What is the best/easiest broker to buy and hold shares/ETF for Swiss resident?

Investing / Brokers
1

Dear members of this forum,

I spend every day more and more reading your messages and it gives me confidence to finally start my stock and ETF picking.

I am a Swiss citizen/resident and I wonder what is the easiest and best way to buy and hold shares/ETF? Ideally I think I would like to concenrate on the US market and not consider at all Swiss based companies. I understand this puts me in danger for the currency conversion, but the progress US market companies have been doing is almost unheard of here in Switzerland and Europe.

Also, regarding taxes, do the brokers prepare an automatic end of year statement or that is something I have to do myself?

I see there are SwissQuote, De Giro and some others but I would love to hear what is the best solution with this in mind,

Thank you in advance

2

Buying (and partially holding): Interactive Brokers
Holding only: Swiss broker as e.g. SwissQuote

Define a batch size (e.g. CHF 200k) where you transfer all holdings with IBKR to SQ.

3

And this is priced in the existing valuations. You pay 2x the amount for the same cashflow as with european companies.

Are they great companies, that are very profitable? Yes absolutely. Do you pay a premium for that? Yes absolutely.
Is the current price justified and you likely getting a greater return than with cheaper european companies? Not really answerable and theory would actually suggest lower performance going forward due to high shiller p/e ratio of the US market.
That being said this part is where everyone is in the dark and you cannot predict of they will continue to outperform.
That‘s why it‘s prudent to simply buy the whole market (VT etf).

Remeber a good investment is only good for the right price.
A good example is the Dotcom bubble. Lots of great companies that are still around, but you overpaid a lot back then.

5 Likes
4

Thank you. Is that because IB have cheaper fees for buying compared to SQ?

5

Thank you very much. I think my idea would be to get most of the cash in an ETF just like the one you quoted, and maybe do some stock pics for fun and experience.

1 Like
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Interactive Brokers is massively cheaper: Commissions & Fees | Interactive Brokers U.K. Limited

Nevertheless, it can make sense to have a Swiss broker, too, just to hold these assets (e.g. diversification, US estate tax when passing away).

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Not related to the broker, but the situs of the funds.

8

Yea that sounds reasonable! :slight_smile:

9

Yes, but it seems, a US broker will report you/your death to IRS, while a Swiss broker/bank does not care.

10

Holy moly, SQ is 10 times more expensive to buy a share compared to IB!

I am flabbergasted.

With further searching, I found this thread:

So already by buying on IB and transferring to SQ will save you a bundle

1 Like
11

It is - but for Swiss standards it‘s pretty low :slight_smile:

Yes, you will pay a custody fee, which is capped at CHF 50 per quarter.

You will find more infos in this forum, of course.