Tradestation global – ETF panacea in Europe

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Tradestation global

TSG now charges €15/month.

Investing is not just about making money. My story with the discovery of Tradestation Global is related to sharing and caring of others.

The vicious circle of goodness

I like my job. Naively I think this will be my last job ever. Good team, self-expression opportunities and lack of boredom. Exciting.

We have been growing and expanding our team recently. One of my university friends also returned to Lithuania and appeared to me as a great future team member. I recommended him to my colleagues and after a month or so he has already joined our team and is doing great.

My new colleague is also investing, we talked about it during a night out. In the first weeks of his work, he shared a link to cheap ETF investing on the sesinuliai.lt blog. I thought it was another cheap “invest in synthetic ETFs through derivatives” cheap broker and didn’t pay too much attention to it.

But we talked about it again a few days later, I’ve read the whole article and realized it was a game-changer. I invite you to read the article as well, as there are a lot of calculations on pricing that are not my strong point. 🙂

Pay-to-go of investment

As someone compared it in the Balticmustache forum – Tradestation global is associated with Interactive Brokers like Pildyk (cheap pay-to-go phone operator) with Tele2 (major phone operator). Young people get to play with a toy cheaply, with the aim of the operator to ensure customer loyalty in the long run and earn bigger comission later. 🙂

Previously, cheap ETFs in Lithuania were reached through Degiro, but this is no longer possible. The long-awaited launch of Evarvest has also been moved to the end of the year. My own homemade Baltic Stock Exchange fund was the only cheap option to access stock market. That is sad.

After registering with Interactive brokers through Tradestation Global, there is no longer a monthly fee of USD 10 for IB, the fee per transaction is EUR 1.75, and if you buy for a larger amount, it is 0.12%. Basically, old Swedbank’s pricing on the NASDAQ Baltic.

However, when buying the first fund, I did not apply a market order, but a limit order, and an additional fee of EUR 0.14 was applied for this. It seems strange – I try to protect myself from buying a cat in a bag and for that I am punished with additional commissions.

Scary warnings

When registering with Tradestation Global you need to fill out a stack of forms. The forms are more or less standard, but I saw some of them for the first time – a typical emergency contact form with a motivating note that some clients lose their cognitive functions over time and IB will call the specified person if the client has not been active for a very long time. Buy-and-hold an investor’s dream. 🙂

When filling out the forms, I have one suggestion – I recommend marking all possible countries next to the question about investment experience. I checked the Central Europe and UK markets only and after registration I did not have access to the fund I wanted to buy because the fund was traded on the German stock exchange. After renewing the application I had been not admitted to China market, but I was able to invest through the German Xetra.

The platform itself is oldschool, but all I need is a Google-type search box and a buy button. 🙂 For the first investment, I allocated a minimum initial contribution of €1,000.

VWCE

Prior investing in ETFs, I always made plans on how to create a super ETF combination, add small businesses that grow faster than large ones, and earn more.

However, I decided to invest in the whole world stock index through the Vanguard VWCE ETF. The fund is founded by ETF pioneers, accumulating dividends. Because the fund is registered in Ireland, dividends returned to the fund are not taxable because they are not paid out. In this way, taxes do not have to be paid until the sale of fund units and more money can be earned.

VWCE owns several thousand very large and large companies that are scattered around the world. I find it very fascinating. I was looking for what I have invested in – from Microsoft to the Bank of India, from the USA to Australia, from social networks to sports car steering wheel manufacturers. I’ve only reviewed a few of the 3,500 companies, but I’m looking forward to going back to the list of companies and rejoicing to see something new. I’m always curious to think that the smartest people in the world work for me (albeit for a small fraction of a second 🙂 ).

The best thing is you don’t need to understand the value of the shares. Some of them are overvalued, some undevalued. But if humanity keep improving and the Earth’s population continues to grow, the seed of the good will bear sweet fruit.

Boring investing

I plan to invest a four-figure amount in the fund on a quarterly basis or when I have money I don’t know where else to invest. I am happy with part of the P2P portfolio and I am currently transferring all the money back from other platforms to the Bondora secondary market.

I will invest in the Baltic Exchange €200/month and the remaining free cash balance will either accumulate for the acquisition of VWCE or will be invested in Bondora or the Baltic Exchange. I would love to invest in Bondora automatically, but the programming of API has been going on for several months now.

It’s a little weird that investing becomes a boring affair – the only excitement remaining is Bondora. This year, sales in it by individual activity should not exceed €45,000, but it is realistic that this will happen in the long run and then I will possibly become a VAT payer, which would make the investment unprofitable. However, I don’t understand tax system very well yet and will be looking forward to tax consultation in the near future.

Anyway, life is good.

P.P.S. Be sure to check the platform yourself before you making any investment decisions. This article is only sharing of my personal experience of the platform and is not a recommendation to make investment decisions. Do your own research.


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