Need a UK stock broker that does international shares as well

Cromulent

I'm in the market to buy some shares and I have been looking for a decent UK stock broker. My top choices so far seem to be an IG stock broking account or a TD Direct Investing account.

I'm going to be relatively low activity trader so TD Direct Investing isn't idea as it has a £10 per quarter inactivity fee. IG stock broker is better as there is no inactivity fee (well there is if you are inactive for 2 years but I plan to be more active than that) but it doesn't offer shares on the NYSE.

So basically I'm looking at buying shares in the:

FTSE 100
FTSE 250
NASDAQ
NYSE
and maybe even in some Asian exchanges.

One thing I'd really really love is API access so I can write programs to query my holdings. From what I have read this normally requires direct market access which I am not adverse to getting if it means I can use it in my own programs. But that is a nice to have feature not a must have.

Can anyone recommend any decent stock brokers to me at all based on the above?

If you need any more information let me know.

Thanks!

IronWolf

The best range of markets I have found on offer is from SaxoBank. I've been quite happy with them so far though they did just introduce a 'custodial fee' which is a small % per annum.

I've got shares from UK, Australia, Hong Kong, US and Canada. They do plenty more markets too.

The standard trading account has options, FX and CFDs too, but has an inactivity fee. I get around the inactivty fee though by trading a CFD once a quarter for a few seconds, they have no buy or sell fee so you only really lose the spread which is a few pence.

Buy/sell charges are reasonable as are forex fees for overseas dealing. TD has pretty high forex charges from what I remember.

Cromulent

IronWolf wrote: »

The best range of markets I have found on offer is from SaxoBank. I've been quite happy with them so far though they did just introduce a 'custodial fee' which is a small % per annum.

I've got shares from UK, Australia, Hong Kong, US and Canada. They do plenty more markets too.

The standard trading account has options, FX and CFDs too, but has an inactivity fee. I get around the inactivty fee though by trading a CFD once a quarter for a few seconds, they have no buy or sell fee so you only really lose the spread which is a few pence.

Buy/sell charges are reasonable as are forex fees for overseas dealing. TD has pretty high forex charges from what I remember.

Thanks for the reply.

I spent quite a while reading through their website and was just wondering if you actually own the shares that you buy through them or is it something else? All over their website it talks about their products being traded on margin and that you may lose more than you invest. I'm not really looking for this just a straightforward stocks and shares broker that'll give me some shares and will pay dividends to me.

Am I miss reading their website in this fact or are they really just a normal stocks and shares broker that are just warning based on their other products which are traded on margin?

Sorry for the stupid question I'm pretty new to this.

gt94sss2

You may find the best broker for different markets is different - certainly dealing in Asian markets is much rarer than brokers offering UK/US markets in the UK

Have a look at:

HSBC InvestDirect Plus
iweb
Interactive Investors
Barclays
Hargraves Lansdown
Interactive Brokers

who all offer UK/US shares last time I looked

Regards
Sunil

IronWolf

Cromulent wrote: »

Thanks for the reply.

I spent quite a while reading through their website and was just wondering if you actually own the shares that you buy through them or is it something else? All over their website it talks about their products being traded on margin and that you may lose more than you invest. I'm not really looking for this just a straightforward stocks and shares broker that'll give me some shares and will pay dividends to me.

Am I miss reading their website in this fact or are they really just a normal stocks and shares broker that are just warning based on their other products which are traded on margin?

Sorry for the stupid question I'm pretty new to this.

Yes you can just buy normal stocks and shares, they are held in a nominee account on your behalf like other dealers. The warnings are because they allow dealings in CFDs which are traded on margin, but you don't have to trade them if you dont want to

Cromulent

IronWolf wrote: »

Yes you can just buy normal stocks and shares, they are held in a nominee account on your behalf like other dealers. The warnings are because they allow dealings in CFDs which are traded on margin, but you don't have to trade them if you dont want to

Cool. Thanks.

In that case they look pretty good and their commission is low. I just need to make sure I don't get hit by the quarterly inactivity fee.