# Who is best online broker for irish traders



## dice (2 Jul 2007)

There have been many threads relating to online brokers, mostly covering trading costs.  I would like to know who you think provides the best option in terms in terms of free research tools, ease of use, range of stock exchanges and to some extent value for money (I would be using a buy and hold type strategy - so frequent trader deals would be of no use).

For example how easy is it to find the fees associated with a particular fund or EFT through the broker web site.

I have had a TDWaterhouse account for some (though I seldom use it) and have found it unwieldy and slow to use - in fact I have found it almost impossible to do meaningful funds research through it.

I recently opened an account with Keytrade and find their service good overall but some of their charting facilities are very poor, and trades cost slightly more than some other brokers, especially for UK and US trades.

I am currently attempting to open a Hoodless Brennan account, but am concerned about losses incurred in transferring funds to and from a sterling account - I know for example that barclays charge me £20 every time i want to do an international transfer.  Also they are in the process of changeing their chargeing structure to one that would be slightly less favourable for an in-frequent trader.

I have had no exposure to US based accounts, many people seem to prefer these mainly based on the low trading costs - does this outweigh the cost of foreigh exchange transactions to fund purchases?


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## Del3D (3 Jul 2007)

dice said:


> ...charting facilities are very poor...



Why not use 3rd party sites such as:

http://finance.yahoo.com/ - their new charts are really excellent, excellent company research tools.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/home.asp - charts not bad, real time quotes, reasonable commentry, good research query tools (for US stocks)

http://finance.google.com/ - charts not bad (have noticed some errors! e.g. IWM; what happened from Oct 06 to June 07!), easy portfolio tracking - good news.


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## croker (3 Jul 2007)

There are some errors in yahoo finance charts too (e.g. URRE, the last week doesn't show up in the charts over 1 month).

stockcharts.com is another good chart website.

As far as i can see the US brokerage firms have lower transaction charges than the Irish ones if you are buying US stocks. The Euro-Dollar is an issue even if you are using an Irish based broker to buy US stocks I think.


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## silvamuppet (3 Jul 2007)

Yeah, I'm not sure where yahoo get their information. I've found their PEs to be way off the mark on a number of occasions.

Reuters


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## silvamuppet (3 Jul 2007)

Yeah, I'm not sure where yahoo get their information. I've found their ratios to be way off the mark on a number of occasions.

Reuters provide some good information also.


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## dice (3 Jul 2007)

croker said:


> The Euro-Dollar is an issue even if you are using an Irish based broker to buy US stocks I think.



currency fluctuations will obviously still be a risk.  what i am wondering is if the low transaction cost of us based brokers added to the costs incurred during foreign exchange transactions works out cheaper than paying a european broker a higher transaction rate.


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## silvamuppet (3 Jul 2007)

dice said:


> currency fluctuations will obviously still be a risk. what i am wondering is if the low transaction cost of us based brokers added to the costs incurred during foreign exchange transactions works out cheaper than paying a european broker a higher transaction rate.


 
The US brokers are very cheap in fairness. I think it might be much of a muchness once you factor ForEx charges in. It might boil down to which set of stocks you prefer, I like US regulated ones as I feel I have more visibility on the companies and their figures.
A word of caution though (as I got bitten on this the first time I transferred cash to my US broker). Do your ForEx on this side of the transaction. Transfer to your brokerage in their currency or rather the base currency of your account with them.

I transferred in Euros and it went to Citibank in london first and then from them to my brokerage's bank in new york. There was a bit of creaming off the top going on (either on the transfer from london to New York or on the rate Citibank charged to convert to dollars.....grrrrr). Still , you live and learn. (note BOI only charged about a tener for their part of the transaction)


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## Del3D (3 Jul 2007)

silvamuppet said:


> The US brokers are very cheap in fairness. I think it might be much of a muchness once you factor ForEx charges in ...



I am using Interactive Brokers with my base currency set in Euro and I own stocks and ETFs in Europe and the US. When you buy stocks in the US you borrow US dollar against your Euro balance, where the US loan is charged interest and the Euro balance earns interest (slightly less of course). I regularly close out the US balance by selling EuroDollar and it is very reasonable... very narrow spread and commission of: 1 basis point (1 basis point=0.0001) plus $2.50 commission for a $10,000 transaction.

The commissions are slightly better if you go above $100,000,000 

See here for IB commissions


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