Online broker Stake’s SMSF accounts have gone live, with Australian investors now able to trade through their SMSF on the platform.
The move comes in a bid to break down barriers for SMSF investors to access United States stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETF), the destination for 90 per cent of Australian investors’ money.
“We’ve seen a growth of managed funds in SMSFs and just practically all of Australian investors,” Stake founder and chief executive Matt Leibowitz told selfmanagedsuper.
“Magellan and Platinum are focusing a lot on overseas markets and ETFs in the Australian market, but no one is really offering a simple affordable way to directly invest in companies that are changing the way we invest in Netflix, Amazon, Google and Tesla.”
Leibowitz said his firm was seeing demand from SMSF trustees and members for a low-cost SMSF account on the brokerage platform. The firm went public with its SMSF offering last week.
Stake, which has access to over 3500 US stocks and ETFs, does not charge investors brokerage fees to trade as brokerage is free in the US.
Instead, Stake takes a fee on the foreign exchange transfer, which is 0.7 per cent of the spot rate, Leibowitz said.
The platform has a $500 minimum transfer amount between Australian dollars and US dollars. Foreign exchange transfers below $2500 attract a $5 fee.
