Australian digital brokerage Stake has leapt into the New Zealand market.

Stake offers stiff competition for existing local share trading platforms InvestNow, Sharesies, and Hatch.

Stake specialises in the US market and asks no brokerage fees and no foreign exchange fees on a per trade basis.

Volatility boosts interest

Its global head of marketing Bryan Wilmot says Covid-19 volatility in shares has boosted trading in shares, but there’s also been a lot of interest from traders looking for the next place to diversify.

“There’s been huge demand for the US market,” he says.

“We know that 77 per cent of our customers have traded before, say on the ASX [Australian Stock Exchange] or the NZX [New Zealand Stock Exchange].”

There are already 5,000 people trading on Stake in New Zealand. Two thousand of those were already on a wait-list and became founding customers when it launched ‘Stake Founders Club’ exclusive access in April. The full launch was in May.

Too hard to trade US shares

Stake was founded by Australians Matt Leibowitz and Dan Silver after Leibowitz returned to his native country from the US and found it hard to trade in US shares.

It’s now operating in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, and is launching in Latin America in August, with its first stop Brazil.

Stake just ticked over its 100,000th customer.

In New Zealand, InvestNow and Sharesies have both been operating since 2017, and Kiwi Wealth launched Hatch in 2018, for Kiwis to access the US market.

Sharesies is also set to launch US share trading, saying customers will have access to an additional 2,500-plus companies and 900-plus ETFs (exchange-traded funds). A date has not yet been announced for the new venture.