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Can Stockopedia cover US Stocks?
It seems to me that US stocks are easier to trade, have more liquidity and action compared to UK stocks.
It would be great if Stockopedia did a round up of popular traded US Stocks
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42 comments
I’ve traded US stocks for a number of years. I’d say that Interactive Brokers are the best by far. Their trading platform is second to none, albeit it can be a little heavy going. But it is extremely versatile for trading, it has some very powerful APIs if you want to automate your trading or set up complex trading strategies. It’s also possible to download historical data. I use Excel VBA to interface with their trading platform although there are others like Python, C++, Java.
The trading fees are very low for US stocks and the spreads are usually very tight and very liquid, also you don’t pay stamp duty. There is a 15% withholding tax on dividends but not on all stocks. The account management is also very powerful, plenty of analysis in there and you can customise statements. I trade options through them, they are competitive and again you can set up complex conditional orders. The downside is that their support could be better, over the years I’ve had mixed experiences. Also there are a few bugs in the platform but I’ve never had a major issue.
I have a GBP account with them (although I used to have a USD account) and an ISA. I predominantly trade US stocks & options. In the ISA they automatically convert GBP to USD when you enter a trade and the FX rate is given in the trade log. On exit the USDs are converted to GBPs automatically as you can’t hold USD in an ISA.
I joined IG Index in the 80’s to trade UK options & spread bet. The fee structure is competitive and the range of markets is the market leader. They’ve recently taken over TastyTrade so increased their exposure to US markets. In the early days their brokers/support staff were really good but sadly their support is now, in my experience, pretty useless.
I have only just spotted this thread. My portfolios is about 25% US stocks, and I am trying to increase that %. I have a few accounts, including ISAs with Interactive Brokers- I think they have the best fees and best exchange rates.
For information, I find Seekingalpha.com useful
A Stockopedia.com regular article similar to SCVR would be very useful
I would like to increase my US folio but finding it difficult to find any value. Technology shares have done very well but I feel are running out of steam or there will be a correction.
I would like to increase my US folio but finding it difficult to find any value.
In terms of sectors, energy, utilities and real estate.
In terms of style, small cap value.
That said, the US market has been all about quality growth for the last18 months. And most of the past 15 years for that matter. I certainly find this style fully valued today. But it contains ALL the best companies pretty much by definition.
Thanks Timoteo. The spreads are greater for smaller companies and early in the day (just like the UK). If you stick to very liquid stock like Microsoft (NSQ:MSFT) and Apple (NSQ:AAPL) the spreads are negligible even in early trading. It is of course possible - and reasonably straightforward - to move your ISA from one online broker to another. Last year my wife and I moved the bulk of our ISAs from HL to IG - as Rusty2 has done.
Thanks, William. I hadn’t realised that IG did ISAs : I shall have a look. All of my US holdings are of liquid stocks which probably explains why I have never had a problem.
Barclays smartinvestor has a tiered FX rates, the the higher the amount invested the lower the rate, ranging from 1% to 0.25%.
To me that's a great suggestion to look more at the US. Still after 20+ years struggling to understand how/why the LME has such control on the market. You do not produce any resources and trade no physicals? I have an MBA but I still do not get it. Bit like everyone having to trade in US dollars. Cheers.
Hi Sanjay,
Thanks for the post!
We regularly check the discussion forum, and it's great to see this kind of feedback. We're always open to ideas on how we can improve both our content and product offering, so community discussions such as this really do help.
Having factored this feedback into account, Megan's posted a section on Adobe (NSQ:ADBE) in our latest Week Ahead article, and we intend to provide more coverage of US and international stocks moving forward. I've attached a link to the article below.
https://www.stockopedia.com/co...
Best,
Keelan
Agreed, IG is good - it's my main broker for US shares. HL can be expensive with an FX charge of 1% and larger than expected spreads in the first hour of trading (1430-1530 UK time).
William
I use HL I agree with your fx comment which as I understand it, applies both to the purchase and the sale so is quite significant, but since many of my transactions are in a SIPP or ISA I have no option. I haven’t had any problems with spreads, although I seldom buy/sell in the first hour of trading.
IG group (LON:IGG) have ISAs as well. I have moved from HL to IGG. Spreads on US shares are very narrow. IGG is free on US shares, apart from the 0.5% forex fee, if you do 3 trades in the previous month, on any shares.
Etoro
I'm currently using Hargreaves Lansdown for trading US Stocks, but it seems expensive. Does anyone have any recommendations for a good inexpensive broker for US Stocks?
IG group (LON:IGG) are a lot cheaper, cost is free, if you do 3 trades in previous month, on your account, there is a forex fee of 0.5%.
Interactive Brokers (NSQ:IBKR) are even cheaper, not used them yet.
Thanks Rusty2. I'll check both of them out.
I have a long term IB account in $. If you can handle the tech, it's very efficient and cheap. it's data is better than iweb for the UK tax year (as is degiro!).
Judging by Megan Boxall's email today, there maybe some articles coming soon. At least they are taking note of the comments here.
You're probably correct but you don't need to subscribe to the US markets in order to benefit from US growth. The following ETFs are available in the UK and can be found on Stockopedia, with their growth over the last 12 months in brackets:
Vanguard S&P 500 UCITS ETF USD Dis (LON:VUSA) - (23%)
Invesco EQQQ NASDAQ-100 UCITS ETF Dist (LON:EQQQ) - (37%)
Invesco Technology S&P US Sel Sector UCITS ETF Acc (LON:XLKQ) (56%)
VanEck Semiconductor UCITS ETF USD A (LON:SMGB) (69%)
These funds (I hold) are cheap to purchase (low spread, no stamp duty) and cheap to run with annual management fees around 0.2%. It doesn't actually matter if they're heavily weighted with MAG7 as that usually makes them profitable.
I am guessing that most of the Stocko subscribers are UK subscribers as its our home market. However some of stock's research pieces (eg 10 baggers) has been very interesting. It might be a win win if stocko could do something on how its US / or other international ratings work out performance wise vs the simple choice of just buying a tracker/ETF. Downside with a tracker might be of course that the US market is dominated by the MAG7 which skews the returns / data ?
Some more from Stocko might encourage more peeps to but its US package ?
Hi Sanjay if you're keen on US stocks you might consider opening a Charles Schwab account. Historically, they have provided so much more information on your US shares and your portfolio performance as well as US sector/market analysis compared to their UK counterparts. To give an example, I received an annual UK pension valuation this morning without any mention of the year's draw-down withdrawals! To be fair, reports from ii, Hargreaves Lansdown, AJ Bell etc are now much better than they used to be.
Anyway, getting back to US shares, I do use Stockopedia screens to give me ideas and instant overviews of companies of interest - but I'm not expecting lots of commentary. Our holdings are also listed in a portfolio so we receive relevant news on our US shares along with our other shares.
I think there far too much coverage of companies that are performing poorly, nearly every profit warning is covered but companies that are performing well don't receive so much coverage.
Yes there should more coverage of US stocks. Stocks such as Super Micro Computer (NSQ:SMCI), one of tge best performing stocks in the last year, there is no coverage at all on Stockopedia.
I don't find Stockopedia so useful for US stocks, not sure whether to continue my subscription, there are quite a few services, that offer quite a lot of information, for free.
Valid points Howard.
But one would ask why bother with Stockopedia if one is specialising in US stocks and can find all the information you need, for free, elsewhere? It's a question I am now asking myself.
Regards, William
But can you find all the information you need for free?
My portfolio is becoming more US based, but my purchases are based on various screens that I have set up, which are not available for free anywhere else, especially the stockrank system.
What I believe Sanjay is asking, can Stocko get a U.S centric journalist to undercover those gems as Paul and Graham do on the UK side of the house. They may sell more U.S subscriptions if they do, so win win.
There are free daily emails from Investopedia that cover the main movers in the US market, if you want to subscribe, and a very useful free daily email from We Study Markets. Plus a lot of fundamental data on Yahoo Finance and other websites. It's debatable if the Stockopedia Rankings are as applicable to US stocks as to domestic stocks. Stockopedia is certainly useful for its screens in picking out high momentum stocks. But the main emphasis on Stockopedia is for value small caps, which on the whole I find too risky.
William K, thanks for mentioning Yahoo Finance(YF). I used to use this a lot for my charts before Stocko and still have to as the Stocko charts don't update the highs and lows correctly on the Candlesticks intraday; Stocko also doesn't provide intra day chart time frames.
Silly me, all this time I wasn't aware how good the the fundamental data on Yahoo Finance was and had assumed it was on par with Google's which is poor. In fact the presentation of the fundamentals in Yahoo is perfect- its clean and concise - and has all the relevant sections expected of a balance sheet, income statement, etc... It actually makes Stocko's data look bloated and unwieldy. I'll be checking the fundamental data on YF from now on as its easier to read the numbers, and its also got US data too, and that's free too. Usually free isn't so good in quality, but its suprising when free is better than the paid stuff. That leaves..
Well at least Stocko has easy to use screens...
Thanks Guy.
Yes, Stockopedia's screens are easy to use, but I don't use them much these days as they don't suit my style of investing. But the Stockopedia charts are relatively primitive and sometimes I can only get weekly charts rather than daily which is a bit odd these days. Most of my short term trading currently is is on IG and their charts are excellent giving time frames from one minute to one month on >10,000 financial instruments including commodities, FX, and crypto. All the technical data on IG are free although it's probably worth opening an account with a £250 deposit just to access the full range of facilities. Trading costs for US equities are competitive. (I have no vested interest in promoting IG but Its one of my favourite online brokers.)
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Hi William K
With regard to your point .....
'But one would ask why bother with Stockopedia if one is specialising in US stocks and can find all the information you need, for free, elsewhere? It's a question I am now asking myself.'
For myself, I find the value of Stocko holding all my portfolios - UK, US, Europe - extremely useful, particularly the graphs which capture my trades.
Also, the US stock reports and data are very useful as are key holders lists, daily volume trade stats etc ..
Additionally the news feeds I get with Stocko linked to my portfolios are my essential daily scans and reading.
I have often encountered useful US market insights from reading these daily. Indeed it has been one of the ways in which I have slowly become conversant with how this vast market works and would miss it greatly if I did not have it.
I have no doubt other services could offer similar support to cover the US market but, for me, using Stocko means a one stop shop with which I am very familiar.
Regards
Howard
Hi Howard,
Excellent points.
I guess we all do things different ways.
For me the key fundamental with US stocks is the price of the stock vs the performance of the SP 500. Everything else is noise. I also stick to the XLK technical sector (apart from the occasional speculative purchase on which I usually lose money). Best stocks in the best sector principle. I hold only 8-10 stocks at a time. Today I sold my Apple shares because they've fallen below the 200 day EMA & will replace with #LCRX and maybe some #NVDA.
I rejoined Stockopedia recently hoping to find more interest in US shares on this forum, but on the whole there has been very little discussion. But I'll hang around a little longer.
All best wishes,
William
The UK market will 'come back' sometime.Just like the Greek economy has post their low point.Who knows when but it will get more exciting,.... as not all of us are expert stock pickers (i know i'm not) and able to pick the few currently that are outperforming and not selling off post good news.And there must be some multibaggers in there somewhere... which we would wish 5-10 years down the line we had bought!
Sometimes doing this and paying interest to the market everyday has its downsides.. impatience for me for one.And especially so when you see someone whose picked something else doing not just well, but exceptionallt well.When will NVIDIA (NSQ:NVDA) 's market cap halve like Tesla from its peak (NSQ:TSLA) 's..?!
There are already multi baggers, such as Yu (LON:YU.) and Ashtead Technology Holdings (LON:AT.) but these are not well rated on SCVR getting Red/amber and Amber ratings.
The US really struggling to find any value in companies that are doing ok, it is not just the big 7. I can name loads that look too high, yet they will probably go a lot higher.
NVIDIA (NSQ:NVDA) will fall when the growth falls or they miss a forecast or the technology sector falls, as in 2022. Have you seen their growth figures? The forecast PEG is around 0.8
Super Micro Computer (NSQ:SMCI) has gone up 10x in the last year but the PEG is only 1.2
Stocks under $2bn get very little coverage in the US markets.
Hi Rusty2. I think that we have to look at the US market completely differently from the UK market. In the UK we tend to look for value. In the US it's all about momentum. At least, that's my observation. The US market, generally speaking, is not 'buy and hold' it's for traders. The Mark Minervini approach basically is to buy on good news, momentum, short term EMAs above long term EMAs, and relative strength. The only fundamental he really advocates is rising EPS over 5 years. A high PE is indicative of market confidence and future expectations. He likes tight stop losses (say 10%) and refuses to let a decent winning position turn into a loss. It's worth following him on Twitter. (Make sure you look for the blue tick as there are a lot of fake Minervinis on Twitter.)
The US market, generally speaking, is not 'buy and hold' it's for traders.
Seriously? You’re talking about the greatest collection of quality compounders ever assembled in one place. Absent macro-derived market events, buy and hold is literally the ideal strategy.
Hi BnB. Sure. There are quality compounders, many of which I have held for several years (Microsoft (NSQ:MSFT) NVIDIA (NSQ:NVDA) Alphabet (NSQ:GOOG) . But these are actually only a small percentage of the market. Also the top compounders are too big to continue their exponential growth. The real money is to be made in the smaller companies with a good story. But you've got to know when to get out. Take Zoom Video Communications (NSQ:ZM) for example - $64 in 2019, peaked at $560 in 2020 and is now $66. Same story with Peloton Interactive (NSQ:PTON) , Snowflake. (NYQ:SNOW) , Alibaba Holding (NYQ:BABA) NIO (NYQ:NIO) and many others that you can probably name as easily as I can. The important thing to know is when you're trading and when you're investing. Similar processes but different mindsets.
You’re simply defining the difference between investing and trading. But to state that quality compounders only constitute a small proportion of the market is a bold and misguided claim. Taking the S&P 500 as a proxy for the market, I would confidently assert that well over half of the total market cap of the index lies in quality compounders. Mag 7 is more than a quarter of the market in just seven stocks. Although I would exclude Tesla from the definition of a quality compounder. Look at the huge $100 billion + corporations in the layer below, most of them also with decades of compounding growth.
Thanks BnB. The difference between investing and trading is exactly what this debate is about. The two styles are not mutually exclusive. The problem is that you buy something like Zoom Video Communications (NSQ:ZM) and it doesn't turn out to be a long term compounder so you sell fast. You buy NVIDIA (NSQ:NVDA) and it does, so you hold. I agree that the SPX & NDX have some of the best companies in the world and the best way of investing - and the cheapest - is a tracker such as Vanguard S&P 500 UCITS ETF USD Dis (LON:VUSA) and / or Invesco EQQQ NASDAQ-100 UCITS ETF Dist (LON:EQQQ) (currency hedged or unhedged). A decent US portfolio for UK investors might be 50% trackers, 25% Tech giants and 25% speculative trades (during bull markets only - like we're having right now). It is a mistake, I believe, to hold on to any stock when the sell signs flash up. Even if the value and quality look OK.
What’s the point of a roundup of popular US stocks? The investment universe is massively overpopulated with articles about the Mag7. You can find them almost anywhere. What would add value is a service similar to the SCVR, but for liquid, vibrant US companies, beyond the obvious choices, filling a need instead of duplicating an already massively redundant supply.
Hi BnB & Sanjay
I agree completely with your posting BnB ....
The greater portion of my portfolio is US stocks, thus I research the US market quite extensively. The main financial service companies such as Bloomberg and CNBC do excellent and extensive coverage of the market ... macro examinations, sector investigations, individual companies, results, CEO and other analyst interviews. Stocko could not come anywhere close to offering any better insights.
Furthermore, US companies and Podcasters are very good at doing YouTube vids about US companies and their activities, so if a company pricks your interest I recommend a first port of call to scan YouTube for any coverage. This is usually very enlightening as a first step.
One suggestion I would offer if anyone is just getting into the US is that thinking 'thematically' can be helpful in narrowing down ideas. For example Cyber security, or AI, or defense, or cloud computing, or Biotech. Scanning in a sector can help to flush out which companies are taking a leadership position and a therefore good candidates for a watch list and further research.
This thematic approach really helped me to navigate into the US market without getting overwhelmed by the vast volume of options.
I hope this helps a bit.
Regards
Howard
Excellent post Howard. I would just add that Seeking Alpha, for a similar subscription to Stocko, provides excellent commentary, much of it from qualified FCAs, on a vast range of US stocks. In contrast to Stocko, the volume and breadth of commentary means there are always bull and bear points on each company.
SA seems to me to offer 2 extremes as eye candy to attract subscriptions. Stocko offers individual commentaries from people you can access as individuals over a period of time. It's a labour of love rather/as well as a business.
Agree. My portfolio is mainly US based. Much more growth and much smaller spreads.