For the minimum brokerage fees, Citibank has the lowest brokerage fee at $22. Otherwise, Saxo Capital seems to be offering the lowest brokerage fee at 0.18% of the contract value for any contract value below $100,000. However, you will need to put up a sum of $15,000 to open an account with them. For contract value above $100,000, Citibank, Lim & Tan and Philips are also offering a brokerage fee of 0.18% of the contract value.
Citibank
DBS Vickers
iOCBC
Kim Eng
Lim & Tan
Philips
Saxo Capital
UOB Kayhian
Posts
I think the lowest is etrade.
ReplyDeleteI think I didn't make myself clear that I am comparing brokerage fees for buying local stocks and I will edit this post to make it clearer. In general, the brokerage fees for buying US stocks is cheaper if you buy through foreign based brokerages.
ReplyDeleteHi Kay,
ReplyDelete1. With regards to Citibank rates, what is the difference btw 'Min commission (per contract)' compared to 'SG$50000 n below'? Does that mean that I can choose either 1 of them?
2. Am I right to say that the Philips SBP is for those who are not disciplined enough to invest a certain amt every mth?
3. Philips SBP is costly if funds set aside is small. What is the min amt of investment such that one can take the option from qn 1?
4. What's the difference in investing a mthly savings of $1500 every 3 mths VS a mthly investment of $1500? Does the DCA differ?
Thank you =)
Newbie
Hi,
ReplyDelete1. It means that for any one transaction you made, the minimum commission that the Citibank brokerage must earn is $22. You can't choose any one of them. The minimum commission (per contract) is not the header for the '$50,000 and below' and others.
2. You can use the Philips SBP for such a purpose. Other purpose includes being able to purchase an amount of shares of the counters under the Philips SBP that is not of any lot size regularly.
3. There is no hard and fast rule regarding this. Assuming that you are buying less than 2 counters using the Philips SBP, the main expense will be the handling charge which will be $6.42 in this case. Thus, this would be rather expensive if you are buying only a small amount. As such, I would suggest an amount of at least a couple of hundreds.
4. Perhaps you are referring to the difference between investing $1500 once every 3 months and investing $500 every month. Assuming that the expenses are negligible, the former will be less volatile. However, expenses do matter in reality and a higher frequency of investing will result in higher expenses which in turn may affect your returns slightly. That is something which you may wish to work it out in a spreadsheet.
Regards,
Kay
Hi Kay,
ReplyDelete1. Want to chk my understanding. Assuming I'm buying 2 lots @ $2.50, 2*1000*$2.5= $5000. Does that mean I would incur total charges of $22 + 0.28% of $5000 = $36 ?
3. Do 'counters' refer to the 19 share counters such as CapitaLand, DBS, SPH and etc? So the more counters I choose, more charges are incurred?
Thank you.
Regards,
Newbie
1. In this case, the contract value for buying 2 lots @ $2.50 will be $5,000. For $50,000 and below, the brokerage charge will be 0.28% subject to a minimum charge of $22.
ReplyDeleteSince 0.28% x $5,000 = $14 which is less than $22, the brokerage charge for buying the 2 lots @ $2.50 will be $22.
2. Counters refer to all stocks listed on SGX. For every single contract, the brokerage charge will be imposed once. You can take it that for every counter you buy, you will have to incur brokerage charge for each counter.
Kay
Hi guys.
ReplyDeletePlease dont forget there is this thing called an amalgation of orders.
Lets say, it means that if you buy one counter in the morning. And then, you buy the SAME counter at another point of the day. The commission is computed once instead of twice.
Hi Singlish,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the useful reminder.
Kay
Hi, Kay,
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering if Citibank offers the lowest rate, how come most ppl use POEM? Even most of ur post is illustrated using POEM oso. hehe
Another qn, Kay, does that mean only if i buy/sell same counter several times in the same day, the commission will computer once, if i buy/sell different stock in the same day, the commission will still be computed several times accordingly?
ReplyDeleteHi Zzz,
ReplyDeleteThis post of mine was written quite some long ago so it may not be accurate but I still believe Citibank has the lowest brokerage and DBS Vickers is just as competitive if you only do cash transactions. The requirement to open a POEMS account is not so stringent so perhaps quite a lot of people are using POEMS.
With regards to your 2nd question, I think you are right but to be on the safe side, you better check with your brokerage.
Kay
I am using Citibank for their brokerage service. I recently found out when you sell your shares, they break the qty sold (qty filled) to pieces, e.g. you are selling 500 shares, they are breaking it to 100, 100, 200, 100. Thus you get hit by multiple transaction fees for one trade!!
ReplyDeleteCalling them to find out what's going on...
Hi SGD,
ReplyDeleteThat must be a pretty bad experience. Are you selling your shares on the US market ?
Kay
Kay,
ReplyDeleteYes, it is on US market. Citibank and I are still trying to figure out what's going on....
Hi SGD,
ReplyDeleteThat is very interesting indeed. I wonder why is happening too.
Kay
Hmm... Citibank is currently running a promotion. Sign up before 30 November 2009 and get my first trade commission at 0%. Maybe I can go sign up and see how it's like (it's free anyway).
ReplyDelete- Mic
Well, here is the conclusion on Citibank's charges... It is NOT fixed $/transaction. So far I have ranges from $31-$73, although most are around $31. It depends on Limit/Market order when you place the transaction, and how many "qty filled" on that transaction.
ReplyDeleteThe best guide (so far) to know how much is the final charge is from the online statement.
Overall, I find Citibank is OK. They can do better with real-time ticker, and have fixed transaction charge (lower is better ofcourse). Nothing to compare to Etrade (understand that is not apple-to-apple comparison).
SGD
Hi Mic,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the information. There's no harm signing up for an account anyway since it's free. I think it will be beneficial too if you bank with them.
Kay
Hi SGD,
ReplyDeleteI think when it comes to the US market, the charges offered by those online brokerages are still the lowest.
Kay
http://www.dbs.com/posb/ibanking/tradingservices/default.aspx
ReplyDeleteDBS seems to be offering 0.18% commission or $18 minimum (lowest I ever encountered) for all Singapore trade done through iBanking
anyone have any experience on it?
dbs one so good... then i gonna apply for it ^^
ReplyDeleteHi Warren and Zzz,
ReplyDeleteFrom what I know, this is only applicable if you are willing to put cash upfront. That means you will not be allowed to do any contra trades. Of course, that is still a good deal for any investors who do not do any trading.
Kay
Hi Kay
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comparison. I always thought that the local brokerages (eg Kay Hian, Poems, Lim & Tan) charged the same amount , and that they are lower than what the banks charge ... until I read this. Thanks for the info. BTW, do u know if this info is still valid ? and from your own experience, what are the top 3 for local stocks purchase (not CFD, only stocks) in terms of cost and ease of use of online platform. Thanks
Hi Sean,
ReplyDeleteThis post was written in 2008 so things may have change so I'm not that sure if the information are still up to date. You should be able to get the brokerage charges on their official websites. Nonetheless, it's still true that some brokerages have cheaper charges as compared to others and there may be occasions when there are promotions on brokerage charges from time to time. So far I been using the services of two brokerages so I can't compare on which are the top online platforms for the local brokerages.
Kay
Cheapest is Standard Chartered Bank
ReplyDeletehttp://forums.ocworkbench.com/showthread.php?t=113050
Recently I have been comparing the commission charges for US stocks by different brokerages. It appears that Standard Chartered Bank has the lowest at 0.20 - 0.25% with no minimum commission. This appears good for investing small sums. However, I looked at their exchange rates for SGD/USD and the bid-offer spread is almost 4 times wider than that of Philips Capital (Poems). So it may work out to be the same in the end.
ReplyDeleteThen I looked at the US brokerage OptionsXpress. It charges a lower commission of USD 15, but the SGD/USD exchange rate is not advertised. I emailed to ask and was told it uses JPMorgan Institutional rate, but the rate is not shown on both OptionsXpress' and JPMorgan's websites.
I wonder if a lower commission is the whole story, and whether we should also consider the exchange rates?
I really like sharebuilder .com the trades are just 4 dollars cannot beat that.
ReplyDeleteI think there were lots of changes because this post was like 5 years ago. You can check traderxp review www.tradersxpreview.com to see which among the top performers in the trading world offers the lowest brokerage fee or you may even want to know that binary options is now a new choice for traders who would want a fast kind of investment.
ReplyDelete