Financial Advice and Investing
When you are feeling a little more settled at work, have secured a longer term rental property; you may want to start thinking about your longer term financial future and investing in Australia. There are many options to engage with a financial advisor to assist you with wealth creation in the short term, this may via a planner at your bank, a referral from your accountant or an external professional financial planner.
The Australian Stock Market and Australian Shares can also be a good opportunity to invest in Australia and it is really easy to set up a share trading account to trade in Australian Securities as most firms offer online trading accounts.
For Australian financial advice, please see the Financial Planning section under the Settling In Australia heading for more information and how to find a suitably qualified professional to assist you.
Buying Australian Shares
The Australian Stock Exchange (locally referred to as the ASX) only allows ASX listed shares to be bought or sold electronically through a participating ASX broker. Brokers offer different services and levels of service and can be distinguished between full service brokers and execution only brokers.
The main difference between these two can be summarised as follows:
- Full service brokers offer advice, make recommendations, provide research and compile investment plans on the buying and selling of securities. They tend to charge higher fees for their services.
- Execution only brokers tend to be only online or telephone based and do not offer recommendations or advice. They tend to charge lower brokerage fees as a result.
The ASX has a useful Broker Search Tool to help you to find a stock broker. It also has other useful information on current Australian share prices and relevant ASX company information on listed Australian companies.
Buy Australian Shares Online
As mentioned above, an option for investing in Australia is to open an online share trading account with one of the many execution only brokers that offer these facilities. It is important to note that these do rely on you to do your own research and manage your own buying and selling process as they usually do not offer any advice or recommendations. If you are unsure, it is wise to seek independent financial advice from a suitably qualified professional before you transact.
Canstar (a consumer price comparison website) has a useful Online Share Trading Comparison page that can be useful as part of your research when deciding which company to use.
