THE BEST BROKER IN EUROPE TO TRADE US OPTIONS

It can be very difficult to find a good broker for trading options, especially if you live in

Europe and you want to trade some US options. So in today's video I am going to have a look at some

of the choices that are available and give you my opinion on them. For me personally there are four

different important factors to consider when I'm choosing my broker for trading options. The first

one obviously is do they even allow you to trade US options? This may not be a big thing for other

people but I actually like investing in large US companies and I find it gets a little bit boring

if you are just trading options on European companies. Secondly, it is important to try and go with a broker that isn't too expensive

and it doesn't have anything like inactivity fees or anything like that. Thirdly, because trading options requires you to look at a lot more data points than trading stocks, for example

For me, when you are trying to build a strategy, it should be very easy to see the likes of employed volatility, the volume

and all of the other Greeks like your data decay and stuff like that. And preferably the broker should have a mobile app as well as a desktop trading app

That way you can keep an eye on your positions all of the time whenever you want. And lastly I try and stick with brokers that are actually regulated in Europe

So they have some sort of investor protection schemes. So if they ever go out of business then your money is safe

So they are some of my own personal criteria. So now let's have a look at some of the choices that are available against that checklist

Firstly I'm going to have a look at DeGiro. On a positive note for DeGiro, they have pretty low fees

It's only like 50 cents per contract, and they also are covered by investor protection schemes

And they also have a mobile and desktop app, but that's pretty much where the positives stop for me

You can only trade options on European markets on DeGiro, and they have a few US index options, about four of them in total, but that's the extent of it in trading US options

You won't find anything like an option for Apple or Google or Tesla or anything like that on DeGiro

You'll have to go with something that's slightly different and is a stock warrant

And even if you just wanted to trade options on European markets

I still find that it is pretty dreadful using DeGiro for trading options The user experience is pretty basic I just going to hop over onto DeGiro now and show you what I mean So I just on the web browser here for DeGiro and

I have a look at some of their options here. So to go to options what you need to do is click on

products here, options. So this is the home page for options on DeGiro. I find it a little bit

difficult to actually navigate because you need to know what market your option is trading on

Kind of before you can find it. So let's say if I wanted to find a US option, you kind of have to know that it's on the CBOE and then you'll need to go to find your underlying here. Then you can see they only have yet the four index options, as I mentioned. So they have the Dow Jones, the Russell 2000, then they have the VIX and they have S&P 500 mini

so if i want to trade an option on the dow jones i can click on that and then it gives you basically

all of the different expiration dates and different strikes but you can filter down

again so i'll just filter for a specific month i'll have a look at december and then it gives

you all of the different options that are expiring in december for the dow jones at the different

strike prices so if i want to just take a look at one of these i'll have a look at one at a strike

price of 340 so this takes me into the page here um which there is very little more information for

me to actually go on all it has here is going to your bid your ask your opening high and your low

and the volume and that's pretty much all the information that you're given which is quite poor

in my opinion you're going to need some other data source asides from the gyro to try and help

you actually build a strategy because it doesn't give you anything like the theta or the employee

volatility or anything like that so for that reason mainly and the fact that they don't really

have any u.s options aside from a few u.s index options the gyro didn't really cut the mustard

for me and i had to go look further the next one on the list here to have a look at is interactive

brokers and hands down for me this is the best choice of them all firstly they have u options they part of an investor protection scheme and it is very easy to set up an account For their fees they have a tiered style system which depends on the volume and the size of the premium so your fee per contract could vary

anywhere from 15 cent up to about 65 cent USD and that's pretty good you're not going to get too

much better in terms of fees. They also have a desktop and mobile app so you can keep an eye on

your trades at all times the real winning reason for me though is how good it is to actually use

compared to some of the other brokers the best thing i can do is just show you what it actually

looks like here on the app so what i'm going to do is i'm going to have a look here for at a tesla

option so let's go to the tesla stock click into tesla when you click on tesla here you can have a

look at options or you can also take a look at some template spreads that they have so for all

of the different types of popular spread trades they have some templates there that you can have

a look at which i think is pretty good so i'm just going to have a look at the options here

so as you can see here it is laid out pretty nicely all across the top here you have what

you have is like your volume and your employed volatility and some other metrics and then you

can easily swipe through all of the different expiration dates and choose let's say i'm going

to choose one at the end of this year and then it will give you all of the different strike prices

your calls and your puts and one really cool thing that they have here also is a strategy builder down

at the bottom of the screen so you can add multiple different legs to your strategy and build them

all together at once and put through one order if i then go in and have a look at one of the options

here i'm looking at the call one here for example it gives you a wealth of information that you can

use to try and decide on your strategy it gives you all of the different greeks your profit

probability your break-even point your max loss and it even gives you a bit of kind of like scenario

ysis if the price of the underlying actually drops say 20 30 percent goes up 10 or 20 30 percent

it would give you all of the different pnls and how that affects all of the different greeks so

for me all around that is pretty excellent it offers you a lot more than the likes of the gyro whatever give you Another broker where you can trade options is Saxo Bank I haven actually used their platform myself personally but from looking at their website it does actually look quite brilliant

But what really turned me off ever trying Saxo Bank was their fees. I think the minimum fee per contract on an option is $3, which is way above all of the other ones

So I never even started to try it because the fees were just too bad. They have US options and everything but the fee has really settled it for me

If anybody watching this video has ever used Taxa Bank please let us know your experiences in the comment section

There are also some US brokerages that allow you to set up international accounts

One of these is Tastyworks. Again this platform on the surface of it looks pretty good but the issue for me is how you fund your account

So because it is a US brokerage the only way you can properly fund your account is by sending a US dollar wire over to Tastyworks

And that is actually quite difficult if you're in the EU you can't even do it through the likes of Revolut

The only way you can possibly do it for Tastyworks at the moment is through a provider called Currencyfair

And it's going to take three to five business days to get some money into your account

The other area that I wasn't 100% sure on is because it is a US brokerage would you be protected if they ever went out of business

It does say on their website that all of their investors even international investors are protected under the SIDC regulations

And up to over $200,000 worth which is a lot more than the equivalent European investor protection schemes offer you

But I still wasn't 100% sure that this is actually right and personally I would prefer to be part of a European investor protection scheme

so that and the depositing method is what really put me off ever trying tasty works so that is

pretty so that is pretty much it for my review of some different choices that are available i'm sure

there are a few more that i don't even know about if there's anything even better than interactive

brokers please let us know in the comments so thanks very much for watching everybody i hope

you enjoyed the video if anybody here is new to the channel i would really appreciate it if you

subscribe to keep up to date with my latest videos which i plan on doing a good bit more around

options and learning how to trade options