Am I stupid or why is it so hard to buy an ETF?

Investing / Brokers
1

Currently, I’m buying the Invesco FTSE All World (FWRA, IE000716YHJ7) with neon invest, as there are no trading fees until the end of this quarter. After that, the 0.5% transaction fees are a bit much, especially when my fixed deposit is up at the end of the year and I plan to invest a larger amount of money.

So I was trying demo accounts at a few brokers, just to see how I would actually buy this ETF (in CHF, in Switzerland/SIX) in the future. With neon invest, this is completely stupidly simple (but also extremely limited of course). So I tried Swissquote, Interactive Brokers, Cornèrtrader and Saxo Trader.

With Cornèrtrader, I can’t find the ETF:

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Same thing with Saxo (the UI looks suspiciously alike):

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With Interactive Brokers I do find the ETF, lots of them with no discernible difference in the search results, and I don’t see on which stock exchange or in which currency I’ll trade:

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If I click on through to the detail page, a miniscule country flag shows me that I’m buying in Switzerland, but still not on what exchange or in which currency:

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And last but certainly not least, Swissquote. I find the ETF, and it is crystal-clear on which exchange and in which currency I’ll trade:

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Am I doing something wrong?

2

On IB, when you give FWRA, you see the exchange by the 3 letters in the end :
LSE : London Stock exchange
EBS : Elektronische Börse Schweiz
XETRA :Germany (electronic)
ARCA : NY Stock exchange

etc.

Then you have to know how it is listed in the respective exchange (should be available on the Fund website, or justetf.com).

Using smart routing is mainly for currency. IB, will find you the best exchange platform for the trade(they have an obligation by law). In General, for a liquid ETF product, the exact exchange has no real impact (apart currency of trading) and will not make a huge difference.

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3

Cornèrtrader indeed uses the Saxo platform. I don’t know why the ETF is not listed there but it’s possible that they add it if you were to request it.

4

You can see the currency in IB, when you click “Trade”. Not really practical, I have also been confused about the currencies of different stocks on IB.

5

Thanks everybody.

The process on IB seems very intransparent to me. I wouldn’t want to invest tens of thousands of CHF under such circumstances and rather pay fees of CHF 200-300 per year to have some peace of mind.

6

What is exactly intransparent?

The user interface may not be the best or the most intuitive, but you get what you pay for. You need a bit time to get used to it. For me the extremly low trading costs and no custody fees outweigh the unituitive interface. But that’s just my personal view, you may value other things more.

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7

i use the info page of ib. you can search by name, isin etc. with ibkr you need to know the symbol.

https://pennies.interactivebrokers.com/cstools/contract_info/v3.10/index.php

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8

You can try the IBKR phone app. It is much better than their website. Also easier to use than their TWS tool (but less powerful too).

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