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Ask HN: How to invest safely in Europe?

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Re: Ask HN: How to invest safely in Europe?

#31

Post by tandem_bike »

sprash wrote: post #29

How about don't. Europe is in huge decline right now. Asset prices are artificially inflated, bond yields are negative and the export surplus can only be maintained because the Central Bank is devaluing the currency by printing money like there is no tomorrow. The house of cards will fall as soon as some major trade partner introduces tariffs. The demand for credit is especially weak which shows you that nobody reall…

It's predictable that you would get downvotes, but your points are generally true. The Monetary Union of Europe is failing just like the socialism of some of its member states. Europe's economies are strangled by taxation and regulation.

In a thread on investing in Europe these are important perspective to bring up.

Re: Ask HN: How to invest safely in Europe?

#32

Post by seppel »

user5994461 wrote: post #19

You can have a look at ETF from Amundi, Lyxor, Legal and General (UK), Vanguard EU/UK. There are three problems broadly speaking. First is the currency, American index funds are in dollars while you don't have dollars. There are a couple of index funds that are quoted in EUR/GBP, above. Second you need to find a bank that offers trading accounts and allow to buy these. It is god awful to find one. European banks are…

In general, you can ignore the currency that an index fund uses internally for reporting. You can buy A1JX52 using USD in the US or using EUR in the EU; the same as you can buy JPY using USD or EUR, whatever is more convenient for you.

I don't know how the situation in general with Banks in Europe. But in Germany you will find many Banks which are convenient and offer cheap access to the stock market. Yes, they will try to sell you shit, but if you select an online bank and know what you are doing, you will never have to talk to anyone and get really good products.

Taxation varies across Europe. Some countries take less than the US, some take more. But pretty much all countries of the western world have double-taxation agreements, so there is no double taxation. A German citizen, e.g., pays not more than 15% tax on the dividend of a US stock. It looks that this is even less than US citizens, but I'm not sure. That is of course and bit annoying when filling out tax forms, but if you invest in an fund, the issuer of the fund does it for you.

Re: Ask HN: How to invest safely in Europe?

#33

Post by chvid »

scribu wrote: post #27
BjoernKW wrote: post #20

Why do you want to invest in the European stock market specifically in the first place? There's nothing that keeps non-US citizens from investing in US market ETFs. That said, European economies are quite diverse. There are ETFs for the European market as a whole (Euro Stoxx 50, for instance) but they tend to fare worse than their national counterparts. In addition to simply investing in US ETFs you might consider in…

> There's nothing that keeps non-US citizens from investing in US market ETFs. Actually, there is. Unless an ETF provider publishes key investor information documents in the format required by the EU, EU citizens are not allowed to buy those ETFs. Since 2018, I have a number of US ETFs that I can no longer buy. I have to search for alternative UCITS funds instead, which are neither as diverse nor as large.

It is outrageous that the eu is effectively blocking its citizens access to products like spyder snp500 etf which is a far cheaper and more liquid etf than what is offered on the European markets.

Re: Ask HN: How to invest safely in Europe?

#34

Post by seppel »

chvid wrote: post #33
scribu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's nothing that keeps non-US citizens from investing in US market ETFs. Actually, there is. Unless an ETF provider publishes key investor information documents in the format required by the EU, EU citizens are not allowed to buy those ETFs. Since 2018, I have a number of US ETFs that I can no longer buy. I have to search for alternative UCITS funds instead, which are neither as diverse nor as large.

It is outrageous that the eu is effectively blocking its citizens access to products like spyder snp500 etf which is a far cheaper and more liquid etf than what is offered on the European markets.

I'm an EU citizen and I can buy, e.g, the iShares Core S&P 500 UCITS ETF (ISIN IE0031442068) which gives me access to the S&P 500 and is as cheap as it can get.

Re: Ask HN: How to invest safely in Europe?

#35

Post by swongel »

lawlorino wrote: post #16
wsc981 wrote: post #11

I, a Dutch national, invest in the stock market through Meesman [0]. Meesman offers the following funds for investing in the European stock market: - MSCI Europe Custom ESG [1] - Barclays Euro Govt. Bond [2] Please note Meesman offers a very limited selection of funds (5 total). As such I am quite sure the Meesman company did good research on what funds best represent certain markets. If you'd like to invest in the E…

I'm also in NL but use DeGiro, and I compared the two back when starting out on my first investments. Maybe I missed something but it seems DeGiro is much cheaper in terms of fees, and it's straightforward to set up a portfolio that's similar to any of Meesman's offerings. For something a single ETF that's globally diversified I buy Vanguard's VWRL monthly, which is also on DeGiro's list of "free" ETFs. The only draw…

U vraagt, wij draaien: https://www.consumentenbond.nl/sparen-en-beleggen/beleggings... https://www.iex.nl/Column/117156/DeGiro-en-het-risico.aspx https://www.reddit.com/r/DutchFIRE/comments/95kh7m/degiro_no...

EN: DeGiro is a dutch broker which is known for it's low costs, however they can short your stocks unless you're willing to pay an additional fee and they sometimes trade stocks on their own "internal market".

Re: Ask HN: How to invest safely in Europe?

#36

Post by wsc981 »

lawlorino wrote: post #16
wsc981 wrote: post #11

I, a Dutch national, invest in the stock market through Meesman [0]. Meesman offers the following funds for investing in the European stock market: - MSCI Europe Custom ESG [1] - Barclays Euro Govt. Bond [2] Please note Meesman offers a very limited selection of funds (5 total). As such I am quite sure the Meesman company did good research on what funds best represent certain markets. If you'd like to invest in the E…

I'm also in NL but use DeGiro, and I compared the two back when starting out on my first investments. Maybe I missed something but it seems DeGiro is much cheaper in terms of fees, and it's straightforward to set up a portfolio that's similar to any of Meesman's offerings. For something a single ETF that's globally diversified I buy Vanguard's VWRL monthly, which is also on DeGiro's list of "free" ETFs. The only draw…

I've used both DeGiro and Meesman as well in the past. From what I've read funds should be a bit more safe with Meesman compared to DeGiro. For me safety is a prime concern as this will be my retirement money.

Re: Ask HN: How to invest safely in Europe?

#39

Post by jimclegg »

tandem_bike wrote: post #31
sprash wrote: post #29

How about don't. Europe is in huge decline right now. Asset prices are artificially inflated, bond yields are negative and the export surplus can only be maintained because the Central Bank is devaluing the currency by printing money like there is no tomorrow. The house of cards will fall as soon as some major trade partner introduces tariffs. The demand for credit is especially weak which shows you that nobody reall…

It's predictable that you would get downvotes, but your points are generally true. The Monetary Union of Europe is failing just like the socialism of some of its member states. Europe's economies are strangled by taxation and regulation. In a thread on investing in Europe these are important perspective to bring up.

When a bank robber has no more banks to rob, his standard of living tends to go down.

Most economic surpluses in Europe over the last 2 centuries have been thanks to importing stolen goods/criminality, only change is, some of the biggest victims of this type of "economic growth" now have nukes.

Re: Ask HN: How to invest safely in Europe?

#40

Post by larrysalibra »

user5994461 wrote: post #21
viraptor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if these are available in Europe, but Vanguard in Australia offers hedged indexes like this one https://www.vanguardinvestments.com.au/retail/ret/investment... specifically to avoid the currency exchange floating.

Vanguard doesn't really exist in Europe per se. They have a range of funds in GBP in the United Kingdom, because the retirement system there is similar to the US. That's all. There is a handful of funds in EUR through an European subsidiary, but it's laughable compared to what is available in the US and they are pretty hard to buy.

Vanguard offers a number of exchange traded funds in Europe domiciled in Ireland.

There are funds in base currencies of USD, EUR and GBP and traded on number of exchanges across Europe in several currencies.

https://americas.vanguard.com/institutional/funds/all-produc...

Someone looking for exposure to Europe could get that through one of the Vanguard FTSE Developed Europe funds - they’re available including or excluding UK and in accumulating or distributing versions.

Very easy to buy just submit an order on the market. I personally use Interactive Brokers and buy on London Stock Exchange but any broker that gives you access to one of the major European exchanges should do.

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