I am an American citizen, and fairly confident I would be able to
figure out how to buy, say, Wal-Mart stock. But my question is
international.
How, and with whom do I go through to buy stock for an aussie company
whose stock is listed only on the Australian stock exchange (ASX)?
What is the best way to monitor said stock.
I would be investing a thousand dollars at most, if that impacts the
answer.
Thanks-

Hello.

A foreign stock that isn't listed on U.S. exchanges is called a
"foreign ordinary." A foreign stock that is traded on U.S. exchanges
is called an "American Depository Receipt (ADR)." Well-known brokers
such as Charles Schwab, Fidelity, and Merrill Lynch can help you
invest in both ADRs and foreign ordinaries. Additionally, a company
called Intltrader.com offers direct online trading of foreign
ordinaries: http://www.intltrader.com .

This AOL/TheStreet.com article, "What Works: Getting Started at
Trading Foreign Stocks," by Jamie Heller (3/7/01) offers a good
introduction to the world of foreign stock trading:
http://aol.thestreet.com/funds/whatworks/1333254.html
Also see a follow-up article from the same author: "What Works: Schwab
Leads Pack for Foreign Stock Trading"
http://aol.thestreet.com/funds/whatworks/1337690.html

Here is a Wall Street Journal article, "All Over the Map," (6/11/01)
that also offers some ideas on international stock trading:
http://public.wsj.com/ona/online/SB991769435236506889.htm

Also see: "The Basics of Trading Overseas" by Eleanor Laise, in
Bloomberg Personal Finance, March 2000:
http://www.bloomberg.com/personal/ft2_new99.html

Here is information about international trading opportunities through
Charles Schwab:
http://www.schwab.com/SchwabNOW/SNLibrary/SNLib072/SN072mainGlobal.html

For more information about Merrill Lynch, visit:
http://www.merrilllynch.com/

For more information about Fidelity, visit:
http://www300.fidelity.com/

To get quotes and follow foreign stocks, visit Yahoo Finance
International: http://biz.yahoo.com/ifc/
Yahoo Australia/New Zealand offers stock quotes and symbol look-up for
Australian-listed securities:
http://au.finance.yahoo.com/
For example, to get a quote for Coca-Cola Amatil, the Coke bottler in
Australia, you'd enter CCL.AX as the symbol:
http://au.finance.yahoo.com/q?s=CCL.AX&d=2b
To find the symbol of another company, use Yahoo's symbol search
function:
http://au.finance.yahoo.com/l

I hope this helps. Good luck with your investing!

---

Clarification of Answer by juggler-ga on 22 Jul 2002 13:59 PDT

Oh, I'm sorry about leaving out the search strategy. It slipped my
mind.
The general concepts were from my own knowledge, but the links were
generally obtained from searches such as:
"foreign ordinaries"
"trading foreign stocks"
"buying foreign stocks"

Well done. The only thing I would request additionally is a list of
search terms (I'm not sure how much of this came from your own
knowledge base, and how much you were able to divine through
research)- Normally I'm not the type to ask the magician how he sawed
that lady in half, but how else am I gonna learn?