Cross-Border Stock Trading Gets Hammered—I’m Left to Tough It Out

In 2020 I opened a Tiger Brokers account; at the same time I also opened a U.S. account with East West Bank, but the maintenance costs on that bank account were too high, so I eventually closed it.

In February 2025, I went on to open Futu Securities, Longbridge Securities, and Interactive Brokers (IBKR) accounts one after another, and also got a bunch of Hong Kong bank cards.

In reality, opening these accounts wasn’t driven by any need for large cross-border transfers. I’d toyed with the idea of becoming a digital nomad, but never followed through. My life, family, income, and expenses are all in mainland China—I can’t just walk away for now.

I have a quirk: I love collecting cards—gathering all sorts of oddball accounts. As long as the barrier isn’t too high and I can set one up in fifteen or twenty minutes, I’ll happily open it. To manage hundreds of accounts and random passwords, I even bought 1Password. I also enjoy collecting various email suffixes and hoarding short domain names—including the blog domain you’re looking at right now, which cost me several thousand yuan and ranks as my second-biggest writing-related expense.

That said, getting in early really does pay off. When something new first emerges, the doors are wide open; once the crowds arrive, the path gradually gets blocked. Like China Telecom’s Macau student plan—I signed up for one on a whim back then and ended up reluctant to switch after four or five years of use. Or DMIT’s servers, which became discontinued while I was still using them. Or the Mac mini I bought not long ago, which has now turned into something of an investment asset.

Yesterday afternoon after the market closed, I saw the news that the Chinese government was cracking down hard on cross-border stock trading and wealth management, and my heart sank. Because I’m heavily leveraged on Xiaomi through Futu Securities, currently sitting on nearly 50% unrealized losses. If going forward I can only sell but not buy or deposit funds, I won’t be able to do any day trading, nor will I be able to withstand the margin call risk if the stock price drops further.

After calming down and analyzing it, I realized the actual impact isn’t that severe. My biggest risk right now is actually the leverage risk; without leverage, I could simply move my positions elsewhere.

First, buying stocks through Hong Kong local banks is completely unaffected. This policy didn’t place any restrictions on stock purchases via bank channels. For instance, HSBC’s Trade25: pay a monthly fee of 25 HKD and you get 250,000 HKD in free trading quota. Other banks like CMB Wing Lung Bank, Chong Hing Bank, and ZA Bank also offer Hong Kong and U.S. stock trading services—though their fees are a bit higher, they’re still usable.

Second, U.S. brokerages were largely untouched. The Interactive Brokers account I opened is a U.S. account, not a Hong Kong one, so it’s completely unaffected. At times like this, that account suddenly feels especially valuable.

As for fund safety, there’s even less reason to worry. Hong Kong’s financial regulatory system is relatively robust—the risk of a platform running off with your money is practically zero.

All in all, there is an impact, but it’s not particularly massive—no need to get overly anxious. With my current leveraged unrealized losses, I’ll just have to tough it out; I’ve got a two-year window, so I’ll wait and see how things unfold.