Are you spending a lot on trading fees or struggling to track your portfolio performance on trading platforms with complicated user interfaces?
As an investor in the stock market, I’m always on the hunt for the best trading platform. I’m no longer be satisfied with brokers that merely execute trades for a commission. I want not just a broker but a trading platform which can provide stock information, news & analysis, performance tracking in addition to basic trade execution.
Tiger Brokers is an online broker that offers all that and more. They aim to be a one-stop platform for all your trading needs. They even provide access to more advanced features like options trading and margin trading (not recommended for beginners).
I used to be paying S$10-25 per trade with other Singapore brokers, but now I’m paying so much less with Tiger Brokers (see the section below on Fees). As a retail investor trading in small transaction amounts, every dollar saved on fees goes a long way.
I can’t speak on the more advanced features but I can say that Tiger Brokers can definitely cater to the basic needs of retail investors like me.
Personally, I’ve only so far traded stocks and ETFs in cash. I’ve not dabbled in options or derivatives and have not used margin for trading, and I’m perfectly fine.
So if you’re a beginner or retail investor like me looking to make basic trades and low fees, definitely check Tiger Brokers out.
If you want to jump right in, you can click on the button below to open an account using my referral link. Tiger Brokers are offering attractive welcome gifts for new accounts FYI but that shouldn’t be the main reason you sign up. But then again, who doesn’t like free stuff.
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.
Let’s get into my review proper. Here’s an outline of this post:
- Safety and regulation
- Market access
- Fees
- Account opening and funding
- User interface and functionality
Safety and Regulation
As investors, the first thing we always worry about with brokerage accounts is whether our money is safe. Since Tiger Brokers is a Chinese company, it’s only prudent that we look into whether it is regulated and by whom, and where our money is kept.
Tiger Brokers is regulated by the respective regulators in Singapore, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. For instance, in Singapore they hold a Capital Market Services (CMS) license issued by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). You can find the regulatory information on their website here.
Since MAS is known to be pretty strict, you can gain some assurance that Tiger Brokers is not a scam since they met all licensing requirements.
Client money is also segregated and kept in custodian accounts, so you don’t have to worry about Tiger Brokers running away with your money suddenly. You can find out more about the custodians in the various markets here.
In addition, Tiger Brokers is listed on the NASDAQ in the US under the company name UP Fintech Holding Limited (ticker: TIGR). So we can easily track the company’s performance through the quarterly results and other disclosures they have to make as a public company.
A quick look at their financial results for Q2 2021, shows that TIGR’s revenues, account balances, and number of customer accounts have increased substantially YoY. However, TIGR reported a pretty substantial net loss this quarter largely due to a fair value change on convertible bonds. That said, non-GAAP loss which reflects its operational situation was much smaller. In my personal opinion, I don’t see any red flags.
That said, currently we only have less than 10% of our net worth in Tiger Brokers. The majority of our invested money is still with Standard Chartered. Although SCB charges higher trading fees, we are more comfortable putting most of our money there since SCB is a well-established global bank and also regulated by MAS.
Similarly, you would have to find a balance yourself between saving on trading fees versus your risk/comfort level in putting money with a foreign broker.
Market Access
Tiger Brokers allows investors to trade in US, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, and China markets. Specifically, you can access these assets:
- US stocks and ETFs
- SG stocks, ETFs, REITS and DLCs
- HK stocks
- China A-shares
- Australia stocks
Besides equities, Tiger Brokers also offers trading in options and index/metal/treasury/energy futures. However, I personally haven’t yet dabbled in these products so I can’t offer my take on those.
They aim to be a one-stop trading platform, so they might be adding many more securities in the future.
Fees
The most attractive proposition about Tiger Brokers are the low fees they charge for trading on their online platform.
Since I’m a small retail investor and my trades are usually around SGD2k or less, I’m mostly concerned about the minimum fees when comparing brokers.
Basically, for US markets the minimum fee is USD1.99/order (commission min USD0.99/order + platform fee min USD1/order) and for SG market the minimum fee is SGD2.88/order (commission SGD1/order + platform fee min SGD1.88/order).
You can find a comprehensive list of fees here.
PROMOTION (as of this writing on 5/11/2021): For SG market, the minimum commission and platform fees charged by Tiger Brokers are waived until 31/12/2021, so you just need to pay 0.08% of trade value.
Note that the fees I mentioned are only those charged by Tiger Brokers. Some stock exchanges also charge fees like trading or clearing fees, which apply to all brokers. For example, SGX charges 0.0075% trading fee and 0.0325% clearing fee.
If you’re trading in Singapore, note that GST (currently 7%) are excluded. GST for every trade will be reflected in your account statements.
Account Opening and Funding
Opening an account with Tiger Brokers was pretty quick and straightforward for me.
If you’re Singaporean, you can easily authorise that your personal data be provided to Tiger Brokers through Singpass/MyInfo. Then, follow the rest of the instructions and the usual form and compliance questionnaires to complete the registration. Your account should be opened within 1-3 business days.
Tiger Brokers has a detailed guide on account opening here.
To fund your account, you can deposit funds using bank account transfer (within 1-3 business days) or Direct Debit Authorisation (DDA) if you have a DBS/POSB bank account (free and almost instant). I’ve only been depositing using DDA and the experience has been very smooth.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you deposited SGD but intend to trade in US markets, remember to convert your SGD to USD and make sure you have sufficient USD Cash for the trade otherwise you might be buying on margin and thus be charged margin interest. This applies likewise to other overseas markets.
User Interface and Functionality
In my opinion, user interface (UI) and functionality is where the Tiger Brokers platform shines.
The main Stocks tab has most of the important information you would need to analyse a stock and make a trade. Here’s a brief description of the various windows:
- Watchlist: On the left is your watchlist, which I usually arrange in descending order of % price change for the day to see which stocks are making big moves.
- Chart: At the center is a stock chart, with customisable technical indicators and your buy/sell trades marked out.
- Position & Order: At the bottom are your positions and orders. Among the fields are market value, PnL, PnL%, etc and you can sort by any of these fields. Under the Order tab, you can see all your orders that are To Be Filled, Cancelled, or Filled.
- Stock Information: On the right is where all the stock information is contained. You can find the following tabs and information:
- Quote: Market Data, Order Book, Capital Flow
- Analysis: Valuation Analysis, Fundamental Analysis, Short Interest
- Financial (my favourite): Business Segments, Financial Analysis, Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow
- Filing: Company Notices
- News: All the latest news on the company
- Post: Tiger Broker community posts
The other tab I find very useful is the Assets tab, where Account Information and stats like Returns, PnL, Funding History, Dividend History, etc.
I’m a big believer in tracking your performance against appropriate benchmarks like the S&P 500 index. Since Tiger Brokers also provides access to China and Hong Kong markets, you can also pick HSI, SSE or SZSE benchmarks for comparison. Notably, Singapore’s STI is missing though.
Personally, I find the Tiger Brokers platform and UI sufficient for all my trading needs and workflow. I can keep my favourite stocks on watchlist, perform quick fundamental and technical analysis, key in my trades, and review my portfolio performance all within the platform.
Mobile App
Tiger Brokers mobile app surprisingly has many of the features that the desktop version has. I found funding my account, keying in trades, analysing stocks, tracking performance, managing my watchlist and setting price alerts just as easily on the mobile app.
A few things I found difficult on the mobile app are reading the account e-statements (not optimised for mobile) and finding my dividend payments, which are much easier to do on desktop.
Conclusion
Tiger Brokers is currently my favourite trading platform and one I use most frequently to keep up with the market and trade. There are just so many things to like about Tiger Brokers platform.
It’s easy to use, funding and currency exchange are fast, and has all the basic analysis tools you might need to quickly analyse a stock.
The platform saves me time with all the functionality built in, and money with their low fee structure. On the flip side, I tend to trade more frequently and in smaller dollar amounts.
I haven’t explored all the platform has to though especially the more advanced features like margin and options trading. If I do eventually use those services, I’ll definitely write another review update.
I definitely recommend giving Tiger Brokers a try. If you have any questions about the platform, feel free to reach out to me and I’ll try to help you out.
Sign Up for a Tiger Brokers Account
If you’re interested to open an account with Tiger Brokers, you can click the button below to open an account using my referral link.
Tiger Brokers is offering pretty attractive welcome gifts for new sign-ups, including limited commission-free trades and a free Apple (AAPL) share (current price ~USD150) if you deposit at least SGD2,000 for your first deposit.
The promotion now is a lot more attractive than when I first signed up back in March 2021. Back then, all I got was a 10% off a single Tesla (TSLA) share. But I guess I shouldn’t complain because that Tesla share has more than doubled since then.