US shares are now on Strawman.
You can paper trade them in the same portfolio as your ASX holdings, with the same play money, all in Australian dollars. Roughly 550 names: the S&P 500, the Nasdaq-100, the Dow 30, and a set of widely held ETFs. Not the entire US market, but enough of it that the companies you’ve been reading about for years are finally on the board.
Why bother?
The ASX is a good market. It is also a narrow one. Banks, miners, a handful of industrials, and not much else. Plenty of the world’s best businesses never list here, and plenty of the ideas worth arguing about live elsewhere. If Strawman is meant to sharpen judgment, it helps to practice on the full set of companies that actually matter to a long-term investor, not only the ones that happen to trade in Sydney.
That was the case for adding US shares. Not diversification theatre. Not a new game. Just a wider field for the same discipline: pick a thesis, size it, write it down, and live with the result.
How it works in brief.
One portfolio. One cash balance. Prices are the US close, converted to Australian dollars, so what you see moves with the share and with the exchange rate. Limits, values and returns stay in Aussie dollars. There is no separate US-dollar wallet. US dividends land in cash in full (no franking credits, and we don’t withhold tax on the paper account).
Orders fill at the close, if your limit allows it. ASX cuts off at 4:00pm Sydney. US orders cut off at the New York close, which lands at 6:00am, 7:00am or 8:00am the next Sydney morning depending on daylight saving. The order pad shows the exact time. Cash from a sale only funds a buy once that sale has filled, so an ASX-to-US switch same day usually works; a US-to-ASX switch usually waits a session. The usual rules still apply: long only, 20% max on a new position, and thin stocks may fill only in part.
US holdings count in the Strawman Index and rankings like any other share. Your benchmark is still VAS. Search shows the market on each result (AAPL:NASDAQ, BHP:ASX), and a dual listing is two separate positions. US posts are on in your newsfeed by default; turn them off under Account → Markets if you’d rather keep the noise lower.
If you’ve been waiting for Apple, Nvidia, Costco or a boring S&P ETF to sit next to your ASX book: they’re there. Have a look.
Strawman is Australia’s premier online investment club.
Members share research & recommendations on ASX-listed stocks by managing Virtual Portfolios and building Company Reports. By ranking content according to performance and community endorsement, Strawman provides accountable and peer-reviewed investment insights.
Disclaimer– Strawman is not a broker and you cannot purchase shares through the platform. All trades on Strawman use play money and are intended only as a tool to gain experience and have fun. No content on Strawman should be considered an inducement to buy or sell real world financial securities, and you should seek professional advice before making any investment decisions.
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