Just to clarify, Swissquote does charge a nominal custody fee (chf 100/ann/per postion), but this is irrelevent to the trade size. IB does not charge a Stamp Tax (which is relevent to the trade size) because they are based in UK.

Thanks for the opportunity. Our bank is of Belgian origin, was founded in 1998 and is nowadays owned by Crédit Agricole. The bank has about 125.000 customers (mainly in Belgium) using our proprietary platform. Our traditional strengths are in providing direct access to the leading equity markets but we have a full online funds offer as well. We wanted to export the business model to other countries and noticed what investors were charged in Switzerland as a result of local dominance of one player. The Geneva-based branch opened in April last year and has a full Swiss banking license. In total we have 15 equity and option markets online and most of them are in real-time. A substantial percentage of our clients are actually foreigners resident in Switzerland. Some people are attracted by the price difference compared to Swissquote (we have been selected consistently as best offer by the local press) but often also by the product offer. Swiss brokers tend to focus on their local product offer as most Swiss do not buy foreign shares. We come from a different background and have a fully developed offer for the US markets (incl. OTC-BB and equity options), London, Euronext, Toronto etc. We also have a second platform focused on short-term products (FX, forex and futures).

Best regards

Patrick

just a note on swissquote. i don't normally trade frequently but happened to do so on my shares in BP due to some of the recent volatility.

i had some bad experiences with swissquote:

- first the fees are expensive, aside from stamp duty which is expected, you have swissquote fees and then rather expensive FX fees
- swissquote seems to like break your order up then charge you fees on all the mini-transactions e.g. if you want to sell 2000 BP shares, they might sell it in 5 transactions each incurring a minimum 5 quid stamp duty charge and each incurring a separate swissquote charge and separate swissquote FX charge

once i liquidate my remaining BP shares, i will not be buying via swissquote again!

Hi,

The only reason I can see for this breaking up of orders is that this is the effect of partial execution. When you put in an order at a (low) limit you could have part of it executed first and the rest at a later stage. In case of partial execution of a single order we (see my posting above) only charge fees once, even if executed over several days. And I agree Swissquote is expensive

Best regards

Patrick

I also feel swissquote is expensive. My normal trade is about 10000 annd i hope to get 5percent return (500chf) now swissquote take 60chf per trade which leaves me with the risk of loosing my money and only 380 - stamp gebühr...
are thy any cheaper professional online traders like the UK offers ??

https://www.interactivebrokers.com looks good, but I don't currently have an account with them so would welcome any opinion. I currently have accounts with DKB in Germany and Share Centre in the UK and whilst both are good in terms of cost I feel their platforms are poor. For example no performance metrics for Share Centre and although DKB does have this it ignores accrued interest for bonds and Divs for Stocks so it is effectively useless.

I'm very much in the same position. I've started actively trading (multiple per week) in the last month or so but am focused on the AIM markets in the UK. Since I'm not UK-resident, I can't open a trading account there so initially felt that SwissQuote fitted the bill and so my trading is currently through this medium. (Sidebar - I was infrequently trading via my UBS account for the last several years but, even with a discount, the cost was "prohibitive" to say the least considering I did all the work.)

Apart from price, the major issue I have with Swissquote is that I can only place limit orders on the UK exchange. No stop limit, trailing stops etc. which means if I'm not permanently on top of it, I could quickly lose capital or miss signal based selling opportunities. I was so surprised, I called them for help thinking I was incorrectly entering orders ... Very blunt "No, we don't do that".

Just found out about KeyTrade and am going to look into it closer but if anyone (belgo?) knows the answer to the above, it would be great.

Will also take a look at "interactivebrokers" since I've not heard of this one before.

Compared with being resident in the US or UK, the online trading facilities seem still to be in their infancy in Switzerland; more competition would help - being able to open accounts elsewhere as a non-dom would give huge choice (and possibly force major change in Switzerland) but banking laws are fully against you on this it seems

Regards.

Hello,

We (keytrade bank) currently have stop and stop limit type of orders on euronext, nasdaq, Nyse, Xetra but not on London unfortunately. On London we have market and limit orders. We are planning to have more types of orders including trailing stops in the next months though. As you rightly point out these type of orders are very useful. We have a second platform (www.keytradebankpro.ch) on which you already have these type of orders (stop, stop limit and trailing stop) but it is geared toward products such as CFD's, futures etc so more leveraged products.
regards
Patrick

Does anyone know the Swiss tax return implications for the various different trading account possibilities?

Looking at the Interactive Brokers website, it says something along the lines of 'We are US-based. You have to file paperwork to say you are non-US resident. You might be able to reclaim some withholding tax back somehow depending on the US tax treaty with your country of residence'.

Would the trading platforms registered in Switzerland make this easier? I guess at the least they would provide an annual statement more acceptable to attach to the Swiss tax return (anyone have experience of this?). Would they make getting withholding tax from e.g. UK dividends / interest, easier to get back (or somehow compensated for in the Swiss tax return?)

As usual, trying to figure out how to correctly fill in the tax forms is as clear as mud. This is why I haven't got a trading account, although I would like one. Does anyone have any tips on how to keep the Swiss tax return simple, at the same time as holding some GBP and EUR equity ? Is it possible to not pay witholding tax on dividends (in the UK specifically), or is this an inevitable tax on the small investor?

Hi Belgo,

I recently opened a "non pro" trading account with Keytrade Bank.

I was attracted by the low share dealing fees and that, unlike Swissquote, there is access to all optionable securities in the US. I won't buy a security unless it is optionable.

However, I was shocked to find you charge USD 19.95 for options trades. Swissquote charge about USD 2.50.

How do you explain such a large fee? Does the USD 19.95 include the buying back or sale of an option?

The 100% margin requirement on naked puts is excessive. CBOE rules require only 20%. While I usually mentally reserve 100% of the underlying in case of assignment, sometimes you think it is worth it to take the chance.

Also for calls, one can only sell covered calls it appears.

What are the main differences between the pro account and the non pro account?

Hi BeastOfBodmin,

Thanks for your mail. We are indeed a lot cheaper than Swissquote for shares and have the US options market online as well; you pay 2.95$ per contract for US options but with a min. ticket fee of USD 19.95. So indeed if you only do 1 contract you do not pay 2.95$ for the trade but USD 19.95. However on 10 contracts you pay 29.95$, not 10 times 19.95.
You are correct that we are quite conservative at the moment regarding margin requirement for naked puts. We are working on a different margin based system however, which should be available end of the year.
Yes you can only do covered calls.
On the Pro account you basically trade different products i.e. FX, CFD's and Futures. It is margin based and you have no limitations in short/long.

best regards

OK, that is better, but the minimum charge is high, especially coupled with the 100% margin requirement.

Will the replacement margin system follow CBOE rules? May I ask what are the reasons for the current margin requirements? Is the replacement system on schedule for a release before 2012?

Will this change with the different system you mention above?

Then with the Pro account there is no possibility to trade stocks, and options on stocks?

Thanks for taking the time to follow this thread.

Hi,

I think the discussion might become a bit too detailed to have on this forum. We will be pleased to go into further detail but I suggest to send us a mail on info@keytradebank.ch. You can just copy the text from the forum.

best regards

Patrick

I've also used SwissQuote for a few years and have had no problems. I can recommend them.

I recently opened an account with Swissquote. As an expat I find them very expensive. They might be a norm for Switzerland, but completely insane compared to any online broker in the US. I will be looking for cheaper alternatives and will close Swissquote account as soon as I recover the money lost to the fees, which is over 2k CHF. Any new experiences/recommendations given the recent postings were about a year old.

What about an Interactive Brokers account?
As far as I know they're the cheapest around!

For me, Swissquote's (SQB) only advantage is their stock options are the cheapest I have found. But they don't offer all optionable securities online. And if you get assigned/ exercised, then you get hit for the trading fees at SQB rates.

CIM Banque offer a trading platform as a "white label" Interactive Brokers account. Their shares dealing charges are the cheapest I have seen. Their options charges are not quite as good as SQB's.

Thank you very much for all the above replies to my original post re SQB. I checked other brokers as recommended. All taken together, for simple trading of equities within Swiss market, cost across different platforms appears to be very high and perhaps a tad better at KeyTrade Bank (Credit Agricole). I spent quite a bit of time calculating cost structures across different platforms and came to a realization that the cost fee structure across different platforms is simply outrageous. At the end, I'll end up buying a lot of Nestle, hoping that it doesn't take a hit and its dividend outruns the fees paid for a great privilege to trade in Switzerland. It'll take me a while to get over this. I guess we got really spoiled in the US with simplicity and low cost structure of online trading (no custody fees etc..).

Patrick -

I will let others judge if you are abusing this forum for promoting your employer (Keytrade Bank) or not.

I'll just comment on the fact that Keystone - unlike Credit Suisse, despite their higher fees - at least have the decency to accept US persons to hold current and investment accounts.

Keytrade, on the other hand, outright discriminates against US nationals:

Please note that we do not open accounts for "US person", i.e. US citizen (be it by single, dual or multiple nationality)
source: https://www.keytradebank.ch/en/openaccount

Don't blame the companies that do this. The fault lies with the US government for creating onerous regulatory conditions for its own citizens and for financial service companies that would serve them.