No. of Recommendations: 2
I use Interactive Brokers. They allow accounts by French residents and citizens. Frenchresidents are legally supported out of IB's subsidiary in Ireland, but it's basically all the same thing. Opening an account at IB can be a few more steps, there is a minimum commission/data charge of about $10 a month, and their interface is a bit daunting the first couple of hours. But the commissions are too small to bother tracking, and they plug you directly into the global forex market so you never pay a currency spread again. They will generally let you trade any product, including bonds and funds, that it is legal for you to own based on where you live. This is an excellent longer term choice for when you know what you want in the way of capital allocation.
Interactive Brokers used to have a $10 monthly minimum but I think this was removed a long time ago, and I can't find any mention of it on the ibkr website. Jim probably trades enough to get over $10 anyways, but maybe he or someone else who has an account in Europe could check to see if this really applies any more.
Also, I find that the big benefit of having an ibkr account are, in this order:
-better prices on trades, and
-excellent forex trades (already mentioned by Jim); but also
-low interest on margin loans,
-access to markets that most brokers ignore (Japan, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, etc.), and
-rebates on shares lent out for short trades.
The relative important of these features will be different from one investor to another, and most of these will not make much of a difference, if you just want a simple account with a few Berkshire shares held indefinitely, but the monthly minimum would be a killer, if it still exists. However, I think that erstwhile drawback has now disappeared.
DTB
Addendum: the minimum monthly fee seems to have been removed, at least 3 years ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/com...
