Many will say playing the US Markets is more exciting and profitable, but my opinion is it takes a brave heart to do so as you can win big but can also lose big as their daily trading price range is very volatile. Also, prices of their Blue Chips are very high to begin with. Take for example: APPLE at US$147.54, FACEBOOK at US$364.38, MICROSOFT at US$299.09, NETFLIX at US$550.12, AMAT at US$132.49, ASML at US$810.94, etc. And I don't go for CFDs and leveragings because these are even more volatile.
To buy 1 lot (1,000 shares) of AMAT will need a capital of US$132,490. Even if it goes up by US$1 within a trading day, one can only make US$1,000 excluding commissions, taxes and foreign exchange fluctuations. On the other hand, if I buy 100 lots (which I usually do on the local bourse) of say UMS (the indirect proxy of AMAT) for S$169,000, every upward movement of just S$0.01 can make me S$1,000 excluding commissions and taxes, but no foreign exchange risks. So, I'll still prefer to trade locally although I have to admit that it can be quite boring at times. So far since May 2020, I have already made a net S$87,854.41 from trading in the local bourse, which is not very exciting t