Hi all, I need some help here find an US broker that allows me to maintain my brokerage account while living in Romania. I have an account with Optionxpress, but today they just told me that they don't allow me to maintain it if I move to Romania, even though 2 months ago they said they would allow me. Or what other solutions are there for my situation. Thank you.
This is a new problem. A few US Brokers have stopped adding foreign accounts because of excessive regulatory risk and expenses. FINRA and the SEC just have made it too difficult. Good Luck, 1245
See if http://www.interactivebrokers.co.uk/ will accept Romanian residents. I suspect they will. If not, if you are a U.S. citizen or green card holder, then possibly you could maintain a residence address in the U.S. since you will still be paying taxes to the U.S. anyway. (But you would probably want it to be in a state that does not have an income tax). With some brokers, you might need to use VPN so that your ip geolocate shows as USA. Or tell them you are travelling back and forth a lot on business. Otherwise, if you are not a U.S. citizen, then you may need to use a European broker in a country like France. There are plenty of good discount brokers in Europe. They offer access to all U.S. markets. Check French language or Romanian-language trading web sites.
Thank you 1234. Cimintel, thank you too. I called IB and they accept a Romanian address. I checked a few European firms and they charge a lot of commission.
Same experience here, I would like to add one non us broker, but haven't found competitive, at least at retail level. Most attractive brokers price wise out of Europe are actually using IB platform and topping IB's fee with their commission.Not very useful as IB is already quite foreign trader friendly. I'm still interested in a competitive asian or european based broker offering a multi products platform. It may require a higher minimum balance than IB for portfolio margin, but 5mil cash like Newedge seems to request is more than I can come up with.
Yes. FWIW, IB and/or it's affiliates are members of ASX, HKEX, TSE/OSE, SGX, NSE and BSE. We also offer access to KRX along with our FX products. Depending on your location, you may also have access to our CFD suite of products.
I confirm IB works well from Asia, IB is also very convenient as it provides local funding opportunities in a bunch of currencies through local banks, one can than exchange those funds from HKD/SGD/JPY etc... into USD or whatever currency through their idealpro platform. It saves quite a bit in currency exchange and bank transfer fees compared to when using most other US discount brokers.