- Choose the US brokerage. Make sure that they accept international account. If the brokerage has a branch in your country (eg Singapore Etrade), probably it'll be more convenient if you just pay them a visit and ask them to open one for you. That way you save on stamp fee and fund transfer fee.
- After you have register an account with them, you need to download, print and fill up the W8-BEN form and mail it to them. They probably won't accept scan or fax. This is a form that will...
- Photocopy, scan, fax or mail them your passport, a statement that has your address (electric bill, credit card stmt etc).
- For Sogotrade, I need to fill up, sign and send them the signature form which will they use to identify me when I withdraw my money through check next time.
- Once they received and verified all the documents, they'll let you know that you can start to transfer fund to your account.
- Sogotrade only allows wire transfer for international account. I used the ibanking remittance from DBS Singapore. They were having promotion during that time so I was not charged for the handling free of 0.08%. I transferred S$1000 (it was my first time so I didn't transfer much). The cable fee was S$20 and there was an agent bank fee of US$20 which I did not know until after the transfer was made. With an exchange rate of 1.38 plus the above charges, the total amount that finally end up in my account was US$680. Wire transfer was fast: I transferred the fund on a Thursday and Sogotrade received my fund on Friday and I was able start trading the following Monday.
I have not yet withdraw my fund yet, so I'm not able to provide any help for that.
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