Opening a US Brokerage Account

Opening a US Brokerage Account

I still remember buying my first US stock ( Citibank) back in 2009.I used a local brokerage and I must tell you that the brokerage fee is killing you. It is even more so if you are a trader because local brokerage charges an exorbitant fee. As you all know, Citi proves to be the worst investment I made, I bought at the price of about USD4 per share and later on it went into reverse 10:1 split and I sold my holding after almost 6 years with a profit of only 15 percent!

A few years back I started to use DBS Treasure to buy US stock and again it charges minimal USD18 per transaction.

Starting this year, I started to use Interactive Brokers and I IB has the best fee structure ( as low as USD0.35 per transaction) and best platform for longterm investors as well as day traders.

If you are a Singaporean, it is even better because you can use FAST to transfer your fund into IB Singapore account and the money appears almost immediately in your account. The exchange rate is pretty competitive  as well.

For Malaysians, funding your IB account can be irritating if you plan to line up in bank and being asked one hundred and 10 questions the reason behind transferring your money to US. I was very agitated a few months back when attempting to send money to IB account in US. ( Malaysians have to send to money to US in USD when they want to fund their account).

Anyway, I found a good way to bypass the hassle of lining up in bank or doing this via internet banking. There is an easy way to transfer your fund to IB account just a few clicks and the daily limit is RM30K.

Will share it with you all in my next post.