Icon: enlarge
Frankfurter Börse: There are quite a few deposits for stocks and funds with very manageable costs
Photo: Thomas Lohnes / Getty Images
Millions of new investors have tried their hand at the stock exchanges since the recent upturn.
This time you have better chances than decades ago: You can reduce the costs for the custody account to almost zero, and investing in a global basket of shares (as an ETF) reduces the risk.
To the author
Photo:
Financial tip
Hermann-Josef Tenhagen
, born in 1963, is editor-in-chief of »Finanztip«.
The money advisor is part of the non-profit Finanztip Foundation.
»Finanztip« is refinanced via so-called affiliate links.
More about it here.
Tenhagen was previously editor-in-chief of the “Finanztest” magazine for 15 years.
After studying politics and economics, he began his journalistic career at the »daily newspaper«.
Today he is an honorary member of the cooperative's supervisory board.
Tenhagen writes weekly on SPIEGEL.de about how to handle one's own money properly.
More than 20 years ago, Germans were preparing to become a big club of shareholders.
They listened to the well-known "Tatort" commissioner Manfred Krug - and bought the Telekom shares.
And Nokia.
And then even hotter internet papers.
And fell on their noses in the process.
They let tech industries sell specialized funds to them and made losses.
In the meantime, many banks earned themselves stupid and stupid money from the business.
A deposit at the house bank quickly cost hundreds a year and each purchase additional fees.
Securities accounts are no longer that expensive
Ten years ago, large custody accounts and a lot of securities trading could easily cost 10,000 euros per year.
Even the small inactive depot can still be expensive.
Anyone who buys a fund at a savings bank in the south of the country for 5,000 euros today and just leaves it for ten years must currently expect costs of 475 euros over the decade.
Actually unbelievable.
On top of that, there were and still are the issue surcharges, i.e. the commissions for the (often bank-owned) fund companies that are often still incurred when buying securities.
A five percent issue surcharge has long been the norm for equity funds, and those who don't follow up often still pay it today.
Investors now have much better conditions: in any case, in terms of costs.
Because there are quite a few securities accounts / custody accounts for stocks and funds with very manageable costs - almost zero.
You can control the depot from your home computer or even with your smartphone.
You can set up a savings plan with just a few clicks.
At Finanztip, we have just taken a meticulous look at the costs of 26 online custody accounts.
With exciting results:
First of all, there are two groups of offers competing for inexpensive online depots.
Some as online offers from brokers, i.e. securities dealers.
Because they are so new, experts also speak of neobrokers.
There you can of course set up the account for your securities free of charge.
And when you buy or sell securities, the purchase costs are often eliminated, sometimes they are as low as one euro.
There are even neobrokers that you can only operate via an app on your mobile phone.
It really doesn't get any easier or cheaper.
Banks can also be cheap
But it can also be done in a more classic way.
Established direct banks also offer custody accounts free of charge and the purchase costs for the securities are also low here.
Often they are even zero for savings plans on index funds.
The ING even wants to cut the purchase costs for all ETF savings plans from April, other savings plans cost 1.75 percent of the respective savings rate.
And you could start savings plans from as little as one euro per month.
One euro a month is of course a marketing gimmick, but on the other hand something like “a stock market to try out”.
And the "around 800" announced free ETF savings plans are a word.
Seven really cheap offers came out in the comparison.
Three neo brokers: the app from Berlin's Fintech Trade Republic, the “Free Broker” depot from the Munich asset manager Scalable Capital and Smartbroker, which belong to Wallstreet Online.
And four direct banks, in addition to ING, Consorsbank, Comdirect and DKB.
In addition to the simple deposit, they also enable banking services such as a current account, a joint deposit with the partner, a children's deposit and the collection of savings plan installments from someone else.
In a quarter of an hour to the securities account
Setting up such custody accounts and savings plans has also become much easier.
My dearest test person just said that he set up a new depot with a neo broker in 15 minutes.
Now he does this more often, but your application is also filled out online at the direct banks while you drink one or two large cups of tea.
Then it is the bank's turn and usually completes the opening in a few days, a maximum of two weeks.
In addition to address, account details and salary, the usual information also includes an identification, i.e. the PostIdent procedure or Video-Ident.
Once the deposit has been set up, it still takes a bank working day to beam money to the clearing account, i.e. from Friday evening to Tuesday.
But the new setup routines are corona-compliant in any case.
Remain defensively with the investment strategy
The investment itself remains as the residual risk. Investors in this country can also report good progress in this area.
Anyone who makes their equity investments with global index funds sees significantly less ups and downs in their depot than with individual stocks or any industry special fund.
The MSCI World Index, for example, comprises more than 1,600 companies from 23 industrialized countries.
You are more likely to invest in the global economy than in a company - and that involves significantly less risk.
And save fees on funds
The main reason for the success: The savers save many millions in fees with the index funds.
Because ETFs don't need managers who constantly watch over the selection of stocks.
The annual fees for ETFs are around 0.25 percent, not two percent like typical managed funds.
And that adds up to a lot of costs over time.
After all, the money in the ETF should be invested for the long term, i.e. for at least ten to fifteen years.
The advantage: historically in the past forty years there have been no losses in following the major global indices for more than fifteen years.
At every conceivable point in time, of course, only a few managed funds have been more successful than the index funds from the customer's point of view.
They have to catch the higher costs first before they can let investors participate in the market return.
If managed funds had any advantage in the short periods of sharply falling stock markets, it would only be if your manager kept more money in cash during the times when the index funds are still fully invested.
In the long run, however, managed funds will not be able to beat ETFs.
Except for lucky exceptions, but who knows in advance which fund manager will have the most luck on the stock market?
This is how you get your own share savings plan
So let's summarize what needs to be done in order to invest money sensibly in stocks today.
This is the little list:
Get the right deposit that costs next to nothing, either with a broker or with a direct bank.
If you already have one, simply move the depot to your new address.
It's a lot easier than switching accounts.
Most banks now also offer a relocation service for the depot.
Granted, if you trade a lot in stocks, it may take a little longer.
If you like, set up one or more fund savings plans and gradually increase your wealth.
Use global market-wide equity ETFs for this.
They are inexpensive and less risky than special investment ideas or hyped fund managers.
Act long-term and not hectic.
Even if you have your depot in your pocket by now, that doesn't mean that you have to do something there every day.
You don't even need to look at the deposit value every day - a couple of times a year is enough.
I wish you success!
Icon: The mirror