Hi sifus!

I'm interested to open an account with a stock broker that allows Malaysian to easily deposit/withdraw money. Based on my readings, I should choose a broker regulated by SIPC in the USA.

Could you please recommend any brokers that are easy for Malaysians to use? Is FSMone regulated by SIPC?

Thanks in advance!

IBKR

For US stocks, many brokers allow you to do desposit/trade/withdraw, even Malaysian brokers allow US stocks trading too.

Now, SIPC is just an NGO agreeing to assist and expedite payout of up to 500k USD for securities and up to 250k USD for cash in case a US broker is facing financial difficulties or goes bankrupt. It is not a regulator and does not have the authority to do so.

https://www.sipc.org/about-sipc/sipc-mission

Brokers (and dealers) in the US are "self-regulated" by FINRA which in turn, is under the SEC. https://www.finra.org/about

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SIPC, however, is only for US-registered broker. Brokers in Malaysia in general don't register themselves in the US, so they are not eligible for SIPC. Most brokers in Singapore/US are registered in the US however, thus they are eligible for SIPC protection.

They include Futu (Moomoo), Syfe, Interactive Brokers, TD Ameritrade, Webull, and Tiger.

However, FSM (both SG and MY), Saxo Markets, Stashaway, Endowus, and others are not registered in the US, thus they are ineligible for SIPC. You can check the list of SIPC members here: https://www.sipc.org/list-of-members/

Note that absence of SIPC memebership does not mean you are not protected. Most brokers segregate clients' funds from their company's business accounts, i.e. client's funds are held in a custodian account separate from the company. It's just that the process of reclaiming funds from non-SIPC members might be slow if the non-SIPC broker is in financial difficulties.

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As for brokers "easy" for Malaysians to use, that depends on user interface, fees/commissions, customer service, methods of transferring in/out funds, forex charges/spreads (if any), stability of the trading system/server downtime frequency, etc., you can have a look at the name of brokers I mentioned above for comparison.

Hope that helps.

Please avoid FSM. They are expensive. Go with interactive broker or TD sg or webull sg.

Of course if you like to give free money to your broker, by all means use FSM.

This post has been edited by Ramjade: Jun 29 2022, 07:41 AM

What about rakuten?
Is it good

More expensive fees than IBKR, they are partnered with IBKR right now so it's basically IBKR + extra fees (due to the convenience). Rakuten is still cheaper than most Malaysian brokers like banks etc. If you open an IBKR account, you also need to open an SG account to transfer funds over. It's more of a pain in the ass, but you get cheaper fees that way. Rakuten is very easy, you bank in to it, you withdraw from it. The upsides are that is is very easy to open/deposit/withdraw and deals all in RM or USD (no SGD involved). Negatives are the more expensive fees and also no USD account (yet). All money is stored in RM. If you are buying growth stocks with no dividends, this doesn't matter so much but if you plan to compound your dividend stocks, its very poor value because your USD dividend is converted to RM then you have to convert from RM back to USD to purchase more stocks. In general I don't touch US dividend stocks so I don't really mind and I use Rakuten for the convenience.

This post has been edited by ivanpei: Jun 29 2022, 01:24 PM

Actually i open IBKR already,
but personally feel abit "insecure" to put money in US. (i know is it 100% safe, but jz personal opinion)

Will look into rakuten.

Thanks for the info.

This post has been edited by sl3ge: Jun 29 2022, 02:01 PM

Interactive broker is actually a damn kiasu and scarry cat broker if you know how they operate. Think of it as public Bank but super conservative. They have no debts and one of the highest net margin of US brokers.

This post has been edited by Ramjade: Jun 29 2022, 08:40 PM