ONLINE BROKERAGE
Your chat room pals might be anywhere from Adelaide to Zanzibar, but until recently no online brokerage could sell you the cross-border issues they touted. Now Intltrader.com is bringing the worldwide market to your browser window.
Before Intltrader.com launched in January, if you wanted to buy international stocks in the US, your choices were limited to full-service brokerages, foreign-focused mutual funds, and the 1,200 or so non-US companies that trade in dollars on US exchanges. International Assets Holding Corp., Intltrader.com's parent company, has been brokering international investments since the '80s and gives the site access to 8,000 overseas stocks listed in 32 countries. With a minimum balance of $2,000, you can trade foreign ordinaries for $29 and domestic stocks for as little as $14 - up to 5,000 shares per transaction.
"We want to provide an experience that's as close as possible to trading a US security," says managing director and COO Brent Bessire. Indeed, Intltrader.com offers the features you'd expect from an online brokerage, plus outstanding research - a necessity for overseas investing. One other online brokerage, Globeshare.com, has followed the lead, but Intltrader's lower commissions and global intelligence give it the edge for now.
Foreign investments, certainly, can fall prey to political instability, shifting currency exchange rates, and overnight price fluctuations. "Markets in many other currencies aren't as liquid," adds Peter Brown, president of Evensky, Brown & Katz, a Florida-based financial planning firm. "Also, standards of financial disclosure are much lower elsewhere than in the US."
Of course, the next Cisco or Qualcomm could be incubating overseas. In fact, Nasdaq has lagged behind the Euro.NM, a composite of high tech, high-growth indices representing four European markets, most of which are regulated as stringently as USexchanges. Year-to-date (as of September 1), the Euro.NM gained 21 percent, while Nasdaq grew 1.8 percent.
Both Nasdaq and NYSE have announced ambitious plans to extend their reach throughout the world, and market pressures are forcing stock exchanges to consolidate in Europe and Asia. But years will pass before foreign stocks are as easy to trade as shares of IBM. For the time being, Intltrader.com is the next best thing.
- Andrew Marks (amarks@nyc.rr.com).
Intltrader.com: www.intltrader.com.
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