I just recently realized that choosing a brokerage is really a science. I used to not compare securities transaction fees carefully, and as a result, I ended up paying a lot of unnecessary money.

There are so many Taiwan local brokerages—old names like Yuanta, KGI, and Fubon do have the highest market share—but their fee discount offers can differ by a huge amount. For example, Yuanta offers a 6-off discount, KGI new customers can get a 2.5-off discount, and Yongfeng is as low as 2-off. When you add it all up, the difference in annual trading costs is actually massive. Later, I found out that although the transaction fee is officially priced at 0.1425%, with fierce competition for online orders today, if your trading volume is high, you really can negotiate discounts—some brokerages even refund your money the very next day.

But there’s a catch to watch out for—many smaller brokerages slash their transaction fees extremely low to attract customers, and the result is that their system stability and order placement speed are worse by a noticeable margin. So you can’t judge a brokerage based on fee comparisons alone. How good the APP is to use, what products you can trade, and whether their margin interest is high are also very important. These days, I mainly look at three key points: first, how strong the fee discount is; second, whether the trading software is smooth and easy to use; and third, whether they have enough listings and trading sources.

If you’re only trading Taiwan stocks, local brokerages are enough. But if you want to trade Hong Kong and US stocks, using an overseas brokerage may be more cost-effective, because the cross-delegation commission fees from local brokerages are really a bit high. I’ve also been researching overseas platforms like Mitrade recently, and I found their low barrier to entry and zero-commission model quite appealing—especially for people who want to test the waters with a smaller amount of capital.

In short, instead of blindly following the trend, it’s better to spend a little time comparing each brokerage’s transaction fees and service content, so you can find the one that best fits your trading habits—it’ll be worth it. How do you all choose?