[London, ENGLAND] Online investment service
E*TRADE
announced Wednesday that
E*TRADE Norway
is offering facilities for Norwegian customers
to trade in U.S. equities on three U.S. markets.
With the new service, users can trade not only
in Swedish and Norwegian stocks, but can also buy
and sell equities on the New York Stock Exchange,
Nasdaq and AMEX — all from a single account.
Magne Solberg, managing director of E*TRADE Norway,
said individual investors would be able to follow
an international investment strategy similar to that
of professional investors.
“If investors are interested in a particular sector
then they should be able to trade a wide range of
international stocks from that sector,” Solberg
pointed out, adding that with access to three markets,
E*TRADE Norway investors would reap the benefits of a
diversified international portfolio.
The new service uses the E*TRADE global trading platform,
a fully electronic platform that handles execution,
clearing and settlement of customer orders.
The platform also processes the foreign exchange component
of each transaction, in this case giving E*TRADE Norway
customers a view of their multi-market portfolio in
Norwegian kroner as well as in other currencies.
Johan Brenner, chief executive of E*TRADE Europe, said
he expected the Norwegian service to be popular, especially
as it followed the successful launch of cross-border trading
in Sweden earlier this year.
So what has the Swedish experience proved?
The answer gives some indication of the type of investor
the service is attracting — as the most popular U.S stocks
traded by Swedish investors are largely those of the
most prominent IT companies. The top five traded stocks
are Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Oracle, Qualcomm and Apple.
Norwegian users of the new E*TRADE service will pay
NOK 299 (US $33) per trade.