The Investor Diary Entry #23: March 24, 2023
I am neither a US citizen nor a resident. Therefore, it was easy for me to know what is the best stock broker for me. I needed a broker that has international accounts, and one that allows me to invest in different markets.
No it is Firstrade. Yes you can find a link on this website that encourages you to open an account with them, but Firstrade is not my stock broker for two reasons.
The first is that it does not have the country of my residence as part of the regions that it supports, the second is that I didn’t know about it before I opened my account with my current broker.
Is There A Best Stock Broker?
Of course not. The best stock broker is the one that is able to cover my needs. For me a Stock Broker needs to allow accounts from country of residence and highly reliable. Those two are the most important for me.
Other needs come after the above mentioned two factors. The evidence lies in the broker that I currently have and use. They do allow to open an account from my country of residence and they are a well-known and trusted name in the brokerage industry. I was so happy that I saw their ad on Bloomberg after I opened my account.
Before seeing the ad I knew that they were reliable, but didn’t quite catch how big they were, then when I saw their ad I was happy. It wasn’t the fact that they had an ad on Bloomberg, it was what they were advertising. They were advertising a very specific product. This meant for me, that they are confident that their brand is well-known that they are advertising about a specific product on their platform.
What About Firstrade?
The reason why I am promoting Firstrade and not the broker that I am using, is exactly what I said in the first paragraph in this subtitle section. I am not happy with the service that I am getting with my current broker.
Do I know that Firstrade will have a better service? No, I don’t know that. I never used them. What I am sure of is that I will not promote my current broker because I am sure that I am not happy with their service. Well, at least I am not happy with their service to the limit that I will not promote them, but not to the limit that I will leave them.
As for Firstrade, it is up to anyone who is looking for a stock broker to do their research. What I know about them is that they are user-friendly and they do support international regions, but not many. The other features should be studied by the one who is looking for a broker.
This Is Not A Review
I am not here to make a review about a certain broker, I am writing this article because I was trying to buy a stock in the Australian market for whole duration of the last week, and each time I try to make the buy, my broker’s platform comes with a new message that contains new information about a new reason why I cannot continue with the buying process.
This is to show who important it is to choose a broker that covers your needs and not to ignore the warnings of some reviewers. I knew even before I sign up with my broker that its platform is not user-friendly. Unfortunately, I understood that it required a longer than average learning curve. What I found is that their user-friendliness problem goes beyond that. I will describe in detail what happened; correction, what is still happening to the position that I am trying to open in the ASX (Australian Securities Exchange).
Choose your broker carefully because once you are in, it is not easy to get out. Well, I am not sure if there is a way to change brokers and transfer your open positions from the old broker to the new broker. If there isn’t, then you are stuck.
One Week Of Surprises
Last week I found a penny stock company that explores Hydrogen. All other Hydrogen Fuel companies that found were into producing hydrogen through technological processes. Since this company was exploring Hydrogen, I got excited, and after my research I wanted to buy stocks in it.
Since it was a penny stock, I wanted to risk losing a very small amount of money that would at the same time give me a good number of stocks. I logged into my broker’s platform to open the position. It took me a while to realize that this company traded in the Australian market; therefore, the position needed to be conducted in Australian Dollars. What I thought the platform would do is take my base currency – USD – convert it and that is it.
No, with my broker it cannot be that simple of course. I needed to do another transaction with my broker to buy AUD with my available USD. This is what I did.
I went back to make the buy position. The order went through fine. I was happy as it seems that things are going well. The next day I wanted to check on the order.
There was no order. I went to see what went wrong. The order had been canceled by the system. Why? it turned out that I needed a minimum amount of Dollars to invest in the Australian market.
Therefore, go back to buy more AUD. Wait until the order was filled. Once the order was filled, I went back to try to buy it for the third time.
It would have been much easier if the platform gave all the requirements at the time the order is being set. The order window once it has the information of the order it can give the conditions that need to be fulfilled before the person presses on the order whether it was a buy or sell.
Conclusion
To have a broker that satisfied your investment or trading needs is very important. Reading reviews is important buy do not depend on the conclusion of the reviewer; the conclusion needs to be totally yours.
It would be great if the broker has paper trading within their platform. Go ahead and try out the platform with paper trading rather than with your own money.
Normally the recommendation with paper trading would be given to those who are new to investment and/or trading. I am giving this advice to anyone who is not familiar with the broker platform. Again, try it out with paper trading rather than with your own money.
I wish I read this advice when I was searching for a broker. I went both feet in, only to realize that there were few things with the platform that were not understood, and I had to understand them with my own money.
Was there paper trading, yes there was. Truthfully, when I read that choice in the platform, I didn’t know what it meant. I thought it meant some manual way of buying and selling using paper; therefore, I totally ignored it.
More on the Australian Company in the coming entries.
The Investor
Friday 24 March 2023
About The Author
I started to look into individual stocks in January 2022. I created this diary initially for myself to track my investing progress, and second as a place that I can share my ideas publicly hoping that others will share their ideas and learn from each other, and lastly as an online business where some links that I share are affiliate links, and if anybody bought anything by clicking those links I will get a commission based on that successful sale, which of course will not affect the price that you are buying the product or service at.
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