Fancy a dabble in the stock markets?

Thanks to my good friend Mario to highlighting this on my last trip to Penang. Many people will wish to dabble in the stock markets be it buying and selling stocks and shares (though I doubt my other friend's De Lorean shares will net him millions) or investing in some high yield bonds. Now you could do this through a bank but the problem with that is you will often pay the bank for their services, and often quite a lot!! I have also found in the past that the advice banks give on investments can vary and in some cases is more biased towards selling products of that bank, not always but it's something to be mindful of.

Mario basically does it all himself and uses the Singapore based Saxo Bank, which markets itself as "an Internet-based information and investment trading platform". There is a lot of useful information on the site about how they operate, their terms and conditions and there is even the option to open a free live demonstration account with no obligations to get a feel for trading in real time prices. It's something I certainly intend to look at more closely when the time is right. Now, where are those "Can't fail" investment opportunities .

Adendum: One problem I have been made aware of is that you would likely need to set up your account with Saxo before coming to Malaysia as they will not open an account if you are resident here. However there are several others that offer a good enough service such as:

RHB Invest: Very popular

Jupiter: Also very popular and, along with one other bank, offers the only 'mobile phone' based trading capability.

HLe: Again, popular, less so than Jupiter I gather, but again offering a mobile capability.

There is a useful forum discussion about this topic here and a reasonable comparison article here.