Hi, Can someone help me to find a good shares broker? My goal is to build a long term portfolio of shares, mainly in French companies. I will hold positions for months / years and will not be involved in day trading. I am not looking for a CFD broker as I need to hold the underlying share and I am looking to receive dividends on my long positions. I will invest about EUR 3,000 max in any company. In terms of commission, I would be looking to pay less than 0.1% per side of the position. In terms of leverage, I will use leverage 1 or 2 at the most. Leverage is not essential. I will not do short selling. The broker must not charge other fees than trading commissions, like inactivity fees, monthly fees etc (therefore it excludes Interactive Brokers). I will start with a capital of about EUR 6,000. I realise this is a small capital to start with and therefore I can't afford to pay for inactivity or monthly fees with such a small account. I am looking to make about 10% return / year (that is about EUR 600). Therefore I am looking for a cheap broker in the long run, ideally yearly cost should be zero (except for trading commission obviously). The Broker must allow trading in shares of French companies, mainly CAC40. If you know a good shares broker, please let me know. Many thanks
unfortunately for you, i guess u will not find what you are looking for. trading stocks in Europe is much more expensive than US for retail customers. maybe if you had some big size you could find the comms you are looking for but with just 6k to invest, i don't know any brokers that cheap. it may be possible to buy the shares thru (eg) IB, then shut down the a/c and transfer the stock to a holding account? maybe... otherwise, ask yourself, what's in it for the broker? your 6k investable capital, even at 0.1%, is just 6 eur comms. hardly worth going to the bother of opening an account (for them) it's frustrating i know - i ran into the same problem when i was retail
Try Binckbank, if you only want to invest and not trade. The problem with a non french broker is that you might not get all parts that come with the dividends (I mean the avoir fiscal), since no fiscal statement is delivered at the end of the year. It would be then as good as losing half of the dividend. Dubus is not bad either.
I will consider a stock broker to invest in US shares then if they have cheaper commish. Excluding IB, what US broker would you suggest?
OK, European brokers: - Internaxx (might be the perfect fit for you, I'm pretty sure they offer CAC40 shares and a lot more, altough their fees aren't cheap) - I hate to ask but did you try/what is wrong with Cortal Consors? (As you seem to be French, and they are the premier French online broker.) - .comdirect - E*Trade (they have a UK and Germany subunit, I don't know if they have a French one, but I know E*Trade Germany carries most European blue chips) - WH Selfinvest - Selftrade - RBS - Barclays Stockbrokers - Digital Look - 1822direkt - Maxblue - ING DiBa - Brokerjet - Saxo Bank (I do not recommend them, I heard many bad things about them, altough all in relation of forex trading: their stock trading arm could be legit, but why gamble on it? Once a crook, always a crook.) US Brokers: - you can try E*Trade US, they say they offer US, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, UK - Noble Trading I don't know of any other US brokerages that offer international investments possibilities online. Americans seem to be satisfied with the range of products offered domestically. Now, for the disclaimer: I DO NOT KNOW ANY OF THE ABOVE BROKERS FIRST HAND. (with the exception of Internaxx and WH Selfinvest) This means that the above is simply a list of brokers and is not a recommendation. You have to do your own due diligence, maybe others with real experience can chime in here. My understanding of the European online brokerage business is that its pretty much frowned upon by both customers (nothing short of equating it with gambling) and banks (as it usually takes a bank to create an online brokerage: very few independent brokers). Thus its nowhere near the US market where traditional brokerage houses are ever so fast to go out of business unless they go online. And the service US brokerages offer online are very hardly matched in Europe. There are still some pretty good European online brokers but they cater for customers with serious coin - about two 0s more than what you're thinking about. Alternatively, with such a small investment capital, you can try foreign exchange investment a.k.a. carry trade.