You can try tiger brokers or moo moo trading since you are interested in US and china.

Cheapest way is still via IB. No one can best their commission.. Not to mentioned they have now removed the pesky Usd10/month fee which makes it even cheaper. Combine with the fact you can deposit SGD directly via local transfer, exchange at Spot rate inside interactive broker and open sg banks as Malaysian you can't get any cheaper than this.

What's complicated? All you need is CIMB Malaysia. Then open account using CIMB sg website. Then fund CIMB sg account.
After that open interactive broker. All online. No need visit sg or us to open account.

Step by step instructions can see this blog.
https://ringgitfreedom.com/banking/opening-...for-malaysians/
https://ringgitfreedom.com/investing/invest...station-global/
-just skip the tradestation page and go straight to interactive broker website and click open account. After that the steps are the same.

Ziet has something to say about TSG vs IB. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvwoBjGPG8Y&t=169s

That's pretty much the case. But IB's customer service isn't that bad last time I tried, there's free support via US toll free line instead of emailing back and forth with TSG.

Perhaps need more time to observe. Main reasons for choosing IB are the lower commissions and the availability of fractional shares trading.

It's old news. Last time yes. It's because last time IBKR have USD10/month inactivity fees hence better to go TSG route to avoid paying the fees. But since they abolished it, no more incentive to use TSG.

This is IB's pricing: https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=1590

This is TSG's pricing: https://www.tradestation-international.com/...ng-commissions/

In general, TSG's pricing should be more expensive than IBKR, since they earn fees and commission on top of IB. If the fees are cheaper, TSG would have gone bankrupt long ago.  TSG is introducing broker to IB, remember. IB earns as they should according to fixed/tiered pricing behind the scene, add that up with the fees/commission TSG earn, that would be the price shown on TSG's pricing page. 

For small volume, IB's tiered pricing is cheaper for US exchanges, HKEX, LSE compared to TSG. You can check the minimum fees and % fee per trade value.

The only exceptional case is SGX, IB's fixed pricing is cheaper for SGX for small volumes than tiered pricing, but still comparing tiered/fixed vs TSG, the former 2 are cheaper than TSG.

So in short, IB is cheaper than TSG for fees/commission.

No problem. Always glad to help. If you delink from TSG, then you automatically go to IB Pro. If you are new customer, you are also automatically linked to IB Pro.

IBKR Lite is only available for US and India clients. For new IB users here is the video guide, by Ziet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f__HgJRe3nU

I think you mean dividend withholding tax? That applies to US domiciled funds like VOO, rate is 30%. CSPX is UCITS, domiciled in Ireland, they still pay tax behind, rate is 15%, but that is factored in behind in the annual charges, so you don't need to sign any forms like W-8BEN etc.

In both cases (VOO and CSPX), the dividend will be affected since it is taxed anyway. The only thing to compare is whether the fees/charges from investing in CSPX UCITS, after accounting for the lower WHT of 15% vs 30% of VOO, is still lower than or higher than buying VOO directly the US. If it is lower, than CSPX is a better choice, if not, then VOO works better, for the long run. 

Can you share the link/source which states CSPX more expensive than VOO? I think the $10 per month is the monthly inactivity fee charges but that is abolished now. So it does not matter now. In the past few brokers allow one to access UCITS on LSE, IB is one of them, whereas US is a more developed market, so more brokers have access to them.     

You can find IB's charges here: https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index...=1590&p=stocks2