another happy geoop customer: wacs security, page-7

Surprising that etrade don't do NZ shares!

I am with ASB Securities here in New Zealand and it is the same here; if you want to trade US Stocks (not that I have any) then you need an US$ account.

I invest mainly on the ASX and ASB Securities allows to trade ASX shares directly from a NZ$ account. However, I found this to be really cumbersome. Every trade you make you have to consider the exchange rate and you loose money every time you buy and sell (unless the exchange rate has changed in your favour). Because of that I eventually created AU$ account. Now I just transfer money into my AU$ account and then trade in and out of that one without having to worry about the exchange rate. Opening a foreign currency account only took me a phone call; it was set up within hours.

Maybe you give Westpac Broking and the way they do things another thought; maybe not all that bad.