Share Trading Accounts Australia

St.George directshares

Signup for a St.George directshares Account

Open a new directshares account and receive up to 25 free trades.

St George directshares is St George Bank's online trading service, provided by E*TRADE Australia. As such, it claims to provide many of the same benefits as its parent provider.

St George has positioned directshares as an easy way for investors to bypass the traditional stockbroker and gain access to direct trading online, including the buying and selling of shares, options, warrants and managed funds online, whenever or wherever they choose.

Directshares offers largely the same products as its parent provider E*TRADE, including market depth data including 10 levels of prices and volume, as well as showing ASX prices in real time.

As with E*TRADE, there is no joining fee, with customers being charged per trade. Brokerage fees start from $21.95 per trade, when trading more than 21 times per month. St George is currently making a special offer to new customers of 25 free trades if they open a directshares account before 30th June 2008.

Customers are also offered free access to the customised trading tool directshares Power if they make more than 10 trades a month on an account. This tool gives active traders access to a comprehensive database containing research compiled by a wide range of independent research houses.

Like E*TRADE, directshares offers a Conditional Orders function, which allows the customer to instruct the site to monitor a chosen stock, and in the event of it reaching a predefined target, automatically buy or sell in accordance with the customer's price specifications. There are three levels of Conditional Order – Basic, Intermediate and Advanced, depending on the experience level of the trader. Basic orders are charged at $7.95 per trade, with Intermediate and Advanced orders retailing at $19.95 per trade. Margin lending and self managed super funds are two other products offered by the site.

As with all direct share trading, it's preferable that the customer has a reasonable level of sophistication and understands the inherent volatility in the market process of direct shares. This is even more advisable when dealing with an online brokerage operation such as directshares, where the level of customer service assistance will, by definition, be less than that provided by a traditional stock broker.

As with E*TRADE's relationship with ANZ, St George directshares requires the prospective customer to open a St George deposit account, with the funds therein to be linked to their directshares account. However the types of deposit account with the following features are unable to be linked to directshares broking:

*directsaver high interest personal savings account
*Business Express saver
*any account requiring two signatures for all account operations
*term deposit accounts
*foreign currency accounts

There have also been some security issues with the site in recent times, notably the discovery that a directshares account could be set up using freely available identifiers such as account number, ABN or valid tax file number, along with any other false details. A potential hacker could then freely view customers' bank account balances. St George claims that this security loophole has now been closed.

Reasons why you might choose this broker include

St George directshares is a trading platform suited to both knowledgable, active traders and new investors alike. It boasts largely the same software features as its parent provider E*TRADE Australia - e.g. charting tools, Smart Alerts, Conditional Orders and real time market news - with the added bonus of international trading, being attached to a major lender, its online trading accounts are also interest bearing.

Positive elements of this trading platform include:

• Access to international trading
• Sophisticated charting tools and up to date market news
• Interest bearing online trading accounts
• Automated share ordering functions, e.g. Smart Alerts and Conditional Orders

 

Signup for a St.George directshares Account

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