The Lemon Fool

Hello, investment "newbie" here

I have a share ISA with a FTSE index tracker inside. That's all the experience I have with investment.

I want to experiment with let's say 100K of investment in ETFs, long term and "buy and hold/forget". This involves 2 steps:

1. identifying what to buy
2. finding a means HOW to buy

my existing ISA is managed by Henderson who don't have that much to choose in terms of ETFs.

to keep it simple, I would like some help on HOW to buy an ETF, for example let's say I want to buy one from Vanguard and one from blackrock. How do I do it? Do I need an account with saxo or something similar? Do I need a broker? Do I buy direct from Vanguard/Blackrock?

I want to do it in a simple way and with the minimum possible fees. I am not a professional trader so I don't need to buy and sell a lot. Also I don't have million$; I want to experiment with (up to) 6 figures first and see how it goes

I don't need to put this in an ISA (I am no longer UK resident).

thanks for any guidance
Nikos

ETFs are bought and sold like normal shares, so you need a broker account. If you are not UK resident then you probably need one based in Luxembourg or somewhere similar.

If it were me I wouldn't go to ETFs, but rather to ITs, but it is your money. I would suggest that you dabble in a small way first, in 4-figure sums at the most, and low ones at that.

TJH

tjh290633 wrote:ETFs are bought and sold like normal shares, so you need a broker account. If you are not UK resident then you probably need one based in Luxembourg or somewhere similar.

thanks but that's exactly my problem, I don't know where/how to get a "broker account" that is suitable for "hobby" investors (without breaking the bank) !?

If you were in the UK I would suggest that you look at the Halifax offering, https://www.halifax.co.uk/sharedealing/Default.asp

I don't know if they accept non-UK customers. One in Luxembourg that advertises on Bloomberg and elsewhere is https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/home.php

TJH

umeca74 wrote:thanks but that's exactly my problem, I don't know where/how to get a "broker account" that is suitable for "hobby" investors (without breaking the bank) !?

There are lots of those for UK residents, but your real problem (in this respect) is that you're not UK resident, so the vast majority won't accept you.

I suggest you look at the International & Expat Investors board, I see there's already a topic on the matter there. Depending on where you are resident you may also want to look into possibilities in your country.

thanks guys, plenty of information for me to sieve!
another "recommended" option for international trading seems to be saxobank, but I am still quizzing them on fees. I'm not sure they don't have penalties for long-inactive accounts (buy and hold)

Be careful with Saxo Bank. A couple of years ago I had a trading account with them in Euros for a short while until the time that I wanted to trade in other currencies. They then informed me that I would have to upgrade to a Premium account (min EUR 100,000) if I wanted to do that. So I closed the account and moved to Interactive Brokers who were much more accommodating. Saxo Bank may have changed their policies by now but do check carefully before signing up with them.

The IB Trader Workstation takes some getting used to but it's still very good for foreign exchange and the charges for buying shares are low.

Hope that helps.

Neddy

unfortunately most of the recommended (here) websites/brokers either don't do overseas or require "active" investors. I have better things to do with my time than monitoring and buying shares

saxobank are expensive (0.12% custodian fee etc) but I don't see any other options for me