Yes, if you’re making one London listed ETF purchase per month or more, in any amount, IB wins the cost comparison. However, you wouldn’t actually do that until your savings flow is higher. You’d batch up your fund purchases into bimonthly, quarterly, semiannual, or even annual purchases to balance the minimum Standard Chartered commission (US$10.70) with the goal of getting in the market. There is an average cost to being out of the market, though, so that’s part of how you balance costs.
Got it, thank you
To a degree, but while you’re under age 26 the minimum activity fee is actually about US$0.90 lower than a currency conversion (US$2) plus fund purchase commission (US$1.90 or so — and I got that slightly wrong, there’s actually about 20 cents of additional cost there, I believe).
Yo I'm not getting this. Where do u get the numbers from? I'm trying to find them on IBKR website https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=1590&p=stocks1 but I can't find them.
So if you’re doing both in the same month, actual commissions will apply instead of the minimum. Consequently if you want to save about 90 cents you can do one or the other but not both. And therefore it could make a little bit of cents (pun intended) to not do both every month. Also, during the first three months after account opening — precisely when you’ll be investing the S$4,000 — there is no minimum activity fee.
Anyway, 2 installments or maybe 3 feels about right to me for that S$4,000, but I wouldn’t go crazy. You’re going to be spending the next few decades saving and investing, presumably, so it’s not going to matter whether that S$4,000 goes in all at once, in halves, in thirds, or in quarters.
ba dum tss
Thanks!