I wonder what the practical cost savings are vs PostFinance per year... for example per 1000chf earned anyone care to guess?
just signed up for a TD Ameritrade account... https://www.stockbrokers.com/review/tdameritrade and https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/inve...itrade-review/
Does anyone have experience with Vanguard's own broker? Is it possible to open an account with them if you're from outside of the US? Do they have convenient way to transfer money? You can buy their ETFs for free if you're their customer.
And Schwab or TDA, how to they compare to IB when it comes to currency conversion and wire transfers? I was that at Schwab you pay $25 for outgoing transfers.
Let's be frank it's not great. 0.3-1% spread at Schwab. But if you trade only in USD, both are good choices
0.3-1% seems a lot on the initial and final conversion. if I send my CHF then I want to convert them to USD, because yes, I only would trade in USD. And then when I pay out, then I would convert it to whatever currency I would need, CHF/EUR.
I also checked the size of the biggest brokers: Fidelity $2.1 trillion assets, 23 million accounts Schwab $2.6 trillion assets, 10 million accounts TD Ameritrade $774 billion assets, 7 million accounts Interactive Brokers $112 billion assets, 449 thousand accounts
https://www.brokerage-review.com/onl...ms-bysize.aspx
IB seems like a really small fish compared to the big guys.
So, why not use IB for cheap currency conversion? You can open accounts at all three if you want and trade and spread assets between them as you see fit
Yeah I see that IB is the cheapest. I just want to have a simple and optimal solution. Not tens of accounts. Btw does spreading your portfolio over many brokers give you any benefit?
Sure if one of them goes belly up - not all your money goes bust, SIPC protection limit is per broker (edit: no, SIPC limits are combined), or decides to investigate you for months for "compliance" reasons and locks you out of access, or gets hacked or whatever. You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket
ΙΒ offers access to markets and products that the others don't offer and it's GUI requires some sophistication to master it. For example the handling of FX is a good reason to open an IB account. Therefore the investors that require these services are not that many.
If your money is in USD and only trade stocks & ETFs the other big brokers are fine plus you get free real time data.
SIPC covers you even if you are not a resident of the US? Any ideas about the cash protection limits?
https://www.sipc.org/for-investors/i...#non-residents
$250k
Nonsense, mobile app is one of the best I've seen from a broker, as streamlined as it gets. Web UI ("Quicktrade") is reasonably intuitive. The big app - TWS, it can indeed be intimidating to learn, but you don't have to use it
I'm thinking of opening a trading account as well.
I now live in the UK and I was going for Schwab.
From what I read you send them foreign currencies and they convert them to USD, for that you pay market rate.
When you cash them out however you pay around 1% fee max for less than 100k, which is really a lot.
Am I correct in assuming that's how it works?
Which alternatives you suggest?
It'd be quite shocking if you really paid no spread on a wire. It's not really so much up to schwab but up to whoever they bank with for your currency to convert it (US brokers aren't allowed to play a bank themselves), and banks will rip you off with a spread, it's what banks do
So don't? What's wrong with just keeping it all in USD?
Ideally I'd like to be able to convert between different currencies on the forex market, and wire transfer directly in the currency I need.
I have no problems keeping it all in USD, until the day I will want to withdraw the invested money.
In that case, it'd hurt paying a 1% fee.
One could go through a cheap broker (transferwise or the like), I guess.
Such a broker has been already recommended in this thread and it ain't schwab
Withdrawing USD from Schwab to whatever bank account you want is free, except for the wire fees which most US institutions would ask for anyway, it ain't Switzerland, wire transfers cost money. Usually flat charge, $25 or so, not a percentage. If you have another US bank account you can probably even transfer for free via ACH.
And then it's up to you however you want to convert it to whatever currency you need and at what cost. The conversion doesn't really have to cost nowhere near 1%.
It's a bloody ripoff with about 1% spread on rates, not a broker. Less greedy than a typical bank, I guess, but not by much
Schwab always refund the wire fee. Thier Visa card is a winner, no charges & very good rates.
A few months ago you were very unimpressed with Fundsmith v S&P500 & NASDAQ 100. It's pissed on both those index's ever since.
Well, in the end I have decided to stay with Postfinance E-trading as it's just so much easier to handle my trading from the same interface as my main accounts, and also with the 90chf yearly rebate Cornertrader.ch is hardly any cheaper, certainly not significantly so in light of the low number of trades I will make (for the moment, anyway) and how long I will aim to keep the assets. Sometimes, safety and convenience is worth a little extra I think.
Yes, I have exposed myself to risk of loss vs letting it sit in my savings account, but there is something satisfying and even a little exciting about making (hopefully well-judged) investments based on the industries you have been researching as part of your hobbies on a daily basis for the last couple of decades.
I will see how this year goes in terms of return and learning and then re-assess my needs on the platform.
Guys can someone please help clear something up for me. I am about to switch to Cornertrader.ch with the aim of having the cheapest and most low maintenance broker within Switzerland, after now realizing how high the PostFinance buying and selling fees are. Maybe in the future when I have 100k of shares I will migrate to Interactive Brokers.
My questions are, if one buys stocks on SIX from a Swiss online broker:
Is this article correct in that profit kept from share trading is tax-free in CH if you are regarded as private, but the tax office could classify you as a business? https://www.moneyland.ch/en/stock-ma...ofits-tax-free Are you only liable for tax the moment you sell something? If you are classified as a business by the tax office and do end up having to pay tax, does it roughly translate to keeping 66% of your overall profits?
Sorry if any of those questions are a little basic, but I am still getting my head around all of this...
IB's worth it even for low value accounts! Have you considered currency conversion markups and stamp duty of the swiss brokers?
Stick to the five golden rules and you should not get into trouble,
If it comes to this, it would be treated like a self employment activity. Net realized gains are taxed as personal income, added to your employment and other income and spouse's if any, and taxed at your personal income tax rates. Plus you'll owe 10.25% AHV on top of it, double of the normal rate because you're considered to be your own employer when self employed. Overall, taxes and AHV could end up eating north of 50% of your gains.
Doesn't really matter where and through whom you buy, your trades are reportable in any case.
Ok, let me think (and thank you ivank, I am going to turn all of these posts into a noobie guide one day). If I read the description and application of stamp duty here: https://www.moneyland.ch/en/swiss-st...ies-definition
The stamp duty is automatically deducted by your bank or broker. The amount of stamp duty you pay depends on whether you trade on a Swiss stock exchange or a foreign stock exchange. Stamp duties are given as a percentage of share value.
Stamp duties on Swiss shares (Swiss ISIN): 0.075%
Stamp duties on foreign shares (non-Swiss ISIN): 0.15%
So does this mean:
A Swiss ISIN is not given to all shares traded on SIX (ie: it would only be given to a domestic Swiss company), so I will still pay more simply for trading using SIX? Stamp duty is completely avoided when using a foreign (UK) platform like IB? If you were to give a rough guide, what % overall would you say was saved from an individual trading on IB rather than using the Swiss cheapest such as Cornertrader.ch? Using IB is it still a saving even if you don't have enough trades to make up their "10GBP per month minimum commission" requirement?
Ok thanks, I'll try and stay small potatoes.
50%? Holy **** that is ridiculous, so all of that could even be paid on top of the AHV of your regular job? That seems damn harsh.
I would never assume otherwise, the last thing I will do in this lifetime is try and cheat the tax man outside of legal means.
There are both swiss and non swiss stocks on SIX, yes you'll pay more for non swiss. You'll pay stamp duty also on a sale so you can multiply the numbers by 2 already in your head.
That's correct! It's the law.
Well, currency conversion alone is 0.5-1%
I think so
Yes, marginal income tax rate in Zürich tops out at 40% pretty quickly. Even more worse In french cantons. Low swiss tax rates is a myth
Yes, there's no income bound on AHV contributions. Worse yet, above 86400 Fr income per year it's all basically lost money to you, not contributing any more to your future pension