Fintech platform Stake has announced the beta launch of Stake Premium, which will provide SMSF investors with direct access to United States share trading without charging any trading fees or commissions.

The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) is continuing to provide SMSF investors with access to overseas markets through its increasing range of products such as exchange-traded funds (ETF) and listed investment companies (LIC), according a senior executive in the organisation.

The United States equity markets’ outstanding performance over the past five years was largely an artificial phenomenon created by mammoth share buy-back programs, according to Tempo Asset Management.

While active international share fund managers generated strong returns over the three years to 30 September this year, they did not do as well as the benchmark used to measure their relative performance, according to research house Zenith Investment Partners’ “2014 Global Sector Review”.