Newbie-Best platform for Trading USA stocks from UK?

[Schwarzennegger]

Good evening
Hope you are enjoying the heat here in UK

* I am newbie to the trading,reading last two months about trading, investments etc. To get more knowledge and insights. In the mean time don't like to miss some nice oppurtunities also get practical knowledge on day today basis.

* As i mentioned i would like to know the cheapest platform to buy and sell USA stocks from UK pls? like to do few trades with little money,also interested in buy and hold few of my USA stocks like, Apple, Microsoft,Costco etc.

* I did opened a Stocks and shares ISA account with AJBELL , nothing contributed yet! Read few articles which mentioned IG.com is good cost wise.

Your advise and suggestion much appreciated.Thank you.

 

[edwrightuk]

Hi

I have a little experience with this. I'm in the UK and I'm using IG which offers free trading of US stocks. You have to have made 4 trades in the previous calendar month (each of which cost £10) in order to qualify, but after that you're off and running. The catch is that you get charged on each transaction for the exchange between sterling and dollars. This might not be so bad (although check the rates for yourself obviously) but I'm day trading which implies a potentially large number of trades and therefore foreign exchange charges. In effect, I'm about 0.8% down on each trade before I've even started which puts me at a distinct disadvantage to those trading in the US. So I'm currently trying to find a way to trade out of a dollar account so I only have to pay for the currency exchange when I moving money in or out of the account, not on each trade.

This is as far as I've got so far - I'm not very far down the road on it, but maybe we can help each other out as we learn.

Regards
Ed

 

[edwrightuk]

Hi

I have a little experience with this. I'm in the UK and I'm using IG which offers free trading of US stocks. You have to have made 4 trades in the previous calendar month (each of which cost £10) in order to qualify, but after that you're off and running. The catch is that you get charged on each transaction for the exchange between sterling and dollars. This might not be so bad (although check the rates for yourself obviously) but I'm day trading which implies a potentially large number of trades and therefore foreign exchange charges. In effect, I'm about 0.8% down on each trade before I've even started which puts me at a distinct disadvantage to those trading in the US. So I'm currently trying to find a way to trade out of a dollar account so I only have to pay for the currency exchange when I moving money in or out of the account, not on each trade.

This is as far as I've got so far - I'm not very far down the road on it, but maybe we can help each other out as we learn.

Regards
Ed

Just did a little bit of research and it looks like the best option for me will be Charles Schwab which lets you a hold a dollar account and charges $4.95 per trade. So that's what I'll likely be going for. The catch is that you need to open it with a minimum of $25k

 

[Schwarzennegger]

Thank you Ed ,appologise for delayed response , i ended up opening with free trade , yeah quite loads of charges when dealing with USA shares. Your profile picture looks familar to me from hotukdeals,right?