Restrictions on investing in certain US companies

Grenage

I've been looking into a company in the States and checked iweb to see if it was listed as an option; it's not.

The company does other things, but primarily services student loans.  Are there restrictions for investing in such companies from abroad?  The company is Nelnet and it's listed on the NYSE.

george4064

Most likely not a restriction as such, but that there is little or no demand for that particular stock to be setup on iWeb’s system so that’s why it’s not setup.

Platforms will generally only make foreign securities available on there website if there is sufficient demand from clients who will buy that stock. 

You can always ask iWEB to make that particular security available to invest in their website, worst that will happen is they say No.

Grenage

Ah that makes more sense, thank you.  It didn't occur to me that companies would need to be manually added to their listings.

lozzy1965

I would have thought it more likely that everything from an index would be automatically included.  Would be interesting to hear what iWeb say.

underground99

 lozzy1965 said:

I would have thought it more likely that everything from an index would be automatically included.  Would be interesting to hear what iWeb say.

The company is too small to be in the S&P500 which is the most 'famous' index of US stocks. There are of course other indexes that cover the next few thousand largest companies, but we wouldn't expect IWEB to add all the 3500+ stocks in the S&P Total Market index. Many of them may never have been traded from the UK and so not have a listing to settle through Crest as a CDI. So a UK broker is not going to routinely offer them if nobody asks them to do so.

Grenage

lozzy1965 said:

I would have thought it more likely that everything from an index would be automatically included.  Would be interesting to hear what iWeb say.

I gave them a call and they said they'd submit it to be checked for listing.  Normally takes a couple of days.

I've only had to call them twice, but their support has been great.

Thrugelmir

lozzy1965 said:

I would have thought it more likely that everything from an index would be automatically included.  Would be interesting to hear what iWeb say.

That would amount to a considerable number of companies globally. 

lozzy1965

Thrugelmir said:

lozzy1965 said:

I would have thought it more likely that everything from an index would be automatically included.  Would be interesting to hear what iWeb say.

That would amount to a considerable number of companies globally. 

I work on databases.  Large numbers should be easy to handle.  I don't know that iWeb allow dealing with every index in every country in the world but I would have thought an online dealing system would link through to any index it is set up for and automatically get all the funds/shares within that index.  Maybe in my ideal world I am over simplifying things though.  I am a bit old fashioned in my technology skills these days.

wmb194

Brokers have a tendency to pick and choose the shares they're willing to deal with. I noticed recently that Freetrade doesn't offer BAe, which is a very odd omission. It offers Lockheed Martin and other arms manufacturers so it shouldn't be anything to do with this, either. 

Most retail brokers will no longer allow you to purchase shares listed on the LSE's 'specialist funds segment*' as they're worried about the risks of retail investors buying them, which is just silly - they're mostly investment trust-type companies and you can buy similar which aren't in this segment easily enough with the same brokers. Fortunately AJ Bell doesn't care and will let you purchase them without, IIRC, requiring any special disclosures...

*The Specialist Fund Segment (SFS) is our dedicated segment for specialist, closed-ended investment funds targeting institutional, professional, professionally advised and knowledgeable investors.

Grenage

For anyone interested, the have said that trading volume is too low for their listings criteria.

So there were have it.

gollum007

Freetrade doesn't offer BAE as it's a stock that requires nationality declaration,  which they currently don't support. Nothing sinister there.

https://www.shareview.co.uk/4/Info/Portfolio/default/en/home/shareholders/Documents/NatDec_BAE.pdf