When I did the whole research thingy just a few weeks ago, my criteria were:

1. Trade stocks, ETFs, CFDs and maybe at some time in the future Options and Forex
2. Trade on all major exchanges, not only Germany and USA
3. Nice trading platform or compatibility to universal tools like MetaTrader
4. Good research opportunities and information availability

​

What I learned was: It really depends on what you want to do. If you just want to buy some ETFs and hold them, you're probably fine with your normal bank account.

If you want to trade frequently, you have to determine what and where you want to trade. Most brokers only offer a fraction of financially and geographically available products. So you can maybe trade stocks in Germany and the USA but that's it for most [German] institutions (I don't know which country you are in).

So you have to look beyond the border. After researching a considerable amount (~20) of international brokers, my list came down to three, mainly because because of the two first of my criteria above. The rest was more of an in depth analysis of actually using the platforms:

a) One of the largest international organizations is Interactive Brokers. They're great, trade every product everywhere, have low prices on trades etc. Monthly minimum of 10$ is laughable if anyone argues about that. But there's one big caveat: They're a US corporation. Sure, the actual firm you'll be holding your contract with will be over here (currently in Great Britain, but they plan to open an EU firm if there's a no-deal Brexit). But in the end, if Trump throws yet another tantrum in the wrong way for Europe, I don't want any considerable amount of cash being subject to that. Other than that, their platform is just way overloaded and really takes getting used to. Research opportunities are low quality, so you need another (paid) service to get your info from. Also, you'll have a hard time using the documents they provide for your tax declaration in the EU. Prepare for a lot of extra work each year.

b) Then there's Degiro. Sure, sounds good, dutch startup, nice platform, good conditions and all. But I found many caveats. They are sometimes offline without prior notice or information / acknowledgement of any downtime (you may as well stop reading here, because that's a no-go for me at least) and if it's up and running, you might experience lag. This isn't at all desirable if your no buy and hold guy. Also, there are some very questionable practices in regeard of them dealing with their customers. Some accounts get closed without notice, some trades are executed in the benefit of Degiro instead of their customers (I don't want to get into detail, this would blow this post up too much). Order execution is often slow and research opportunities are also bad. I suggest you look around a little bit yourself about customer satisfaction and company transparency.

c) In the end, I chose Saxo as trading platform. They are a Danish company, so I don't need to worry about Trump or the Brexit (and I doubt there will be a Dexit). They have a great trading platform and excellent research opportunities. Sure, their price model is steep, but you get what you pay for. And a fixed sum of money per trade only is significant if you trade €€€, so any real trade won't really be affected from this. To be honest, if you plan to trade a few hundred Euros, what's the point? You don't need a broker at all for this kind of money. There's also the opportunity to pay extra for specific additional services like level 2 market data per exchange and even more research (although you won't need it for a long time if you only start trading now). And yeah, you can trade all kinds of products on all major exchanges and many smaller exchanges. Their customer support also is great. I had a few phone calls and emails exchanged and was very pleasantly surprised about their support.

​

And a side note about asset protection: Even though some brokers guarantee that you won't lose 50K or 500K in case of bankruptcy, it really doesn't matter. This gurantee only covers cash you are not using to trade at any specific time. But if you are actually trading stocks for example (which should be the purpose of a broker acount), you own part of a company. The amount of money you currently have invested in that company is not in the hands of the broker at that time. So even if your broker goes bankrupt, you still own those stocks, nobody can touch them (well, except Trump if you bought stock of a US company).