I think no one on this forum ever asked or used any official statement, if it costs.
They probably mean âPortfolio performanceâ document, which is not a tax statement, whatever it is.
Considering that many financial bloggers get commission for people that they manage to convince to subscribe, it is not surprising that they can show products better than they are. See a big ad with a promotion code on the page that you refer.
1 Like
Checked my CHF payment account statement and havenât spotted anything suspicious 
I am wondering why nobody is talking about cornertrader as a swiss alternative to IBKR?
When I compared the prices more than 1 year ago, it was for me better than Postfinance because:
- You get a USD Account (where I wire the USD from IBKR)
- No Custody Fee
- If you donât trade for 3 months, they apply a 35.- inactivity fee
- Trades for VWRL in USD cost: 2-3 cents per share and 12 chf min (capital plan when you have more than 75k, otherwise the minima is 18 chf and 3-4 cents per share for US stocks)
So in short if you trade 4x a year very passively, you should be able to come out with approx 48.- per year while having quite âlowâ (not in comparison to IBKR, but to other swiss brokers) trading feesâŚ
The swiss stamp duty tax is not included in the mentioned fees.
Therefore my question is: WHAT DO I MISS? 
You can find the pricing here: Cornèrtrader â Ihre Online-Handelsplattform in der Schweiz
1 Like
I think most people âforgotâ about it or dontâ want to talk about it since they introduced the inactivity fee. It was once the âdarlingâ of the forum 
I think one missing thing is that you canât have registered shares I believe.
3 Likes
You canât have registered shares, you have to request two-factor authentication via message if you want any form of protection higher than an easy to guess generic ID (that you canât choose nor change) and a password, which comes in the form of either Google or Microsoft authenticator (no in house product, revealing of the lack of interest they have for the concept), and you have to ask them by email when you want to withdraw your funds.
I donât know IB quality of service but CT does cut a few corners that other swiss brokers donât.
I see what you did there.
If you still use IBKR to convert currency, itâs not exactly an alternative to IBKR. Itâs also not convenient. For reference, currency exchange costs 0.5% at Cornèrtrader, which is not as bad as Swissquoteâs 0.95% but still high compared to foreign brokers.
Arenât you mixing UCITS ETF with NYSE fees here? The official VWRD USD listing is at the LSE where the fee is 0.2% with a minimum of USD 30, as far as I can tell. Alternatively, VWRL would be available in EUR at Xetra for 0.12% with a minimum of EUR 12 or in CHF at SIX for 0.12% with a minimum of CHF 18.
Cornèrtrader was my secondary broker (next to IBKR) until a year ago when I transferred my positions from CT to Swissquote. My reasons were:
- Swissquote provides access to Swiss mutual funds such as CSIF with CHF 9 flat fee trades (and no stamp duty tax for domestic funds). Cornèrtrader doesnât (or didnât) offer CSIF funds at all.
- Lower trading fees for ETF âleadersâ: The difference is often small but for large trades, the CHF 9.85 flat commission (+ exchange fees) is significantly cheaper than CT (e.g. when swapping out one ETF for another, although still not cheap due to stamp duty tax)
- Swissquote also provides access to BX Swiss while CT doesnât
- Annual fees are typically worse at Swissquote but the difference is not necessarily that big, depending on your trading pattern. As CT was my secondary broker, I didnât trade every quarter and was thus occasionally hit by the inactivity fee. Swissquote also provides SIX real-time order information without surcharge while this costs CHF 72 a year at CT.
- Currency exchange fees and also regular trading fees (outside ETF âleadersâ and prime partner mutual funds) are overall more reasonable at CT than Swissquote (although CT has higher minima). However, I use my Swiss broker only for CHF funds with a flat fee, so it doesnât matter to me.
- My overall impression of Cornèrtrader is worse than Swissquote
- Withdrawals: Having to call or email CT to get access to my money felt odd to me. Swissquote is a full bank and also supports e.g. recurring withdrawals.
- FIDLEG: On Dec 1st, 2021 an email arrives with general info about new FIDLEG, explicitly mentioning that CT is an execution only platform and no mention of any restrictions. I.e., the email was implying that they donât have to restrict US ETF trades. A couple of weeks later they sent another email where they mention that trades of US ETFs will have to be blocked due to FIDLEG. They allegedly were working with high priority on a solution that prevents private investors from trading these instruments and this will be activated at some point in January 2022. My impression was that they have no idea what theyâre doing. Thatâs not what I want from a broker.
- My relationship manager seems to have left CT at some point. I only noticed when an email to him bounced. I wasnât informed about this and didnât have information for my new contact.
- Opening the trading platform with Firefox resulted in a warning that itâs not officially supported.
That said, Cornèrtrader is certainly not all bad. E.g. the reporting and export functions are more advanced at CT than Swissquote. Depending on what and how frequently youâre trading, CT may be a good choice for a Swiss broker.
Overall, I see almost no benefit of Cornèrtrader compared to IBKR. While Cornèrtrader is a Swiss company, the trading platform is based on Saxo, which doesnât offer access to Swiss securities that arenât available at foreign brokers (e.g. CSIF, BX Swiss). So to me itâs more like a Swiss frontend to a foreign platform. Unlike IBKR, a Swiss tax document can be ordered but it costs CHF 10 per transaction (min. CHF 100, max. CHF 500), so not exactly reasonable either.
Iâm happy with my split of using a foreign broker (IBKR) for foreign funds and Swissquote for Swiss funds. Keeps the total fees mostly reasonable, provides access to all Swiss funds, and still reduces the (already very low) risk of using a single foreign broker.
5 Likes
Sorry, maybe I should open a new thread (split please after the answer 
) but what mutual funds? And why? I donât hear that word (mutual) that much on this forum.
CSIF offers a few mutual index funds without an equivalent ETF, as far as I know. Also, with a Swiss broker, (domestic) mutual funds have an advantage in that there is no Swiss stamp duty tax, and no exchange fees. At Swissquote you pay a flat CHF 9 for buying domestic CSIF funds (+ a subscription spread that remains within the fund). E.g.
- CSIF (CH) Bond Switzerland AAA-BBB 1-5
- CSIF (CH) Bond Switzerland AAA-AA
- CSIF (CH) Equity Switzerland Small & Mid Cap [SPI Extra]
And the CSIF SMI fund has slightly lower TER than the UBS SMI ETF (0.16% vs. 0.20%).
2 Likes
I didnât check for the registered shares but the authentification changed a bit:
You have an account number (username) + A password you define and have to rotate every x month + a second factor with google authenticator. It was imposed like that and didnât have to request it. Still not top notch but ok for me.
1 Like
You are absolutely right, it my case its not an alternative but a way to diversify the broker-risk. And yes 100% at IBKR would be much more convenient.
Thanks for the other comments, helped me a lot to see your reasoning behind SQ. So if you have a big part of CH-Shares/funds SQ might be even cheaperâŚ
Lets see how they develop furtherâŚ