I'm thinking of starting to buy US stocks but cant decide between Tiger Brokers and Firstrade. Also, anyone here knows if there are any underlying fees for Firstrade?

Hello fellow investor!

Personally I have account with both Tiger Broker and Firstrade.
I will try to breakdown the pros and cons for your consideration below.

Firstrade:
Pros

• Commission free
• Simple and basic interface
• Informative on upcoming stock company events (Financial annoucement/dividend payout...)
• Free Morning star report

Cons

• Not regulated by MAS
• can only trade in US market
• Unable to perform currency exchange
• Fee of 50 USD per withdrawal

Tiger Broker:
Pros

• Interactive and comprehensive interface
• Able to perform currency exchange within app
• Regulated by MAS
• Fast deposit of money through Sg bank account
• No withdrawal fee
• Ease of investing in many other markets (SGX/ HK/US...)

Cons

• May contain unrelevant news article
• as low as 2 usd per trade (this amount can be neglected if you are doing long term investing)

My Opinion
Personally I trade using Tiger broker but for stock research, I cross reference the articles from Tiger Broker with Firstrade as I feel that they filter the articles of the stocks quite comprehensively. You can just open both if in doubt as it is not necessary to deposit a minimum amount of money to use both the brokers platform.

If you are interested in opening Tiger Broker, I have created a "step by step sign up" blogpost on it below.
https://investorean.blogspot.com/2020/12/how-to...

Do drop a comment if you have any other questions or feedback for my blog as I am still in the midst of sorting out the layout and stuff before I add more content on it :)

Why not open both and see which you prefer, since it doesn't cost anything to open an account. So can just open, see see look look, then choose 1 from there. There will definitely be 2 sides of the spectrum, supporters of tiger vs supporters of firsttrade