Best Online Trading Platforms for Investors Resident in Europe

Online trading platforms offer a wealth of convenience for investing at any point in time and also provide lots of information about the market minute by minute, helping you make the best decisions.

For active trading as well as long-term investing these are the best platforms I’ve found:

Calamatta Cuschieri Live Trader

This broker is located in Malta and has a decent interface. They are quite reliable and have good support, however the interface is pretty old and relies on having the Flash plugin installed in your browser, which most browsers now block by default. This is my biggest issue with them.

The disadvantage with CC is that you will have to pay a fee if you decide to transfer your positions to another platform further down the line.

SaxoBank

The Danish giant has a physical presence or local partnerships in many European countries. It’s a great platform that works well on laptops as well as mobile devices.

I would highlight the fact that if you don’t trade for more more than six months they will charge you USD 100, so you need to buy/sell something at least twice a year.

If you’re a Maltese investor, you can access SaxoBank through Bank of Valletta as they have a partnership with them.

Other Online Brokers

There are of course other good online brokers in Europe, two others which are worth a mention and have come highly recommended are the following:

• De Giro – Low-cost broker with incredible prices. You’ll need to be comfortable with their practice of loaning out shares though which is the way they compensate for the low fees. Perhaps not a great option for keeping large amounts there, but a good way to make cheap trades and transfer them to a more secure custodian.
• Interactive Brokers – 10 euro a month for maintenance costs, so not recommendable for buy and hold. They are however the most well respected broker worldwide and if you invest more than €100k they will waive the 10 euro per month fee.
• Exante – Another Malta-based broker which has some good reviews but has also been involved in a fraud case with the SEC in the US. While Exante was exonerated, company insiders were still embroiled in the charges.
• Robinhood – A new app-based broker in the US with probably the cheapest fees.
• Freetrade – Similar to Robinhood but for UK-based investors.
• Ninety-nine – Another low-cost app soon launching in Spain.

These two are both cheaper for trades compared to CC and SaxoBank. I always recommend looking at all the fees and factors though, because what works best for me will not necessarily work best for you, depending on your location and investing strategies.

Have you found any other great online trading platforms? Let me know in the comments section.