Finally ventured beyond the local stock market last July. Took some missteps in setting up the accounts for transacting in US, finding it a bit cumbersome in terms of admin for payment of shares and receiving payment by cheque.

After some exploration, decided to stick with RHB and just settling the trade in SGD. Of course, that means having paying multiple foreign exchange transaction costs as I buy or sell the counters.

Of course, there are other platforms such as Interactive Brokers and TD Ameritrades but for some reasons, I did not explore further.

Last year, IFast just received the license for stock trading for Singapore Exchange. By end of the year, they have tied up with overseas partner and US and HK markets were made available for trading at 0.08% sales charge with a minimum of usd8.8. It’s a pre-funded account and I can maintain a US currency account with them. As such, I decided to switch to FSMOne for buying/selling US stocks.

Initially, I have requested to transfer my US stocks from RHB to FSMOne. Unfortunately, the cost of transferring from RHB is higher than selling all my holdings in RHB and buying them again in FSMOne.

Eventually, decided to re-boot my US portfolio and sold all my US counters in RHB. Computing all my buy/sell of US counters, I have made about 5% return over the past 8 months. Not too shabby especially considering the sales charges and exchange rate loss.

Will be re-building my US portfolio in the next one to three months. Currently, I have Starbucks and JD.com. I am looking to add another 2-3 counters with the limited fund I have allocated for overseas market. Will probably expand this after having a hang of the US market.

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