Trove vs Bamboo: which should a Nigerian investor use?

What are Trove and Bamboo each for?

Trove (trovefinance.com, also written Trove Finance, with its app at troveapp.co) and Bamboo (investbamboo.com, run by Bamboo Systems Technology Limited) both let a Nigerian buy US shares and Nigerian shares in the same app. That's the thing the two of them share and most of the market doesn't: the dollar investing apps mostly stop at US stocks, and the local brokers mostly stop at the NGX.

If you're checking Bamboo's fees for yourself, make sure you're on investbamboo.com. getbamboo.io belongs to Bamboo 61 Pty Ltd, an unrelated Australian crypto app, it's easy to reach first in a search, and it publishes a completely different fee schedule.

What does a US stock trade cost at Trove and Bamboo?

Bamboo charges 1.5% on a US stock trade, on the buy and on the sell, with a $1 minimum per trade. Trove charges 1.00% of the transaction amount on foreign shares, before the SEC and FINRA regulatory fees it excludes from that figure. On a $1,000 buy that's $15 at Bamboo and $10 at Trove, and a buy-then-sell round trip costs $30 at Bamboo against about $20 at Trove.

Bamboo's $1 minimum is the figure that catches a small investor, and it works the opposite way round to a cap. On a $50 trade, 1.5% comes to $0.75, so the $1 floor applies and you pay 2% of the trade instead of 1.5%. On a $20 trade you pay 5%. Anything under about $67 costs more than Bamboo's headline rate. Trove publishes no per-trade minimum on its Nigeria pricing page, so its 1.00% stays 1.00% all the way down.

What does a Nigerian stock trade cost at each one?

Trove charges 1.35% of the transaction amount on local shares, exclusive of statutory fees and taxes. Bamboo splits its charge in two: a 1% Bamboo commission plus a brokerage commission of 0.75% to 1.35%, with the statutory lines on top of both. So before any statutory fee, a Nigerian share trade costs 1.35% at Trove and between 1.75% and 2.35% at Bamboo.

Bamboo publishes every statutory line and Trove does not. On a buy, Bamboo lists a 0.3% SEC fee, 0.08% stamp duty, a ₦4 trade alert fee and VAT at 7.5% on the brokerage and SEC fees. A sell adds a 0.3% NGX fee and a 0.3% CSCS fee. Those charges are set by the market rather than by the app, so they apply wherever you trade a Nigerian share. What differs is that one of these two shows them to you in advance.

On a ₦100,000 Nigerian share purchase, Bamboo's published charges come to roughly ₦2,210 at the bottom of its brokerage range and ₦2,860 at the top, which is 2.2% to 2.9% of the trade. Trove's 1.35% on the same purchase is ₦1,350 before the statutory fees it doesn't list, and those add about ₦410, so a reasonable estimate is ₦1,760, or 1.8%. Bamboo also sets a ₦5,000 minimum on a Nigerian share trade; Trove's published minimum is a ₦1,000 or $10 deposit.

What does it cost to get money in and out?

Bamboo publishes a figure for every route. Funding from Nigeria costs 1.4% capped at ₦2,000 by naira card, ₦150 by naira bank transfer above ₦10,000 and ₦100 below it, and 2.9% by dollar card. Withdrawing costs ₦45 to a naira bank account and $45 to a dollar account, with a $500 minimum on a dollar withdrawal. Bamboo charges nothing to hold shares or to keep money in the wallet.

Trove publishes none of that. Its two pricing sections carry commission rates and no deposit or withdrawal fee, and its FAQ gives only the minimum deposit. So at Bamboo you can work out what moving money costs before you start, and at Trove you have to find out in the app.

That matters most on a small portfolio, where the fixed charges are bigger than the commission. On a ₦500,000 deposit, one Nigerian share trade and one withdrawal, Bamboo's ₦150 in and ₦45 out are ₦195 against a trade cost of about ₦2,500. On a ₦20,000 trade the same ₦195 is most of what you pay. A $45 dollar withdrawal is the one to watch: on the $500 minimum withdrawal it's 9% of the money you're taking out.

What do Trove and Bamboo cost, side by side?

Who actually holds your shares?

Neither app is your broker on the US side, and in Bamboo's case and one of Trove's two cases it's the same firm standing behind both of them. This is the part a reader almost never gets told, and both companies publish it.

Bamboo says US-traded securities are provided to Lambeth Capital Limited by DriveWealth LLC, a member of FINRA and SIPC, and that Nigerian securities are facilitated by Lambeth Capital, which holds an NGX trading licence. Bamboo itself is registered with Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission as a digital sub-broker, operating under Lambeth.

Trove says Nigerian securities are provided by Sigma Securities Ltd, an SEC-registered broker-dealer and NGX member. On the US side Trove names two firms, and which one applies depends on which Trove entity your account sits under: DriveWealth LLC for customers of Trove Trading Services Ltd, and Alpaca Securities LLC, which handles brokerage and custody, for customers of Trove Investment Advisors LLC.

What that means for you is simple enough. There are three links in the chain between you and a US share at both apps, and at Trove the firm at the far end isn't the same for every customer. Bamboo's protection on the Nigerian side is the NGX Investors' Protection Fund, which Bamboo says is capped, isn't guaranteed, and covers only what you do through Bamboo as Lambeth's sub-broker. Ask each app which entity your account is under and who holds the shares, and keep the answer with your statements.

One practical difference falls out of this. Bamboo prices a route out: an ACAT transfer of a US account costs $65, and a DRS transfer costs $55 per position, so you can move US holdings to another broker and know what it costs. Trove publishes no transfer-out charge.

Where does Daya Stocks fit?

Daya Stocks charges 0.25% a trade on US shares, which is 0.25% to buy and 0.25% to sell, from $1, across more than 400 assets, with no funding fee and no withdrawal fee. On a $1,000 US buy that's $2.50, against $10 at Trove and $15 at Bamboo, and on a $50 buy it's 12.5 cents against Bamboo's $1 minimum. It trades 24 hours a day, five days a week, with a number of stocks buyable outside normal hours. Verification takes a BVN, a valid ID and a selfie.

Daya Stocks is tokenised, which is a different structure from either of these. Its own page says you own a token that tracks the share price rather than the certificate itself, that there are no voting rights, that dividends are reinvested automatically into the same position after tax, and that tokens can't be moved to an outside wallet, so you sell in the app and withdraw naira. What are tokenised stocks, and how do they work? sets out what each of those means in practice.

Where Daya Stocks isn't the pick: it covers global markets only, so there are no Nigerian shares on it. If holding NGX stocks in the same app is the reason you're choosing, that's a job Daya Stocks doesn't do, and Trove and Bamboo both do. On US shares, where Daya Stocks does compete, 0.25% a trade is the lowest commission of the three, and there's nothing to pay to put money in or take it out.

Which Trove price applies to a Nigerian account?

Trove publishes two different pricing models on two of its own pages, and which one you land on changes what you think a trade costs. The Nigeria pricing section gives 1.35% on local shares and 1.00% on foreign shares. The worldwide investing page sells monthly plans instead, at $3 a month for Standard and $5 a month for Plus, and describes commission-free investing on US shares.

Those aren't the same price, and the gap runs both ways. A Nigerian account is priced by the Nigeria page, so 1.00% is the figure this piece uses for a US trade. But on a $10,000 trade the subscription model would cost $5 where 1.00% costs $100, and on a $100 trade the subscription costs $5 where 1.00% costs $1. Check the commission on your own trade screen before you buy, because the page you read first may not be the one your account is on.

Which one should you use?

On the published figures, the answer turns on what you're buying and how big your account is.

• Trove, if most of your trading is Nigerian shares, or US trades large enough that the commission dwarfs the fixed charges. Its 1.35% local and 1.00% foreign are both below Bamboo's published rates.
• Bamboo, if you want every charge priced before you start. It publishes funding, withdrawal, statutory and transfer-out fees where Trove publishes none of them, and on a small account an unpriced withdrawal can cost more than the commission you saved.
• Bamboo, if you want a known way out of your US holdings. It prices an ACAT transfer at $65 and a DRS transfer at $55 per position.
• Daya Stocks, if you're only buying US shares. 0.25% a trade is the lowest of the three, it starts at $1, and nothing is charged to fund or withdraw.

Whichever you pick, ask which entity your account sits under and who holds the shares, and keep that answer with your statements. Bamboo vs Trove vs Risevest vs Hisa compares the same two against the other two apps Nigerians choose between.