Saxo Markets Review

Expert Review

Saxo Markets is a award-winning investment and trading platform. Founded in 1992 by Kim Fournais and Lars Seier Christensen, the institution has expanded rapidly over the past decade. The company is headquartered in Copenhagen.

International Investing

Many wonderful stocks are listed in countries outside the UK. For investors wishing to diversify their portfolios, international investing should be considered. Saxo UK customers have access to a large number of international stocks. You can invest in North America, major European and Asian markets.

One added risk of cross-border investing, on top of price risk, comes from foreign currency. Movements in the foreign exchange market can either add or reduce your investment gains.

For Sterling-based ISA accounts, you will need to sell Sterling to buy, say USD, when buying US stocks. When you sell the position, you need to sell the USD and buy back Sterling. Saxo uses the mid FX Spot rate, plus/minus 1%, when converting these currency transactions. Sometimes, these rates can be unfavourable and run against your portfolio.

Loyalty Benefits

Saxo has a loyalty point system for their clients. Each time you place a trade through Saxo you will earn some points. For example, a spot FX trade will earn 30 points while a CFD equity trader 180 (see here for a list of points). Over time, these points add up. Once you attain a certain level of points, you can upgrade to the next account tier.

Education & Research

Saxo research is well known for its ‘Outrageous Predictions’ (see 2019 copy). Their experienced research team cover a wide variety of topics.

On the more regular news flow and topic discussion, Saxo provides:

• Podcast – a summary of some of the market moving events
• Webinars – outlook discussion and discussion of special topics such as inflation.
• Macro Summary – a daily compilation of trending topics
• Education – a series of videos that outlines the basics of trading

This is a fairly standard offering that you can find from established brokers and financial institutions. Most of them are free to read. For VIP clients, they will have some access to research analysts and more in-depth discussion of topics.

As a trader, you should be able to get some market information from Saxo – ideas, for example – but planning a trade based on these ideas is not easy because market movements can run independently. Bear in mind that detailed stock research is harder to extract from Saxo Markets as they cover mostly macro and thematic ideas.

Saxo Markets Versus IG

Traders often make a comparison between Saxo and IG because they are two of the largest financial online trading companies. A few years ago, Saxo exited the spread betting arena to focus on DMA, CFDs, futures, FX and a more professional client base.

For UK-based users, this has an important difference in terms of tax. For example, any profits from CFDs are subjected to capital gains tax (HMRC has provided some detailed examples here) while spread betting is essentially tax-free, as advertised by IG.