How to Open TD Ameritrade Account
Recently I noticed there’s a growing interest in paper assets investment in Brunei albeit rather small in numbers. How do I know this? I saw a lot of comments and post in Brunei Subreddit where people were asking how to buy stocks or how to invest in general.
What caught my attention is that a lot of Bruneian Redditors recommending fellow Redditors to open up an online brokerage account and invest their money there instead of using local brokerages, i.e., BIBD Securities and Baiduri Capital. One online brokerage that stood out the most is TD Ameritrade. Since a lot of people recommended that broker a lot, I might as well try to open up an account there. This post will outline the steps by steps to open up an account.
Step 1: Go to this link which will direct you to TD Ameritrade open an account form. In this page you will be asked to select an account type. (If you don’t trust the link I provided above, you can just go to tdameritrade.com and click ‘Open New Account’)
Step 2: Select ‘Individual Brokerage’ account. This account is for those who are opening account for themselves and will be using the account for investment purpose. I believe other options (i.e, IRA, 401K, etc) are not applicable or not suitable for Non-America.
Step 3: Fill in your ‘Contact Information’. For your first name and last name, please fill in your actual full name as printed in your IC and Passport. You can put your parent’s name in your last name.
Step 4: In the next tab which is ‘Personal Information’. The form will ask you whether you are a US Citizen (obviously not). The form also ask whether you have a green card or not, I don’t even know what that is, I just selected no. And for the type of visa I just select none. Refer to picture below. The rest of the form asks your employment status. At the bottom of the form it asks you on how are you going to use this account, I just selected the first option. You can select the other option if you know what you are doing.
Step 5: The next tab will ask about your financial information. A picture worth a thousand words so I’m just going to share you the options that I opted.
As for the Sweep of uninvested cash, you could never go wrong with either of the options. I selected the second option just because I want my cash parked in my brokerage account.
Step 6: In this step, you need to review back your information. Ensure all information is correct. You don’t want to waste time like I did….
Step 7: In this step, obviously you’re going to read all the terms & condition carefully, thoroughly, and put a lot of mental energy to digest all of its content to decide whether you want to agree with the terms or not.
Step 8: If you have taken your time reviewing the terms & condition and you have agreed with everything written in them. You will be brought to a page where they ask you to print out the application form (3 pages), and IRS Form W-8BEN (1 page).
Step 9: You need to physically review the application form, and you may correct any mistake in the form. You also need to fill in the IRS Form W-8BEN.
Step 10: Take a picture of the following documents
- Passport
- IC (front and back)
- Utility Bills (or any letters with your home address in it)
- The application form
- The filled in IRS Form W-8BEN
- Bank Statement
Make sure to sign all of these documents. The last page in the application form, there’s a space where you have to sign. Don’t forget to sign that. Someone I know personally (he’s me) forgot to sign that page and wasted a week of his time.
Step 11: Fax the documents, I used this FaxZero to fax the document
Step 12: Or you could just upload the document here at moveit.tdameritrade.com. Though you need to call TD Ameritrade support to help you on this process. You can use Skype and call their Toll Free number (+1 800–368–3668)
After you have done faxing or uploading your documents, allow TD Ameritrade 3 working days to complete your application. Supposedly you should receive an email from them containing your login ID. It was not the case for me so I just called them again and ask for my login ID. The support team actually quite nice and helpful.
If you have made it through all of these steps, congratulation! You can now start to invest in paper assets in TD Ameritrade! Next post I might share with you what paper assets I am eyeing to buy!
