"Quick email regarding the recent couple of comments on buying foreign shares and US citizens/residents. I'm a writer specialising in international investing as well as an investor and one of the things I do is try to keep tabs on which brokers based where will trade what, so I may be able to add a couple of points.

"With regard to the first reader's specific question, this is my current understanding:

"As far as what can be done by a broker in the US, it depends on trade/account size, as you say. Plenty of brokers will advertise the ability to trade foreign stocks on the OTC market, but this depends what's available OTC and of course you will often pay a high price in the form of stale prices and wide spreads.

"The number who can trade directly is much more limited. In terms of retail-friendly brokerages, there are five or six firms that I know of that can go beyond ADRs or OTC: E*Trade, EverBank, Fidelity, Interactive Brokers, Charles Schwab (and possibly Muriel Siebert). There may be others, but those are the ones I've found so far.

"What they cover varies from very limited (E*Trade) to pretty broad but relatively expensive (Charles Schwab). You will be able to access Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan pretty easily and Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia through one or two or them (albeit at a high price).

"Obviously, if you have a larger account/trade sizes you can go to some of the multinational Wall Street firms as a private client and they will give you pretty comprehensive coverage, though not cheaply. But I believe in most cases you are going to have to be putting $100k+ to work, which may be more than many subscribers want to put into these markets.

"If you're under those limits and you want to invest some of the more awkward markets (e.g. Taiwan, Korea etc) or other countries more cheaply, the obvious thing to look at is opening an account within Asia as your first writer alluded to (e.g. Hong Kong or Singapore, where there are plenty of brokers who offer regional trading - Boom, Phillip Securities and OCBC are among the most comprehensive).

"This is fine for residents of most countries, but there is a complication for US citizens and residents - Regulation S and now FATCA mean that many foreign firms do not want to do business with any clients from the US. Some may be willing to take Americans, but it's a question of asking around until you find one. The reaction your subscriber relays regarding tons of documents actually sounds more positive than many firms, who will simply say "No US residents and citizens".

"In my job, I spend quite a bit of time answering queries about international investing and so I am slowly trying to develop a directory of international stock brokers and other international investing information here:
http://the-international-investor.com/comparison-tables to try to help with queries like these. While the site is still very much in beta, you're welcome to link to it or supply the link to readers if it might be helpful to anyone looking for international stock brokers.

"Thanks very much for your extremely helpful newsletter and site - I've learned a great deal from it over the years and hope I may have finally contributed something useful back to the collective!"

David Fuller's view You certainly have contributed something useful for the Collective! Thank you so much for this very valuable information, contributed in the spirit of Empowerment Through Knowledge, and also for the kind words in your concluding paragraph.

Thanks also for the link to your site above. On first glance I can see that it is extremely useful for investors, and not just those from the US. Fullermoney is pleased to swap links with The International Investor and have added your name and URL to the Brokers section of our 'External Links', (last item in the menu above left). If you would like to forward a sentence or three of additional description, we would be happy to include that copy.