0

I heard that the trading with ETF is the best for people without much money to invest because the provision for the depot is low or free. Furthermore, it is not very risky.

What if I would like to spend only up to 100€ on stocks or ETFs? Should I go with ETF? And what do I have to search for, if I would like to get ETFs that are not to pricy per piece for my small amount of 100€?

In Germany, some stocks cost over 100€...

Update: Sure, I am not going to get rich with this amount of money. But I do not need for now and I hope that it will not become less until I need it if I spend it.

1
  • 2
    From a personal finance standpoint, that small of an amount would be better suited to pay off existing debt or added to an emergency fund. If neither of those are a concern, then investment is an option, but it isn't going to have a significant impact (5-6€ per year).
    – D Stanley
    Jan 5, 2018 at 15:46

3 Answers 3

3

100 Euros is not very much money, therefore you need be careful to ensure that your expected profit is not all eaten up with transactions fees. I'd suggest the following:

  1. Find a discount broker that offers ETF trades for free and has a minimum investment amount that is less than you intend to put in there.
  2. Look at the list of ETFs that you can purchase for free and make sure there are some that cost less than 100 euro per share
  3. Buy one of those ETFs, preferably the most diversified one. If you can, buy a "total market" ETF.
  4. Profit!!

Because there are only a few discount brokers that offer free ETF trades (I'm assuming the situation in Germany is similar to what it is in the US) and each of those only has a certain set of available free ETF's, and many of those ETFs probably cost more than 100 euro, you won't have too many ETFs to look at.

Actually with that amount of money, I'd suggest just holding it in the bank until you have saved up some more. Until you have at least 10 times that much, you aren't really even beginning to invest. Of course, if you are doing this to learn and have fun, then have at it.

3
  • Is it going to be safe enough to spend some money I do not need for now but later? So let us say, I want to make at least some more money out of it without a realisitic risk of decrease in value for the next year or something?
    – Kutsubato
    Jan 6, 2018 at 16:23
  • You spoke about "total market" ETFs. In Germany, we have the DAX as the index for the german market considering the most important enterprises. So should I invest in that one for example? If I invested in the DAX ETF, I had to spend 120€ for one peace. Is that normal?
    – Kutsubato
    Jan 6, 2018 at 16:49
  • @Kutsubato: You may want to spend a bit more time reading. Investing carries risk - that's the difference with saving. ETF's have a reasonably low risk - if you're investing with a time horizon measured in years. They're good for a retirement account, or the study fund for a newborn. At a 12 month horizon, they're risky.
    – MSalters
    Jan 6, 2018 at 22:57
0

Check etfmatic or scalable capital (since you re in Germany). For a small fee (less than 1%) they ll manage such acquisitions on your behalf based on the investing profile you give them. For better results consider getting a bigger amount at ready or to set up a recurring deposit there to reap the benefits of diversification and get an actual portfolio instead of random pieces of an ETF or 2.

2
  • Careful here: etfmatic seems to be based in the UK, which probably means that the investor has to take care themselves of all tax declarations (at least I didn't see them advertise that they take care of automatic tax payments for other countries). Scalable capital is based in Germany, so they (or rather the bank they cooperate with) should handle the relevant tax payments automatically. However, a minimum investment of 10 k€ seems to be outside OPs current budget. Jan 7, 2018 at 14:26
  • @cbeleites etfmatic doesnt have a minimum investment, good point on keeping up with taxation though.
    – Leon
    Jan 8, 2018 at 8:32
0

As @farnsy already said, you need to make sure that the small profit you can get from very small investments is not completely eaten up by transaction fees. I'd like to add a 2nd very similar point: taxation can mean quite complex burocracy that creates basically the same hassle for 100 € or 10000 € investments. A practical trade-off may be to save your monthly budget for investments and instead of monthly investments on the order of magnitude of 50 - 100 €, go for one transaction per year in the order of magnitude of 1000 €.

That being said, personally I deliberately decided to start with rather small amounts (though not as small as 100 €, but maybe only a single trade in the first year - particularly as you are going for an ETF that inherently provides already some diversification) and to slowly add (burocratic) complexity while researching and learning about investing. Small amounts in order to see whether I correctly understood the not always very clear descriptions of fees and tax consequences, accepting relatively large transaction fees in order to be sure that mistaken conception of the "side-fees" wouldn't affect large amounts of money... And while there are lots of online brokerage simulations around, they usually do not simulate the complexity of fees and tax declarations.

As you mention Germany, look up the new (2018) taxation rules for fonds. According to boerse-online.de they are supposed to be mostly handled by your bank, but I'd nevertheless recommend to look up what they mean.

The new rules are among other things supposed/meant to put foreign fonds on the same overall taxation with German fonds, but I guess that doesn't necessarily mean that the amount of burocratic work is the same (e.g. for some foreign shares, both the foreign country of origin and Germany will automatically deduct full taxes and you can then later on claim back foreign taxes due to a double-taxation treaty. Which is a non-neglible amount of work and your bank/broker may charge additional fees for the additional tax proofs).

So for the beginning, I'd recommend staying with an inner-German product, even if (seemingly) attractive foreign (incl. EU-based) products can be bought quite as easily. And with a German broker: tax-wise the only risk there is that you accidentally pay too much taxes if you don't realize how to get double-taxation refunding. OTOH, with foreign based accounts it's up to you to declare and pay the taxes correctly. I.e., simple honest mistakes can get yourself into tax evasion - with much more serious consequences than the loss of few € due to having paid some taxes that were not due.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .