I was an employee of a US based company in India and I hold shares of it and its subsidiaries/spin-offs through their then employee share plan. The stock broker that they engage, called “Computershare (EquatePlus)” would soon start to sell off 50USD worth of my shares as an annual fee every year. Plus, the charges of manually placing a sell order are also high:
Sale fee : $40
Wire charge : $10
Currency conversion fees : 1.6%
Dealing Commission rate on sales : 0.75% of the gross sale proceeds
Transfer shares to different broker : $30.00
The company and its stock are good performers, hence I’d like to hold them till things stay good. I also don’t want to buy any more of their shares – just hold as much as it seems right and later sell.
However, I think the above charges are exorbitant and hence would like to move the shares to a different broker(India based if recommended) who’d charge reasonable fees. If I continue with the current broker they’d eat up my portfolio with the annual stock sale(there’s no way to even transfer the fee separately).
I found a lot of mentions of “Interactive brokers” on reddit but also that their UI is bad. Found a few other brokers mentioned but people have mentioned more on buy & sell roundtrip brokerage. I’m only concerned with annual maintenance and sell charges.
If anybody has any relevant knowledge, requesting to kindly share.
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Do you want to hold your US stocks with an Indian broker?
This will not be possible. The broker needs to have a US entity. Also, instead of limiting yourself to brokers who have a presence in India, you can be agnostic about this. For instance, you can look at Charles Schwab or Robinhood as well.
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If you are an Indian Citizen then Robinhood currently does not allow Indian residents to open an account. For Charles Schwab International there is a minimum maintenance to open an account. Being an Indian resident you don’t have too many options if you are looking for a cheap way out. Interactive Brokers is by far the best when it comes to pricing you can select from tired or fixed rate brokerage and other charges whatever is cheaper to you and they offer one free withdrawal every month and there is no AMC. Plus Interactive Brokers do have an office here in India.
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UI is bad, but I don’t think anyone uses their web-based system. They are known for the TWS desktop application which I think is one of the most powerful application a retail trader can ask for.
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I just stumbled upon US Stock Market: Invest in US stock market Online from India| HDFC securities by HDFC securities. Any review of it ? Seems like it is a partnership with stockal.
HDFC is dealing with Stockal and Stockal is using DriveWealth, who is who? and why do you need HDFC for this? just use Stockal directly. This is the same thing that Groww did (they have now shut down the US investing) that every Indian platform is trying to do. The problem in these chain partnerships is if one loop breaks everything goes down. My suggestion to you is to deal directly with a broker who is reg with FINRA and SIPC. Interactive Brokers, Charles Schwab, TastyTrade, and FirsTrade are just a few that allow non-US citizens to open accounts.
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