I am in similar position , started out with IBKR only and thinking about estate problem later on and also to simplify the process for my parents to invest , at last i chosed fsmone (IBKR still my main account) , 0.08% but no cap unlike rakuten at RM100 for US share , advantages are seperate USD account , slightly lower fees 0.08% for transaction between RM45000/RM50000 and RM125000 , and i like their cleaner interface much more . Main cons is no cap brokerage fee lets say after 5-10years the account roll to a much larger figure it makes a big difference . But for our case i decided to treat it as a future cash flow account so wont sell anything more than RM100000 at once anyways .
Forex spread after multiple tries :
IBKR (myr to sgd to usd) 0.48%-0.52% , (usd to sgd to myr) 0.68%
FSMone (myr to usd) 0.56-0.65% (averages 0.6%) , (usd to myr) 0.57%-0.63%
HLebroking (myr to usd) 0.46-0.5% (can be as low as 0.4% sometimes) , (usd to myr) 0.57-0.64% (fluctuate quite abit)
Rakuten (myr to usd) first try 1.3% few weeks later second look 0.5-0.6% (big gap so gave up trying) , no USD account auto convert all sold value back to MYR .
Moomoo (myr wise to sgd) 0.5% , (sgd to usd) another 0.34% unlike IBKR which charges flat fee USD2 on all sgd to usd transactions .
During withrawal (usd to sgd) assume same rate 0.34% , almost 0.68% extra fees compare to IBKR , I assume Tiger broker is the same .
Conclusion :
Wealth accumulation - IBKR
Wealth protection (estate) - Hlebroking / FSMone (other than the brokerage fee , the painful part is the 0.15% stamp duty fee , abit like paying for estate planning )
Thanks for the analysis, in the end I just use Rakuten for ease as I do not have fsm account. Surprised the fsm spread is so low, for Rakuten it was around 1.3% difference compared to XE rate. As my amount is huge so I am OK for the cap brokerage. More for the convenience.