How much fees to pay for shares? Find out!

Have you always wondered how much fees and taxes you need to pay for those shares you bought or sold? Instead of waiting for the contract statement to be posted to you, find out immediately using CashBench’s Excel Tool!

Buying 1000 shares with a share price of $5.00 should cost $5,000. But, this does not include all the different fees and taxes we need to pay.

How much do we really need for these fees, commissions, charges & taxes? Try calculating it yourself and you’ll soon find that even a calculator doesn’t help you very much. Why? Because there are 4 types of fees and taxes, with 3 different tier rates to take care of!

Now, CashBench can get rid of that problem for you. Take charge of your investments today and use the CashBench Excel Tool to determine exactly how much you’ll need to pay for these fees and taxes. Just key in 2 pieces of information: the number of shares you are buying or selling, and the current share price. For example, 1000 shares at $5.00 per share will actually cost $5,029.30. That’s almost $30 of fees and taxes. If we are selling these shares, we’ll only get back $4,970.70.

Sample Calculation: $29.30 Fees & Taxes

You can get this CashBench Excel Tool immediately by joining the CashBench group on Yahoo now. It’s free and members will also receive a 7-page PDF report on how to invest in warrants. In addition, you will receive email updates on new analysis, forecasts and news on CashBench. These updates are sent once a week or less often so that your mailbox does not get cluttered. To top it off, you can also get your hands on other CashBench reports and tools from time to time as they are released.

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The Mirror Image of the Straits Times Index?

Recently, we keep hearing of the Chinese stock markets leading the movements in worldwide stocks. How true is this for the Straits Times index (STI) in Singapore? CashBench investigates…

 

[Photo: Koalazymonkey]

Before the current worldwide downturn, investors in Singapore typically look at the performance of the overnight markets in the United States for clues on how Singapore stocks will perform the following day. Does this work anymore?

Based on a 3-month and 12-month analysis carried out by CashBench, investors should start looking elsewhere for ideas. Over the past 3 months, there is a low correlation between the returns of the STI and the Dow Jones, Nasdaq or S&P 500 indices. This is true whether a comparison is made for same-day performance (E.g. Friday vs. Friday) or overnight performance (E.g. Friday in Asia, Thursday in US). Mathematically, the correlation between Singapore and the US indices over a 3-month or 12-month period range from 0.28 to 0.37.  These numbers are really far away from a “perfect” correlation score of 1.

… the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong is almost a mirror image of the Straits Times index.

If that’s the case, which markets now moves in step with the Singapore stock market? This may or may not surprise you, but the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong is almost a mirror image of the Straits Times Index. Over a 3-month or 12-month period, the correlation between the Singapore and Hong Kong stock market returns is about 0.78. This basically means that when the Hang Seng drops, the Straits Times is likely to follow, and vice versa.

However, depending on who you talk to, the Hong Kong stock market may or may not be representative of the entire “Chinese stock markets”. If we were to use the Shanghai Composite index for comparison instead, the correlation to Singapore’s Straits Times index drops quite a lot, down to 0.43 to 0.5.

CashBench ends with a surprising find. Despite being culturally and geographically close to Malaysia, the 12-month correlation between the Singapore STI index and Kuala Lumpur’s KL Composite index is just 0.37. However, over the past 3 months, this was much higher at 0.63. Will this short-term trend persists?

Note: The correlation analysis used by CashBench is based on the correlation co-efficient and can range from –1 to 1. A score of 1 indicates there is a perfect relationship between the two indices compared, where an upward movement in one index is followed exactly by an upward movement in the other index. A score of 0 means there is no relationship, and performance of both indices are completely random and does not follow any pattern or trend. Data analysed is based on adjusted closing index levels up to 17 Sep 2009 (Thursday).

Shanghai Composite Fell 21% in August

THE SECOND LARGEST MONTHLY DROP IN 15 YEARS

 

Translated from Lianhe Zaobao (Chinese), published 1 Sep 2009

Recent heavyweight stocks in the Chinese markets collectively fell, resulting in panicky sentiments among investors. According to a report by the China Economic Weekly, an unnamed source close to the Chinese regulators said policies to stabilize the markets may be launched. This source also emphasized that market stabilizing measures does not specifically target the Chinese national day on 1 Oct. Such measures may include the reduction of short-term notes issued by the Chinese central bank, and the speeding up of IPO and fund launches. However, with the continued volatility in the A-share market, stabilizing the Chinese markets will be a challenge for the stock market regulators.

On 5 Aug, the Shanghai Composite Index peaked at a high of 3478.01 and started dropping thereafter. By 17 Aug, the index fell to 2870.63 or 5.79%, the largest single-day drop this year. Yesterday, the index went a step further, dropping by 6.74% to a new low of 2667.75. Before this, the largest single-day drop in the Shanghai Composite was back in 10 Jun last year at 7.73%. Over at the Shenzhen market yesterday, there was a corresponding big drop of 7.55% to 10585.08.

Note: Based on first 6 paragraphs of article.