Financial Mail - Investors Monthly
What they’re good at
We assess each stockbroker on four core measures and the best performers are listed in these tables
There are many elements to being a great broker. Some, however, focus on particular capabilities, such as a wide range of exotic trading instruments to suit professional trading clients.
Others aim to support more novice investors with educational support. In this section we list excellent brokers on four different measures to help readers recognise the ones that would suit them.
This measures the efficiency and time for responses to our mystery shopping exercise and the transparency of the information provided both on the website and in our communication with the brokers. Transparency levels are generally excellent, having improved tremendously over the past few years. Most firms responded swiftly to our mystery shopping exercise.
The range as well as the quality of educational support and research provided by brokers pretty much across the market (there are a few exceptions) is extraordinary. Investors are well catered for in SA. From basic trading concepts to the more sophisticated derivatives-linked investment options, investors can access training on just about any type of trading and investment concepts, online or at numerous events that are offered by stockbrokers.
We assess this category using information garnered from the brokers’ submissions as well as our own investigations into their offerings. The tools assessed, among others, were: direct market access, ability to view market depth, live prices, charting, stop-loss orders and limit orders.
Available instruments assesses the range of investible instruments on offer.
We use the information submitted by the brokers on the total cost of performing a single equities, ETF and CFD buy execution of five amounts (R11,000; R51,000; R101,000, R501,000, R1,001,000). We give a higher weighting to costs for brokerage fees on equities trading but also look at charges for trading of CFDs, including the cost of leverage. We also include monthly admin costs.
“Transparency levels are generally excellent, having improved tremendously over the past few years