Purple Group’s online investment platform, Easy Equities, is teaming up with US stockbroker DriveWealth to enable South Africans to buy US-listed stocks, such as Apple and Facebook. In the next six months, South Africans could access US-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and major individual stocks from the S&P 100, Nasdaq-100 and Dow Jones 30 indices via Easy Equities, said Purple Group CEO Charles Savage. This comes as South African investors are looking to increase offshore holdings following the country’s credit rating downgrades. Passive investment manager Coreshares recently listed the first S&P 500 ETF on the JSE. Platform users could access this and other locally listed ETFs with offshore exposure via Easy Equities, said Savage. They could also buy share portfolios constructed by asset managers and would soon have access to retirement annuities. For the six months to February 2017, Easy Equities grew active accounts 122% to 43,710. Funds under management grew 121% to R1.1bn....

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