Broker Platform Recommendations for UK investors for investing in international stocks as well as UK

9th Feb by jlynchhurst

21 comments 824 reads

Hi all,

Newbie here, looking to set up a portfolio, was wondering if anyone can recommend a platform which allows for international investing at reasonable prices.

Thanks for your time.

Regards

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Jlynchhurst

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21 comments

Chris.Brown

9th Feb

I had the European subscription package on Stockopedia last year, but switched it to the US package because the majority of European small-caps on my shortlist were unavailable on Hargreaves Lansdown and IG. I didn't even find there to be a big difference between those platforms - IG maybe had the odd one which HL didn't.

Two examples are £LLN and £GOFORE. I couldn't get either last summer. HL said they could have added them faced with a request, but had stopped onboarding new stocks due to the pandemic and market volatility. Interactive Investor had Lleida but I couldn't bring myself round to opening an account and transferring funds just for one stock.

Someone mentioned Interactive Brokers (IBKR) on another thread recently. I downloaded the app and their demo account included both the stocks mentioned above, as well as most of the other European ones that HL and IG didn't have available. It is primarily an American firm, but seems to have excellent coverage so I'd try there.

On another note, I placed my first US trade a couple of weeks ago through HL and was very disappointed. Not just the £50 foreign exchange charge. It was a Nasdaq company with a $2bn market cap. When I went to submit the trade I got the following message:

'Before we can execute your order outside a Regulated Market or a Multilateral Trading facility we need your prior express consent going forward, to trade in this way. Are you happy to provide your consent for this trade and any future trades?'

This immediately brought to mind a dark pool where my order would be front-run by High Frequency Traders like Citadel. Sure enough, I was quoted a price about 1% above the offer price HL were quoting pre-trade. I intend to send a message to HL advising them that some of us have read 'Flash Boys' by Michael Lewis and I'll be using IG for US trades from now on!

herbie47

9th Feb

Yes I’m one who have opened an IG ISA account. At first it was fine but then there were problems for 3 days running when the US markets opened, however since then it has generally been ok.

It is a very basic platform but generally works ok and costs are low if you do 3 trades per month or more. Then the next month fees are reduced. Only done uk and USA shares so far. Some European markets are missing such as Scandinavia. Also they don’t do funds.

I would check out which markets they cover. I also use HL but their fees are expensive but they do have wider coverage.

Which markets do you want?

jlynchhurst

10th Feb

Thanks for your comment, IG seems the better option, looking for UK, US, EUROPE and CHINA.

Have you heard of degiro, fees looks low and good ratings on Trust Pilot.

jlynchhurst

10th Feb

Thanks for the information, i think i will stay away from HL, have you heard of Degiro (Good ratings on TP and low fees, wide range of markets)? Interactive brokers look good going to open a demo account to have a look.

jlynchhurst

10th Feb

Thanks for the information :)

PLS1nve5t

10th Feb

I could be wrong, but I don't think Degiro do ISA's ?

That's pretty much a necessity.

raman_deenadhayalan

10th Feb

That's very good to hear.. I was so complacent with HL platform where I had SIPP and ISA together.. Given that the broker fee is expensive compared to others, I'll look in to IG demo and try to move out from HL soon.. Thanks again

JohnEustace

10th Feb

I have a trading account with Interactive Investor that allows me to hold funds in $US and Euros as well as others I've never used namely Singapore, HK, AUS and CN dollars.

I mostly hold US companies in that account. You only have to incur the costs to convert currency once and then can buy and sell with settlement in the foreign currency. That's not allowed in an ISA.

Of course having started small I'm now having to think how best to manage capital gains assuming Mr. Sunak is bound to target that for a tax rise. So no perfect solutions exist that I know of.

PLS1nve5t

10th Feb

I also have ISA's and a SIPP at HL, but these are mainly for IT's / regular income. I trust them to hold these for me rather than some smaller company, but there is no churn so minimum cost.

Horses for courses as the saying goes :-)

herbie47

10th Feb

Yes I have looked at Degiro but it does not offer an ISA, so for me it's a non starter. If that is not a problem then it seems ok.

I looked at Trading212 but don't I trust them from some of the reviews.

Re £IG for UK, most USA and some of Europe they are fine, not sure about China. You can do a demo on IG.
Quotes on IG are as good as HL or better sometimes.

Watch out for forex fees.

I had a look on Trustpilot, score not bad but 23% gave bad reviews, I would go through those and see what the issues are.
I would be a bit careful with reviews on Trustpilot, some companies request the good reviewers to do a review on Trustpilot, therefore you may get a biased selection, I think they are termed invited reviews, check Trading212.

DamianB

11th Feb

I don't know what an ISA is in the UK, so maybe these suggestions are disqualified, but Interactive Brokers is a very good global mkts solution. Dog of a platform and help desk though.

I like IB as it allows sub accounts for each country I invest in. And they can be funded and denominated accordingly. They also offer wholesale interbank FX rates, so just for general use it is great if you move funds between currencies and countries. I can also have sub accounts for different strategies, and move open positions between accounts. The customisable reporting functions are way above retail class as well. Really very good.

IB also offers CFD contracts on larger global shares. So you can very easily short or employ leverage on longs. Example: back in August 2020 I had run out of funds in my US account, didn't want to sell anything to raise cash, wanted to buy CROX, did so with CFDs, and am still long and up 90%. They don't re-quote either, you get the exact same price as the underlying.

Here is every product my account has access to for VOD, grouped by exchange. Different accounts have different access. eg, investor accounts wont have access to CFD products etc.

TSLA

The IB platform (TWS) is well known as poor (functional, but horrible to use). You can avoid it by opening a Trade Station Global account, which uses TS (nice!) but executes via IB in the background. Seems complicated with effectively two accounts, but apparently works well: TS front end/IB backend. TSG is not available in all countries. The TSG solution helps if you want to analyse [charts] and execute orders and report performance in the same platform. I don't... I analyse using TradingView (easy to use and pretty), and execute and report using IB. Apparently TV will this year allow execution via the IB platform. That will be huge. IMO Stockopedia should license their fundamentals analyses and screening to TV. The combo would be killer.

For the record, I really dislike dealing with IB. Their internal systems appear to be a mess, and staff offer a poor user experience. But they are almost a pro-level global platform, with retail access. And as a broker they (apparently) hold USD7bn in excess regulatory capital. People run small hedge funds using IB.

Saxo Bank also has good global and product reach, but high comms. Stock comms these days should be free or very low. For small transactions in some counties they charge around $10 a side!

msirius

14th Feb

I use Trading212, HL, IB, Free Trade and Degiro. Mainly to have good coverage. Still missing warrants. Can anyone confirm dealing with warrants with your broker?

DamianB

15th Feb

What company? I can check on IBKR

Spl183

15th Feb

Gents,

Certainly not the cheapest by I recently opened up an II ISA since I am impressed with their larger range of North American stocks versus AJB,IG and even T212.

Was more focused on targeting specific names rather than costs.

Thanks, Spl183

herbie47

15th Feb

But ii have a 1.5% forex fee which IMO is far too high. Not found any US shares, that I'm interested in, missing from IG but quite a few European shares are.

DamianB

19th Feb

This is probably true for numerous brokers, but another benefit of IBKR that has saved me a few times: they cancel GTC stop loss orders and also limit buy order, after the close, if a corporates action ex-date is the next day. Handy for stock splits. Or big divs when the market is close to your stop or buy limit. They send an email advising the cancellation.

I should know when a 6:1 split is coming... but, sometime I don't. Too many portfolios spread across countries.

herbie47

19th Feb

Been using IG now for about 6 weeks, there was a problem about 4 weeks ago when the US markets opened, could not trade for about 1 hour on any market, since then it has been fine.

The fees are low compared to HL, as I did 3 trades in January, now all my trades are £3 on UK shares and free on US shares but there is a 0.5% forex fee.

One good thing is if you put in a low limit price this can often get filled or partially filled, this would never happen on HL. I will still keep some with HL as IG does not have good European coverage and does not do funds.

So I'm reasonably happy with IG so far, only issue is moving some of my cash from my HL ISA S&S account, I did the form yesterday, so we will see how that goes.

I see Trading212 is not opening new accounts as it's been snowed under with applicants.

Wilbraham

21st Feb

Hi all. Can I ask if anyone is using IG for their SIPP investments? All I can establish is that an IG SIPP is administered through James Hay, though I can find no mention of IG as an 'investment manager' anywhere on James Hay's website. IG's own website has just a few references to their SIPP - and clicking them generally takes me to a hopeless page titled 'How can we Help?' Curiously a google search for IG SIPP throws up several helpful-sounding questions - but they all take me to this hopeless Help page. (I also found a couple of posts on their 'Community' page but no useful information.)

So it's not at all clear how one would even set up an IG SIPP - do you start the process with JH or with IG themselves. I should say that I'm attracted by IG's platform/range of securities but the involvement of JH is a negative for me based on other experience.

It seems to me that neither party really wants to promote their joint SIPP offering. If anyone has had a happy SIPP experience with IG I'd be delighted to hear - ideally with an idea of how one starts the process.

Thanks

Gromley

21st Feb

On the subject of IG I thought I would raise something I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else on Stockopedia (although Twitter is alight on the subject.)

I believe that this applies to both CFD's and Spread-bets.

IG are reportedly withdrawing from supporting a massive list of stocks (more than 1,000 I believe).

Essentially, for stocks on the list :

You can no longer open new positions.
Any open positions will move to a 100% margin requirement by the end of the coming week.
You will have to close any open positions within 30 days (or they will close them).

I am reporting all of this second hand, because despite having been a customer of IG for around two decades I have had no notification from the whatsoever as things stand. I do have positions in (at least) two of the stocks that they will no longer be supporting.

It is reportedly due to them being asked for more margin from the parties they trade with in the light of Gamestop, AMC etc.

Michael Taylor gives some good coverage of the issue here .

As it stands my IG positions currently represent a very small part of my portfolio, but I was planning stepping this up substantially over the next 12 months. That plan is "called into question" now.

With regards IG Group (LON:IGG) as an investment, I used to be long but closed out a while ago, but it could be a good short IMHO unless they can drag some reputation out of the ClusterF*** they have launched.

dmjram

22nd Feb

If they're demanding 100% margin on stocks, quite how they can continue to justify a financing cost on those going forward before they're closed will be interesting to see justified!

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Broker Platform Recommendations for UK investors for investing in international stocks as well as UK

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Jlynchhurst

21 comments

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