Hi, I am planning to invest in foreign share markets, namely NYSE, NASDAQ, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong and the UK.

Has anyone here opened a Global Trading Account before? I heard that Maybank Investment Bank does offer such a service.

I would very much appreciate some advice on the following :

1. Trading fees - has anyone made a comparison of fees and charges for trading? Which provider in KL has the lowest fees?

2. Taxes - I understand that in some countries, one has to pay capital gains tax. How much is it for US, Australia and Singapore etc?

3. Which country should I start? The US market sounds promising ... hoping to get Apple, Google, Facebook or even IBM shares ...

4. Is there a minimum amount to start investing ?

Thanks!

So far I have approched Maybank and ECM Libra.

For Maybank :

SGX Shares - 0.4% or US$25 per transaction min
NYSE, NASDAQ - 0.4% or US$25 per transaction min
ASX Shares - 0.4% or AUD65 per transaction min

For ECM Libra
SGX - 0.07% or SGD$20 per trx
ASX - 0.2% min or AUD$35 per trx
NYSE, NASDAQ - 0.15% min or US$15

Yeah, Malaysian share market has quite limited options.

We do not have any global companies that give good dividends and have strong track records like IBM, Google and Apple.

Thanks for the tip Rosdi1.

How do you manage your cash and foreign currency?

Do you have to TT the money to the broker in the US? Somehow TT rates are not very attractive.

Do you have to maintain a foreign currency account? If so which bank do you use? Maybank's foreign currency rates are not very good ....

Folks,

Some progress updates - I have successfully opened Maybank Global Trading account and have been actively buying in the last 2 weeks.

Why MBB instead of international foreign brokers? Legal recourse. If there are any issues with the local broker, I can go after them.

As for international brokers, things can be more complicated.

Moreover, my local broker has been very helpful [surpirisngly].

My general impression is that local brokers don't give you much attention until you have more than RM100K. The one I used to have with Affin totally sux, she is not even interested to chat any longer than 1 minute!

I am starting small but this broker of mine has been patient and responsive.

I have been focusing on banking shares in NYSE and HKEx since they are all very undervalued now. Their PE ratio are all single digit, DY is at least 2%, most are 3%.

I also get access to all the stock reports by S&P, it is a good source of information that summarized the profile of the stock. You CANNOT get that kind of quality report from local research houses.

For example - they even provide you with the total $$$ worth now if you had invested US$10,000 in the stock 5 years ago. And a lot of US banking stocks are way below the US$10K mark!

HKEx banking shares DY are even better and I'm talking about banks with assets size of more than RM500 billion.

Energy stocks are also down for this year and it is worth watching and see if it goes any lower.

One last thing - while ECMLibra per trx rates are lower, there is a local charge of RM40 per trade. So if you add up all that cost, it is more expensive than MBB Global Trade.

Anyone here has CIMB global trading rates?

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Added on July 22, 2012, 12:06 pmGreat list yokaze.

I just got the June 2012 copy of SmartMoney and it has an article on 2012 Broker Rankings.

Here's the Top 10 & theri commissions :

1. Fidelity - $8
2. Scottrade - $7
3. TD Ameritrade - $10
4. E-Trade - $10
5. Schwab - $9
6. TradeKing - $5
7. Zecco - $5
8. Merrill Edge - $7
9. ShareBuilder - $10
10. WellsTrade - $9

Fidelity, Ameritrade and e-TRade has the best trading tools and research tools ranking - 5*.


This post has been edited by gc68: Jul 22 2012, 12:06 PM

There is no minimum deposit BUT please keep in mind that this account is non-interest bearing.

This post has been edited by gc68: Jul 30 2012, 05:54 PM