Trading UK shares / stamp duty / etc

AntiMatter

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Hi,

I'm trading US equities on a day trading system that seems to be working out to plan for the last 1.5 years, with a very large sample size of trades. I'm currently using IB as my broker.

In theory, the system should also work on UK shares, *if* I did not have to pay stamp duty. If I could avoid stamp duty, I could then day trade the UK shares, then switch to the US markets in the afternoon e.g. more $$$ profit :)

However, the system trades quite a few small/medium size companies. Thus, if I was going to use CFDs, I would need almost complete coverage of UK shares. IB covers only the larger UK companies with CFDs. Also, I want to keep trading the US markets, so I need a respectable broker that does both a complete set of UK CFDs, and US equities. That way, I have all my funds in one place to switch over from UK->US at lunchtime.

An alternative would be trade UK shares on IB, but somehow avoiding paying stamp duty - is this possible? E.g. by setting up a trading company? Do investment banks/hedge funds etc pay stamp duty? If I could just pay my tax *after* making profit, the system should work in the UK. But paying 0.5% per transaction kills the system.

Thanks!
 
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