How to trade stocks in Taiwan

So I see people trade Taiwan Exchange or even NYSE. But I am not sure how I can sign up to any of the American brokers like E Trade… but how do I do this?

And is this a go big or go bust thing? Meaning either I invest millions of NTD or can I invest say 500nt to test the waters before I break into this?

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I heard of a stock exchange app for Taiwan, and min buy is mere few thousands. Forgot what it’s called tho. Good luck hunting.

All I know is in Taiwan the stocks are different. Obviously being traded in NTD each share has very low value so it seems it’s usually traded in units of 1000 share. 1000 share may be a few million.

I kinda wanted to use it as a piggy bank, where a few hundred NTD is put in once a week over the course of years…

The commission on a trade may be more then a few hundred TWD. Maybe you are looking for some special savings account, not trading stocks with a few hundred TWD.

Most stocks are in the single or double digits, but it’s still a few thousands.

Yuanta and some others have a 定期定額 system, where you invest a fixed amount each month into some specified ETFs. However because that doesn’t work for foreigners, I don’t know the specifics.

Unless you have larger amounts to invest, US stocks will be more difficult. Taiwanese brokers charge you an arm and four legs for commission and sending the money to a US broker is expensive because of wiring and exchange fees.

That doesn’t work for foreigners? They were going to set me up with that type of account at Yuanta last year then said that I should go to my nearest branch. I know Taishin and Fubon allow foreigners to buy, is what I was told.

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You can buy and sell regular stocks and ETFs without problems. You just can’t get the monthly plans that automatically invest a fixed amount into the same securities every month.

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But can you do that manually ?

Are all apps still in Chinese?

You can buy the same stock every month, if you want to. But there’ll be two drawbacks: (1) you might forget and (2) because Taiwanese stocks trade in batches of 1,000 you might have to put in more money than you want.

To be fair, I don’t exactly know how the batch system works. It might well be possible to buy less than 1,000 at a time. I just haven’t gotten round to experimenting with that.

Odd lot trading: Trading Mechanism Introduction - Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation

Edit: Inconvenient and probably more expensive as well

I have no clue. I use the Yuanta and Taishin apps and they’re both in Chinese. Yuanta is fairly easy to understand. Taishin is a bit of a mess.

I suspect that even if there are apps in English, because most relevant financial statements and news are in Chinese, you won’t have too much fun with an English version. (Unless you only invest in index funds.)

Thanks!

Seems that automatic monthly plans would still make life a lot easier. But at least with Yuanta, foreigners cannot place them for some reason.

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I really don’t get that part. I mean it’s not like a credit card. If there is no money in the account the broker simply doesn’t execute the trade :thinking:

I don’t really get it either. But they told me that when I asked in the branch and no matter what I do, the app just tells me that I cannot execute the transaction because of my identity.

The other thing that doesn’t work for foreigners is checking your bank account balance through the stock trading app. The reason for that is that foreigners don’t trade under their ARC number, but rather under an account number in the form Fxxxxxxxx (that is the letter F and 8 digits).

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That’s right, I trade with that F account.

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First bank charges 25 USD per trade for US stocks.

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What all docs did you have to submit to open a trading account with first bank?

FWIW, if you are a US citizen, expect any bank to reject you due to the reporting pain that America requires for foreign financial institutions. (Perhaps if you were sufficiently wealthy you could convince them otherwise…)

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Hi,
is there a way to trade Taiwan stocks without commission when you’re outside Taiwan? Thanks.

Some Taiwanese companies are on NYSE and NASDAQ, but not all.