US-Aktien auf dem deutschen Markt (US stocks listed in the German market)

[Ask1991]

Servus Zusammen,

Bitte erlauben Sie mir, auf Englisch zu schreiben, weil mein Deutsch schlecht ist..

Recently I've moved to Germany and opened Comdirect Depotkonto (along with few others to be honest).

I've been investing mostly in the US stocks in NASDAQ, but here I have also notice there are US stocks listed in German market, such as LS Exchange, Frankfurt etc. I wonder what they are? Is it like an European (or German) version of ADR? And what is the benefit investing on those US stocks listed in Germany instead of investing directly in NASDAQ/NYSE ?

Example:

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is listed in several German exchanges under the name of Tesla Inc.( ISIN: US88160R1014 | WKN: A1CX3T)

I am guessing that the possibility to invest on them in German market is the advantage together with the no risk of exchange rate (they are listed in EUR). The relatively smaller liquidity, bigger spread gap could be the risk (though, there is a market maker in LS Exchange).

If you have choice to invest directly in NASDAQ or German Stock Market, which way would you chose ? (assume the same commission fee etc).

Thank you very much.

[ehemaliger Nutzer]

No, it's not ADR crap. It's the real stock but traded in another marketplace (like you can trade real iPhones either on ebay.com or on ebay.de).

Differences:

• Currency exchange fees. If you buy on NASDAQ, where all trading is done in USD, obviously your EUR will have to be exchanged to USD (and vice versa when selling). If you buy something on NASDAQ and directly afterwards sell again, you've lost 0.5% (in total) for currency exchange fees. Contrary to that, if you buy and sell on German marketplaces, there is no currency exchange fee at all, because all trading is done in EUR.
• Different order fees (these can be neglected compared to the currency exchange fees)
• Different trading hours
• Different liquidity (German markets are more than liquid enough when we're talking about the big US stocks. Small caps are another story, though.)
• Maybe different places where your stocks are stored. (Of course they aren't physically stored anyway, but somehow digital in some database on some server. Don't know much about this, though. But this should only be relevant in cases where it comes to asset forfeiture or 3rd world war or something.) Maybe somebody else can elaborate on this point?

Conclusion:

• Use "Tradegate" for big US stocks
• Use NASDAQ for small US stocks
• Why Tradegate and not "Xetra"? Because Tradegate trading hours go to 10 pm local time (Germany) , which is identical to NASDAQ trading hours, which go to 4 pm local time (New York).

Also: Thank you for investing in Tesla (which you're planning to, I assume^^). Full self driving for the win! 😄

[Ask1991]

@ehemaliger Nutzer 

Thank you very much for such an explanation! Now I see the big picture. One thing about the recommendation on the Tradegate. Would that be also the same story (per your just opinion) if I trade on the LS Exchange since LS is working until 23:00 German time? Obviously their size is different.

Thank you very much!

[ehemaliger Nutzer]

I wasn't even aware of LS exchange but it should be fine as well. Just make sure to compare prices with other exchanges when ordering.

But I'd suggest to do trading before 22:00 o'clock, if possible. Because prices probably will be sligthly less fair after 22:00 o'clock when the volume is super low.