Opened a new trading account with Superhero

Despite an intention to simplify my finances, I was interested in investing in some of the US defence industry stocks, such as LMT (Lockheed Martin), Ratheon (RTX) etc. There is an iShares Aerospace and defence ETF ITA.US that includes these (and other) defence/aerospace stocks, so I was looking to invest using my IG.com trading account, but I couldn't find it in there trading list. I was also a bit put off by their $50 per quarter admin fee, so I had recently transferred all the cash out of that account, so I decided to look into one of the newer trading platforms that offers 'no fee' trading in US stocks. 

I decided to open an account with Superhero.com. I has no brokerage fee for trading US stocks, and simply charges a FX fee to convert the initial AUD funds added to the account to USD (for trading US shares and ETFs). It look just a few minutes to setup a new account, and I only had to answer a few questions about citizenship and tax residency (and provide my TFN) to get the account fully setup and funded with an initial A$475.00

I then converted that into my USD 'wallet' which used an exchange rate of 0.71448 USD/AUD which seems reasonable as Yahoo finance is quoting the current AUD/USD exchange rate as 0.7157

There was also a $3.32 FX fee charged, so I ended up with USD$337.01 available to trade. I also ended up with 67 Qantas Frequent Flyer points for the FX (as I provided my QFF # when I signed up), which will offset part of the FX fee I suppose.

I placed an order to buy USD$337.01 of ITA shares 'at market' which I assume will be filled when trading on the US market commences tonight (Sydney time). We'll see how many shares I end up with. Once nice feature is that fractional share trading is available, so I invest the full amount I had transferred into the account and don't end up with a 'cash balance' sitting idle in the account.

I might make some additional transfers into the account and add to the holding over time, but at this stage I am just testing out how the platform works. At the end of the financial year I'll see how the tax reporting also functions.

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My order was processed overnight - bought 3.17305 iShares US Aerospace & Defense ETF shares for USD$337.01

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