Share dealing - NYSE/NASDAQ

[Harry Flashman]

Can anyone recommend an online share dealing account for dealing in US securities? Infrequent trades, about £1-2k a month. This issues I seem to e finding are hidden costs in the currency conversion or dealing with third parties (e.g. Hargreaves Lansdowne's platform) - would appreciate any advice/pointers!

[twinturboz]

I used to use TD Waterhouse easy platform to use, convert your funds once into $ then specify the trade to execute in $ that way your not converting currency on every trade. Will have to fill out a form to trade in US stocks.

[Lardydah]

Who do you bank with day to day? HSBC offer their banking customers two services: "InvestDirect" and "InvestDirect Plus", the latter allows you to trade NYSE/NASDAQ listed stuff, and I'm pretty sure you can open additional cash accounts and hold separate balances in USD or EUR. It's 30 bucks to execute a US trade, I'm not sure if that's competitive or not with other services out there.

I use them solely for UK stuff, so unfortunately I'm not sure how decent an FX rate you get given, but at least if you have a USD account there will be less exposure to FX.

Not the best answer, but something to look at, only useful if you bank with HSBC mind!

[Harry Flashman]

Thanks guys - My bank do not have a particularly decent trading platform, didn't think of a USD bank account to trade from: Lady Flash is American, so this may not be as hard to do as all that...

[twinturboz]

Over complicating it buddy, don't need a US bank account or for that matter even need to be American.
Just open an account with an online broker Td,saxo,Halifax etc, fund the account in sterling and within that same account there should be an option to convert your funds to $.

Then just share trade in $ until you amass your fortune, and then convert back to £.

[walm]

Harry - seriously don't bother with a US account.
They will charge you even for a basic deposit account and that alone will cause a meaningful headwind to returns on <£10k trades.

Then you also run the risk of the IRS chasing you.

Also don't forget that a bunch of equities have ADRs traded on LSE or in Europe - although you face the same problem with Euros I guess.

[Birkin1932]

Why trade equities?

CFD is the way, no tax issues etc etc

http://www.fxcm.com/uk/markets/cfds/stock-indices/


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