocks. On an investment of £1,000, that’s a commission of 1.25%. But TD Direct will also charge up to 2% over the interbank rate for converting your currency – almost twice the headline stock commission.

To be fair to TD Direct, it displays its currency charges more clearly than many rivals. But while they may be transparent, they’re certainly not trivial. Charges like that will mount up pretty quickly, especially if you’re an active trader. So minimising your FX commissions is an important part of keeping your costs down and improving returns.

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Updates

Binck Bank, DUTrade and other updates

There have been a number of updates to the stock broker directory recently. These include entries for:

  • DUTrade, an online broker based in Bahrain and covering much of the Middle East and North Africa
  • Dutch discount brokerage Binck Bank – reported to be a good choice for derivatives and structured products on European markets
  • IW Bank, the online brokerage arm of Italy’s UBI Banca
  • Hong Kong broker Core Pacific – Yamaichi

Other major additions to the site include a comparison table of US discount online brokerages for trading domestic shares and options – a long-standing request from readers – and a comparison table of Hong Kong online brokers. There’s also a comparison table for fund supermarkets in centres such as Luxembourg and Singapore that will accept foreign clients.

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News

The largest stock broker by number of clients

While writing the update on Boom Securities being taken over by Monex, I found a Monex press release that adds some more background to my earlier posts about the estimated stock broker market share in various countries (US, UK, Singapore):

In Japan, Monex, Inc. is an online brokerage firm with a client base of 1.2 million. There are only 8 online brokerage firms around the world that have a client base of over 1 million: TDAmeritrade, Charles Schwab, E*TRADE, and Fidelity in the United States, Cortal Consors in Europe, and SBI Securities, Rakuten Securities, and Monex, Inc. in Japan.

It’s no surprise to see the four US heavyweights on that list (in fact, I think there’s an omission – according to Reuters, Scottrade has 2.5 million accounts) and given the size of the Japanese market, the major players there must also have a significant user base. I’m a little surprised to realise that Cortal Consors has so many clients.

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News

Fidelity expands international trading service

Fidelity, the largest US brokerage, at last seems to be making a serious effort in international markets, with the decision to open its international trading service to all account holders.

The firm has long had a decent set of overseas markets available for direct investment (as opposed to over the counter trading of foreign stocks in the US) and fees were generally not too excessive compared with peers. But the associated conditions were baffling – you needed a minimum balance of US$25,000 and over 120 trades per year or a balance of US$1,000,000. Any investor who met those criteria could and should find more suitable accounts at other brokers.

However, international trading is now available in accounts of all sizes, making it a reasonable proposition for the smaller investor. With another five markets just added (Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland), it covers a good proportion of the major markets.

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Updates

UK CREST personal accounts comparison table

The UK stock brokers section now also has a comparison table for stock brokers that offer personal CREST accounts. If you’re unsure what personal CREST membership is, CREST is the UK’s central securities depository and you can find an explanation of why you might want a personal account there in the notes under the table.

There aren’t that many stock brokers that do this. The table lists the six main ones; some of the other traditional full service stock brokers may offer CREST membership as well, but are unlikely to be any cheaper. Other firms will be added if I get concrete details (many traditional brokers tend to be vague about fees, operating “by arrangement”, which makes compiling comparison tables awkward).

There is also one other small update to the UK listings, with the addition of HSBC InvestDirect/InvestDirect Plus to the stock broker directory.

 

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Updates

Boom Securities expands Japan markets and other Hong Kong stock broker updates

There are a few additions and updates to the stock broker directory for Hong Kong international stock brokers. Perhaps most notably, the purchase of Boom Securities by Japan’s Monex Group has led to some expansion of its Japanese markets offering. As well as the Tokyo stock exchange, it now offers Osaka and the three smaller regional ones: Nagoya, Sapporo and Fukuoka.

New additions to the directory include BOCI Securities (BOCI Online), KGI and HSBC Hong Kong. These three firms are unlikely to offer much that isn’t already available for most international investors, but have been added to try to make the directory more comprehensive. There are a few other firms that should be added in the near future.

BOCI Securities states that “commission rate will be determined and agreed between customer & BOCI Securities”, which isn’t terribly helpful in giving an idea of how expensive it might be. Any investors who have used it and can give an idea of what typical rates are is welcome to leave a comment below or send an email via the contact form.

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Updates

Standard Chartered Bank Securities Trading and other Singapore stock broker updates

There are a number of new additions and updates to the international stock broker directory. One interesting one is Standard Chartered Bank Securities Trading, which moved into the Singapore brokerage market a few months ago with an unusual product.

It offers online trading in Singapore stocks for 0.2% per trade (0.18% for those with a larger banking relationship) and 0.25% per trade (0.2% for favoured customers) for Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan (including both the Tokyo and Osaka stock exchanges), the Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. This has no minimum commission, which is rare in the brokerage business and attractive to customers trading smaller amounts.

There are also apparently no account and no inactivity fees, custodian fees, no dividend collection fees, no corporate action charges, making it a commendably clean fee structure. There is one catch though; currency conversions done through Standard Chartered are considerably worse than many Singapore brokers, with users reporting a margin of 2% over the interbank rate. However, you can hold and fund foreign currency accounts with the bank, so you shouldn’t need to pay this every trade, if you’re careful.