Execution only broker for LTD co.

Hi All

Habitual lurker making first post so please be gentle.

Im currently looking for a broker that can provide an execution only account for primarily UK equities for a UK LTD. company i.e. the account would be held in my companies name, my initial deposit wont be particularly big approx 15k. I would like to be able to go short and long with the intention of making use of cash excesses in the company.

My experience to date is just trading through the long side, swing and position trading using fundamentals and TA, mostly because i havent ventured outside of using a SIPP and ISA.

Does anyone have any particular suggestions, whilst getting into DMA appeals (and ive been looking at this outside of the company anyway) i'm not sure its hugely beneficial given my time frame is always going to be days and weeks rather than intra day. Im struggling to find ways to short UK equities except through SBs, CFDs and IB as a broker, the latter may be a good option, spreadbetting is probably a no-go area for a company but cfds may be a possibility, anyways interested in getting some feedback from folks on here particularly if anyone does a similar sort of thing?

One last thing, the ability to reliably withdraw funds within a reasonable notice period i.e. less than a month is a must.

Let me know if you need any more info or context

Thanks in advance

Oli

olionion said:

Hi All

Habitual lurker making first post so please be gentle.

Im currently looking for a broker that can provide an execution only account for primarily UK equities for a UK LTD. company i.e. the account would be held in my companies name, my initial deposit wont be particularly big approx 15k. I would like to be able to go short and long with the intention of making use of cash excesses in the company.

My experience to date is just trading through the long side, swing and position trading using fundamentals and TA, mostly because i havent ventured outside of using a SIPP and ISA.

Does anyone have any particular suggestions, whilst getting into DMA appeals (and ive been looking at this outside of the company anyway) i'm not sure its hugely beneficial given my time frame is always going to be days and weeks rather than intra day. Im struggling to find ways to short UK equities except through SBs, CFDs and IB as a broker, the latter may be a good option, spreadbetting is probably a no-go area for a company but cfds may be a possibility, anyways interested in getting some feedback from folks on here particularly if anyone does a similar sort of thing?

One last thing, the ability to reliably withdraw funds within a reasonable notice period i.e. less than a month is a must.

Let me know if you need any more info or context

Thanks in advance

Oli

Click to expand...

Dear Oli

Thank you for your interest in our online brokerage services.

Answers to your questions:

1. Yes we can support a company account to trade UK markets.
2. Yes, we do support stock lending facilities.
3. Yes, we support withdrawal facilities.

We suggest you contact our London office for more details tel 020 7 778 7800.

I use IB for my LTD company account for futures trading.

Can highly recommend them, at least for futures.

Withdrawals are in my account the next working day.

Also the new IB reporting is really good, just enter your company accounts start date and end date.
And IB generate one big statement for you, the statement shows total P/L, commissions paid etc, through out the year.

Im not sure if LTD companies are covered by the FSA protection, maybe small LTD companies are im not sure, so you might want to stay away from the smaller outfits.

The problem with UK equities is stamp duty!

Have you thought about trading US equities with DMA instead?

However if you do open an IB account, you can trade both very easily at the same time.

IB are good for sure but their customer services is crap, basically they never give you a break or do you a favour and it's their way or no way. So if they say 2+2 = 3, it's 3 and they will not budge.

Summary: If you use them for business and have no need to contact their support then you're on to a winner. But if you ever have to contact them and need some help then god be with you.

All

Thanks ever so much for your responses, really most appreciated.

Donalduke - Useful info on the reporting, the accountant would definitely appreciate that. I must admit i hadnt considered the FSA protection side of things, ill look into it. I've spent the last couple of months just making sure this wont mess the company up for things like ESC C16 and Entrepreneurs relief and that it was the best way of doing things for my personal situation. I wish HMRC would adopt KISS as a policy!

I agree with UK equities and stamp duty, its an unwelcome overhead on my trades at the moment and I had been looking at other ways of extending my personal trading and US equities with IB was on the list. Obviously i'd need to do a lot of homework on it, as well as with the IB platform itself as it is pretty feature rich, most of which are bells and whistles for me which in the short term I wouldnt use but it does give lots of potential for the future and that's cool, part of the appeal of trading is the learning and the challenge and i can hit the floor running with UK stuff whilst looking at other opportunities with the mass of products they offer.

Anley - Any particular examples of times where you have had problems, ive looked through the boards and have seen a few but most of these seem to relate to day/very frequent traders where an hour wasted is a big problem (one thread springs to mind where someone couldnt close a trade down that went against him and had difficulties getting through to support from the UK) that being said ive also seen a lot of support for them too. As i spend most of my days chewing my left arm off with work and can often be tied up working long hours I need to make sure trading fits around my life not the other way round which is why for the time being at least ill be a fairly infrequent swing/position trader with some reliance on automated orders, a few trades a week if that through each account i hold so tbh any one broker would have to be pretty terrible to trouble me, the kind of level of reliability i would expect would be similar to my Broadband provider where the odd hiccup is ok but if it costs me money ill move on.

IB - ill spend some time going through all the info on your website first and get in touch with any gaps i have left after that.

thanks again for all your help folks

cheers

Oli