Taking Swiss clients (I successfully opened accounts with these):
Not (currently) taking Swiss clients (my signup attempts failed):
What have I missed? Does anyone have experience with a US broker not listed here?
What would be the use case to use anyone else other than IBKR when talking about US brokers ?
As far as I know IBKR is cheapest anyways
@Abs_max Personally, I am also dabbling (unsuccessfully) in daytrading, and I am toying with the idea of programming my own ETF (market-capitalization-weighted portfolio). For the pure Mustachian, the use case would be broker diversification. And then I guess I just like seeing and testing for myself, after reading all I can online (I find the differences in the signup- and trading-experience very interesting). So far it has been a bit of a lonely experience, but reading this forum it seems like there are some very knowledgeable people around with tons of experience to share :).
Based on my research, right now Alpaca would be cheaper than IBKR (but of course much less established).
Normally one is very far away from being considered a professional trader. But given enough volume, this is likely to get you there. Then you are taxed on capital gains.
Also IB has a 0.35$ trading fee with tiered pricing. And IB is the broker a lot of professionals use for their trading. It‘s well established.
I have never heard about Alpaca, not sure if all the paperwork like the W8-ben will be done correctly there.
Tastytrade also takes europeans afaik. But there is always high cost associated with transfering funds, as far as I heard.
@Tony1337 Yes, potentially being classified as a professional trader is another topic that I am interested in, but that’s for another thread (if allowed on this forum).
Are you using the tiered IB plan?
I plan on opening a thread on Alpaca sometime. I don’t know about their W-8BEN handling, because so far I never held anything overnight there (so no dividends).
I will check out Tastytrade, thanks!
I don’t think a market-capitalization-weighted portfolio would create a higher volume than a single ETF. Perhaps a higher number of transactions, but not a higher volume.
Other weights would, like same-weight or fundamental weights. And day trading would obviously too.
I think because of the rebalancing-trades it would be a bit higher volume than buying an ETF, but still well below the limit of 5x the invested capital at the beginning of the tax period, as outlined in the Kreisschreiben Nr. 36. But like you said, that limit is usually shattered in the first minutes of daytrading…
There is no rebalancing needed with market-capitalization weights. It just stays the course. There can be rebalancing with cash, but the volumes will be the same as if it were an ETF. Am I missing something?
There are topics on the board already, where you can post questiosn regarding that or find what you are looking for.
Most here are. Basically everyone should, it’s just straight up cheaper for the amounts a retail trader uses generally.
I was refering mainly to the daytrading. Both in combination, with enough volume.
Just the etf replication unlikely.
However executing that will be likely extremely diffcult to a satisfying degree and I dont think you can beat the cheapness of VT. Let alone the headache of all the withholding taxes for the stocks and tax filing 
No you’re right, at least for a total market portfolio (until a new listing appears). I was thinking about having only the top X stocks, where the components at the bottom would change. This would then mean to sell the component that dropped out, and buy the new one, and if the new one made a grand entrance (immediately jumped a few of the bottom ranks), it would cause a slight rebalancing of everything else. And I also haven’t decided yet how often I would want to do the rebalancing (daily, weekly, monthly, quartely).
Thank you, I just switched to the tiered plan, and updated my original post.
Factoring in my time, yes, I could never beat VT (or any other ETF). Otherwise I believe it is possible to achieve zero TER.
For execution, I was thinking to export the top X list from TradingView from time to time and feed it to my program to calculate the rebalancing trades and execute them automatically via the brokers API.
WHT: I think that would be no different from a normal portfolio: The account statement from the broker should have all the necessary info to file the DA-1/R-US forms.
Even at a low 35 cents per trade, the trading will cost you quite a lot I would imagine. Especially if you want to have a resemblence of tracking the index.
I think it gets quite complicated quite fast with a lot of different countries and the double tax treaties applying etc.
I plan on implementing this as soon as Alpaca implements multiple accounts (which is planned for this year). With zero trading comissions, I expect to have exactly the same or less trading costs than an ETF. I expect to be tracking even better than ETFs, because I can rebalance more frequently.
Sorry I didn’t mention that I plan to have a purely US portfolio, e.g. US top 50 or 100. So the WHT situation should remain very simple. Having separate accounts should allow me to separate my daytrading and buy-and-hold activities (just for myself, tax office wouldn’t care).
You do realize TER of SP500 ETFs are as low as 0.03% (aka negligible).
If you’re going to DIY something why not get an actual advantage (eg replicate it with futures, get the total return with no income tax and not have to deal with DA-1).
I do (I own a bit of IVV and VOO). I want to do this mainly because this is my idea of a fun hobby and not to save 0.03%. Also I think it’s pretty amazing (and exciting) to actually be able to contemplate something like this as a private individual.
Futures are an interesting thought. So far I didn’t investigate further because:
That‘s a feature for us
You get the total (gross) return without dividend, that’s a plus.
Not really, if you don’t want leverage, you need invest the rest into something like short term US treasuries (e.g. BOXX since it’s tax free too) to counterbalance.
Unfortunately I cannot edit my original post anymore (can a mod help?).
My tastytrade account was approved. The sign-up process was very smooth. The platform feels modern. It was possible to link my Wise account via ACH. They have instant deposit (like Alpaca): The deposit was available for trading immediately even though the ACH transfer was still being processed. They automatically submit W-8BEN on my behalf, nice.
With IB and Alpaca it was also possible to connect my Wise account via ACH.
My Wise transfer to Schwab was blocked, I had to cancel it.
My Wise transfer to TradeStation was finally deposited after I spent hours providing various bank statements. Customer support told me this would be necessary for every Wise transfer.
IBKR is recommended everywhere, even in other financial forums. Always for the same reason: very low fees. But what about Privacy? Is the level of Privacy comparable to Swissquote? Or is my data simply being sold to brokers? I thought I remembered somewhere that Robinhood (that was Gamestop on Reddit) sells the data wildly.