Domestic investors can trade American stocks for less

Romanian investors can trade American stocks at a lower cost, now that the Central Depository has established a cross border connection with the central depositories of the United States. This will allow Romanian investors to settle trades with the financial instruments managed by the DTC (Depository Trust Company) and FED (Federal Reserve Banks) depositories, including trades with government bonds issued by the US treasury.

Until now, the only way for domestic investors to trade in the US was to have their brokers send the orders to another brokerage firm that had access to the American market, and the trades would be settled through the depository of the foreign brokerage firm.

"Investors will have access to the entire range of Eurobonds and government bonds registered in the system of the FED and in the European Central Depositories with which the Romanian Central Depository has made agreements with, as well as the stocks, bonds and other securities registered with the DTC and the aforementioned European Depositories", a press release of the Romanian Central Depository states.

Adriana Tănăsoiu, the managing director of the Bucharest Central Depository said that the implementation of the new connection to the foreign depositories is a step towards the creation of the institution"s global network of connections.

"We are extremely pleased to announce that the cross-border connection between the Central Depository and the depositories of the United States of America has become operational. This is a major step in our expansion program, as this is the first connection to depositories located on a different continent", Adriana Tănăsoiu said.

The Central Depository has cross-border connections with 17 countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Switzerland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Luxemburg, Great Britain, Holland, Poland, Spain, United States, Sweden and Hungary) and offers investors cross-border settlement of trades in 10 currencies.