THE advertisements of online brokerages such as Tiger Brokers and moomoo tout free shares and zero-comission trades, but trading through them can be expensive – as one customer recently found out.

Kong Weng Hong, a sales accounts manager, recently sold about US$5,000 worth of US-listed shares he was holding with Tiger Brokers.

But when he logged in to his account after the trade was completed, he was shocked to see a deficit of US$11,000 instead.