Good Morning., I am attempting to get all my 'ducks in a row' so to speak in terms of long term investing. I am currently invested in cash but would like to get set up with a brokerage firm. I intend to focus on Exchange Traded Funds tracking the major indices, and operate a long term trend following approach: DOW, FTSE 100, SP500, NASDAQ, NIKKEI, Hang Seng, DAX and CAC. Do Irish stockbrokers offer ETF products to track these indices or must I look abroad? ideally, I would like to have one broker account catering for each index but is this realistic? Any feedback would be appreciated.
You should also consider holding your ETFs (which are dematerialized products and not available in certificate form) in your own name in a CREST account and not in a nominee account. There are various posts on AAM on this point.
ETFs traded on the ISE http://www.ise.ie/index.asp?locID=572&docID=-1 and the LSE
can be held in a CREST account. It also means that you can arrange for dividends to be paid directly into your bank account.