The good thing, there's a little choices for the local retail players to access US market.

MIDF Invest - owned by PNB
https://www.midfinvest.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobC...ASAAEgJYHfD_BwE

Rakuten Trade - owned by Kenanga Investors Berhad
https://www.rakutentrade.my/

All this trading most important is the "fees" too. As it will eat into your return long term/compounded. Basically you want to be investors, not speculators going in and out trading, and lost in bunch of fees in trade. Your trade should be infrequent and really buys into stock that you foresee/analyze growing thus growing ur investment.

Buying Index fund is easier as u buy basically the whole market rather then pick and choose needle in haystack and have trust the US market will keep rising.

Anyway, the capital injection back to the US market is huge, with other countries accessing them and people like those in Malaysia now putting their capital there. The general reading now the is the US stock market is over valued and high inflation now for their goods. The US feds should stop printing money. Bubble is YUGE now.....

I hope not only US these platform opens up, what about HKSE or Indian Stock exchange, show them a little love too. Don't blow capital to US, the other place need some too.

Looking at our sad KLSE....hahahaha, show a little love here too. There are good stocks here too.

^midf rates is expensive at usd8 per trade (once 30 days is over). Let’s wait and see if Rakuten will be cheaper than wise>IBKR

I think we put too much on rates on choosing platform if we want to be investors and not traders. I hope not we are not DAY TRADING on the S&P 500 index!! Certainly not.

You gonna go in there, use a platform YOU TRUST with your money, better it's regulated by law of your country. If anything happen, you are protected.

So you go in S&P index, think its a fair price at that time, put in 100,000 there and that's it. 1 time....maybe few months, years, u have capital accumulated and put in again, when it's fair and hopefully it grows. Your trade probably infrequent if ur investors.

What's USD8, if your 100K after 10 years, u hope compounded and grow to be 3, 4 x.....later.

You buy at a fair price and you wait. You become rich, not by frequent buying and selling, u rich by waiting your investment grow and compounded over time.

If you day trade and more on speculators, then yes, better u choose a less costly platform as each fees charges of each trade will eat ur profits or make ur lost worst off.

Currency also should be a factor. Assume you intend retire in Msia so will spend MYR. Hence you bet your USD shares many years down the road you liquidate and change back you are rich.

But for me Sporean USD keep depreciating against SGD. So it does not make sense for me to put into USD shares and hence I got for RMB, CNH denominated investment instead.

Real life experience. My PayPal USD saved many years ago was 1 USD give 2+ SGD. Recently forced to change it is 1 USD give 1.3 SGD !!!

How I wish we can easy get some RMB access. RMB is also appreciating against the Ringgit.

Don't always look at US capital market. Open and make it easy local platform can invest on China and India market. So the local small fishes can go buy those stocks there. Should be global.

Look for cheap bargain there, buy and hold, you probably can get also good return 10 years down the road and appreciating currency there.

Portfolio should spread abit regional and not too concentrated.

Pretty sure most Malaysia doesn't have a lum sum of money to put in S&P, most would rather DCA. Even if you DCA once a month, USD8 per month is equivalent to USD96 per year just for fees alone.

https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/raku...ear-say-sources

Previously rumoured can trade US stocks at local commission rates. But also previously rumoured to start in 2021. So who knows 🤷

DCA is the worst idea abused by the mutual fund and brokerage firm, platform provider industry. Putting each month consistently each month generate "fees" to the bookies of these industry. That's how they make money. Whether England or Brazil winning the world cup, it's the bookies that profits each bet.

As investor, your DCA only probably few times. If you see value in the biz, u buy the stock at certain price which if fair or cheap to you at that time. Even if the price of the stocks drop, and you still see value in it, you buy more via DCA. You don't DCA each month consistenly like zombie, don't think that's how super investor like Warren Buffet operates during investing.

Provided if one has a lum sum, which again, I highly doubt most Malaysian have.

I think Ramjade mention for IBKR what he do was accumulated enough then lump sum transfer (save on fees?) then inside IBKR he wait for correct time to buy. He mention 10k not sure he meant 10k MYR or 10k SGD or 10k USD

If you got no money to buy like Google, no choice DCA


Yup that's my plan for 2022. DCA into some of the super expensive. I lumpsum transfer RM10-12k. Salary peanut what for Malaysians.

Maybe not the right word. Invest with the amount you have after evaluation. Can be 5k, 10, 50K....while u look for a good deal. It's alright to sit on cash if there's not a good deal, nothing wrong with that.

Looking for advice from sifus. I want to start buying foreign ETFs and since IBKR has removed the inactive fees, I intend to use it.

From what I’ve read here, the best way seems to be open a SG bank account. Probably CIMB would be the easiest since it can be done from MY.

Then open a IBKR account with the SG bank info. In IBKR, use tiered pricing to purchase the ETF. If I understand correctly, with the funds, I should be able to buy in multiple stock exchanges across the globe.

Is my understanding correct? Also, should I have the SG bank account remunerated in USD to minimise forex charges when transferring into IBKR?

Thanks for any help.

Why do you need to remunerated? I never brin my money out form Ibkr. I reinvest it. Only bring money out if you really need it.
Each time you bring money back to Malaysia, you will lose some money in foreign exchange.

Oh, referring to moving money into IBKR, not withdrawing. I thought the reason for the SG account is to transfer cash into it? MY acc (RM) -> SG acc (USD) -> IBKR? Or can still use wise to do MY acc -> IBKR (via transfer wise)?

The purpose of cimb SG is two purpose.
1) to received your converted sgd and to deposit it into IBKR via FAST (local transfer)
MY bank account -> fintech - SGD into Cimb SG -> IBKR (SGD) -> USD
2) to send back MYR at the cheapest rate.

Thank you so much sifu. /bow

3) and also last time i see CIMB is the only SG banks which doesn't charge inward remittance fee for withdraw from IBKR.
Other banks charge inward remittance fee (last time i used Maybank SG)

if CSPX too expensive for you, get VUAA instead.

They are the same thing just that VUAA is cheaper since it is newer.
Both irish domiciled investing in S&P 500, same expense ratio, dividend reinvesting.