Hello everyone, we have an account with IBKR where we deposit CHF 100 per month for our daughter (the account is in our name). It is a cash account.
We initially purchased 130 shares of FWRA, and plan to purchase more every two months (~30 shares).
I don’t know what I did wrong, but when I purchased the 130 shares, the commissions/fees amounted to CHF 1.50, compared to CHF 3.58 for the 30 shares… See below.
Could anyone explain this to me?
I don’t know why only CHF 1.50 was charged for the first trade but CHF 3.58 looks right, unfortunately. The minimum commission is CHF 1.50 and the minimum exchange+clearing fee at SIX is CHF 2.08.
Using the recurring investment feature might help. While IBKR states that standard commissions apply for recurring investments, they do aggregate orders, so I think the exchange fee should not be applied to each investor (assuming there are multiple investors). However, I can’t confirm this as I don’t use it myself. Does anyone here use IBKR recurring investments at SIX and can tell how the total commissions/fees are like in practice?
If that doesn’t help, I’d suggest lowering the trading frequency to once every 3 or 6 months, buying FWRA at a different exchange, or investing at Neon for your daughter (if I remember correctly, Neon allows to transfer positions out in case you want to switch to a real broker in the future without excessive fees).
Maybe internally, you effectively didn’t buy the ETF on the stock exchange itself but from another IBKR customer and then it gets routed differently, so the seller and you both pay less for the trade and IBKR earns more?
Thank you for your replies ! Indeed, for 3.58 CHF per order I should trade only once every 6 months to reduce the impact of fees. I’d like to keep the money on our name so Neon is not an option. I’ll try the recurring investments and keep you posted.
