General

Syfe Trade Review – Best Way to Start Investing Small

Calvin Lo

If you’re interested to start investing in the US stock market but only willing to dip your toes in with a few hundred bucks or less, Syfe Trade might suit you.

Main features

The biggest draw of Syfe Trade is that the platform allows you to buy fractional shares in most US stocks and ETFs, i.e. part of a whole share. Technically you can even buy USD 1 worth of fractional shares, including the likes of Amazon (AMZN) or Google (GOOGL) which costs around USD 3,000 per share.

Syfe Trade is also offering 5 free trades per month as part of their introductory offer, and super low fees of USD 0.99 per trade thereafter. I’m not sure how long this introductory offer will last.

Benefits

In my opinion, Syfe Trade is a great no-frills option for beginner investors who may want to trade in small $ amounts. Investors can also implement their own DIY dollar-cost-average (DCA) strategy every month, taking advantage of the monthly free trades.

For instance, one could buy $100 worth of Amazon shares every month instead of having to save up for almost 3 years to buy 1 whole share.

I think Syfe Trade is really advantageous for small retail investors and opens up almost the entire US stock market regardless of stock price. This is great for investors because stock price is actually fundamentally meaningless, the more important metric being market capitalisation.

Fees

Besides the introductory offer of 5 free trades per month and USD 0.99 per trade thereafter, Syfe Trade also doesn’t charge any platform fees or withdrawal fees, and there’s no account minimum or inactivity fees.

This is great for small investors. I can practically just fund my account with SGD 1,000 to qualify for the promotion and get cash credits, without worrying about any other incurring any other fees.

Safety and Regulation

Syfe has been around since July 2019, and started off as a robo-advisor under Syfe Wealth. Syfe is regulated by MAS under CMS licence CMS1000837.

Securities of Syfe customers are also protected under SIPC for up to $500k.

User Interface and Experience

Syfe Trade is currently only on mobile app, so there’s no equivalent app on desktop. I really like the interface because it’s simple, elegant, and clean. There are only 4 main tabs – Home, Discover, Watchlist, and Portfolio.

Home

This tab provides the overview of your portfolio value, performance, and watchlist stocks.

Shows your portfolio value in USD, 1 day return and chart (expandable to show 1 week, 1 month, and all), buying power, and daily top movers from your Watchlist.

Discover

Shows interesting stocks to consider by Most Popular, Top Gainers, Top Losers as well as by different Sectors, Market View, and Themes.

I think this could be a great place to get stock ideas, but probably use it only as a starting point for further research.

Watchlist

Add stocks or ETFs here to watch. The sort function by daily change is useful to monitor how your watchlist stocks are performing during the trading day.

Portfolio

Shows more details on your holdings, including cash balance, 1 day return, total unrealised return. Details on individual holdings can be expanded when clicked.

Syfe Trade also provides some basic information on individual stocks. When you click into a particular stock, there are 3 tabs – Overview, Analysis, and News. There’s a stock chart, key stats, a few financial metrics, analyst ratings, estimated target price, valuation analysis, and latest news.

However, the level of information is pretty basic and nowhere near as comprehensive as what you might get on other platforms like Tiger or moomoo. As I mentioned, the info provided can serve as a good starting point but it would be best to use other sources for deeper analysis or charting.

On account opening, the process is very smooth if you have Singpass. That’s the method I used, so I can’t speak to other methods.

On funding, the options are PayNow, FAST/GIRO, and wire transfer. I’ve been using PayNow and the process is pretty seamless.

My personal experience

I’ve just been using Syfe Trade for a few weeks (signed up on 28 Jan 2022), but so far I’m very happy with the platform and I find it really seamless and easy to use.

The monthly free trades really removes the mental barrier of having to invest a certain amount of money so that commissions become a smaller percentage of the trade.

In addition, the fractional trading features allows me to buy whatever US stock I want without worrying about the stock price. So far, I’ve bought $100 worth of Tesla (TSLA), Google (GOOGL), and Amazon (AMZN), all of which won’t be possible without fractional trading. TSLA, GOOGL, and AMZN costs around $876, $2650, and $3093 respectively as at time of writing.

I’ve also gotten my ~SGD70 cash credits deposited into my account (as buying power in USD) within 1 working day of depositing SGD 1,000 and making my first trade.

If it’s one thing I feel that’s lacking is the portfolio performance tracking capability. I’m a big advocate of tracking performance vs benchmarks like S&P 500 and Nasdaq, especially if you’re invested in individual stocks. It’s always good to not only know how your portfolio is performing in absolute terms, but also how it performs relative to the market average.

Final thoughts

In my opinion, Syfe Trade is great for beginners, investors with limited capital, and for regular investing through DCA. There is enough functionality to make the investing experience simple and smooth, yet not too much to clutter the interface. The no-frills concept might also be the reason Syfe Trade can afford to offer low fees and even free trades.

However, Syfe Trade is not an all-in-one trading platform. Investors might want to use other apps or websites to perform deeper analysis both fundamental and technical, keep up with company news, and track portfolio performance.

In addition, Syfe Trade for now is limited to cash trading and only access to US stocks/ETFs. More advanced traders who want access to margin financing or option/futures trading might have to look at other platforms/apps.

If you’re interested to sign up for a Syfe Trade account, you can use my referral code SRPT47KQL to get an additional SGD 10 cash credits on top of the SGD 60 cash credits for funding your account with at least SGD 1,000 and making your first trade.

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Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. I am not professional financial advisor nor do I work in the finance industry. Anything I write here is purely my personal opinion. Please do your own research and due diligence before investing into anything. All investments come with associated risks. Best to consult a financial advisor if you’re still unsure.

For more investing resources, see my Referrals page.

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links and I may get a commission when you click on the links or open an account through the links, at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products or services that I have personally tried and have found useful.