Rakuten Trade is a totally online Bursa Malaysia stock trading platform. It is a joint venture between Kenanga Investment Bank and Japanese-based Rakuten Securities. It has been in service since 2017.
If you haven't open a stock trading account with Rakuten Trade, now is a good time if you intend to do so, because there is promotion which going to end soon in 31 March 2020 worth RM60 upon account activation, and the best time to buy stocks is when the price of most stock counters were beaten down.
Opening account is just for preparation to trade with Rakuten Trade, hopefully in the near future, when you are mentally and financially ready to buy stocks. A good timing will be when good development of mitigating COVID-19 virus is announced (such as, proven vaccine is available) and the socio-economical traction is recovering from the damage made by the COVID-19 virus. That will be the time to ride on the rebounding wave of the stock market. Anyhow, if you are a risk taker, you might want to enter your position earlier too.
Why Rakuten Trade?
First of all, you can open account with Rakuten Trade totally online, without the need of filling and signing on any paper forms, and without the need of visiting to their office.
More importantly, opening CDS account(s) with Rakuten Trade is free of charge, while most other broking firms will charge you RM10 per CDS account.
You can click here to open your Rakuten Trade account at their website.
Remember to use the Referral Code Voyager8 during account opening to get 500 Rakuten Trade Points (RT Points) upon successful account activation.
If you open your account on or before 31 March 2020, remember to open both Cash Upfront and Contra accounts together, and key-in HelloGold as Promotion Code by following the instruction in this linked webpage, because you can get RM60 worth of gold in HelloGold, upon successful Rakuten Trade accounts activation. The RM60 will be emailed to you in the form of HelloGold promo code, which you can key-in under the Rewards > Enter Code section in HelloGold app to redeem as gold of equivalent price.
There are 3 kinds of accounts in Rakuten Trade. You can activate any one, two or three of them. Click here to learn more about the Cash Upfront, Contra and Margin accounts available in Rakuten Trade.
Among all the broking firms in Malaysia, Rakuten Trade is one of the one with the lowest brokerage fee (if and only if, there really exist another broking firm with cheaper brokerage than them).
Their brokerage is as low as RM7, and the maximum brokerage fee per stock per day is capped at RM100 only (while most other broking firm will charge brokerage unlimitedly).
Note that beside the cheaper brokerage fee, the clearing fee and stamp duty is at the same rate with the other broking firms.
You can earn RT Points while using Rakuten Trade, especially when you are first time user. Here are some of the ways to earn RT Points:
- Open new account with Referral Code Voyager8 and successfully activate it: +500 points
- Open Margin account with Promotion Code RakuMargin and successfully activate it: +1888 points
- Deposit at least RM100 into new Cash Upfront account within 5 days upon activation: +500 points
- Deposit at least RM100 into new Contra account within 5 days upon activation: +500 points
- Deposit at least RM100 into new Margin account within 5 days upon activation: +500 points
- Execute 1st trade successfully within 10 days upon Cash Upfront account activation: +1000 points
- Execute 1st trade successfully within 10 days upon Contra account activation: +1000 points
- Execute 1st trade successfully within 10 days upon Margin account activation: +1000 points
- Refer new friends to Rakuten Trade with your own referral code: +500 points each
- Trading stocks with Rakuten Trade: +1 point for every RM2 in brokerage
- Transfer shares from other CDS accounts to Rakuten Trade CDS account: +500 points
What can you do with RT Points accumulated? You can perform 1-to-1 points conversion with AirAsia BIG, B Infinite or Bonuslink, which is a pretty good deal!
The Rakuten Trade web trading platform is pretty comprehensive and easy to use.
Beside the normal functions of stock buying, selling, monitoring, watch-listing, cash in, cash out, etc., Rakuten Trade provides a pretty comprehensive and up-to-date information and report about the stock counters under Stock Info section.
It also has a very nice Stock Screener to perform stock filtering at ease.
Beside the preset screening formula, you can also define your own screening formula as well, and there are many screening criteria for you to work with.
You can even go into detail analysis of the filtered result.
Beside web online trading platform, Rakuten Trade also has mobile trading platform called iSPEED.my which you can download from Google Play Store or Apple App Store. However, its user interface is very old style and has many rooms of improvement.
If you find that Rakuten Trade is better than your current online trading platform, just go ahead to open your Rakuten Trade account to enjoy its benefit. After all, open new CDS accounts in Rakuten Trade is free of charge. You can of course continue using your existing trading platform, if you want, even though you have opened new account in Rakuten Trade.