Hi Lars,
actually, I'm from europe and traded the US markets since beginn of 1999 exclusively via US brokers ( Datek & IB ).
But US trading has been only part of my trading activity and I always maintained 2 accounts with European ( german ) brokers as well.
Nowadays, you have also well equipped brokers here in Germany who offer access to almost all exchanges in the world.
Comdirect offers you trading at 42 stockexchanges worldwide + mutual funds. Plus, you can trade of course all national and international stocks listed on german exchanges ( in total about 12000 or so )
Or look at Fimatex, a subsidiary of europes 2nd. largest bank Societe Generale and the leading online-broker in France with branches in Germany, Spain and UK, who offers a kind of direct access trading for bonds, futures, options, stocks listed on german exychanges - US exchanges will be introduced in the coming days - all from one account.
Only drawbacks :
if you want to go short a stock, you need to use options. Shorting is not allowed for the private trader / investor in Germany.
Commissions : In Germany, comissions are calculated based on the value of a lot, rather then the number of shares.
The few flatrate brokers we had in Germany went belly up recently ( eqonline, systracom ).
Margin : Margin is restricted to 50% of the value of your account holdings in stocks.
i.e. Fimatex is charging 0.19% of the value per trade or a minimum of 8,00 - 9,00 EURO / trade.
Well, if you swingtrade in lots of 100 - 200 shares of a 40 - 50 EURO ( USD ) stock, or larger lots of lower priced stocks for that matter, it's not much more expensive than i.e. Datek with 9.99 USD (= 11.50 EURO ) trade.
With Fimatex, you have your buyingpower updated in Realtime ( like with IB or Datek )when you trade intraday. You can execute trades via a tradingstation ( GTS ) on an electronic system ( XETRA ) or directly with the floortraders at the various exchanges or .
You can trade also a variety of stocks directly ( outside of exchanges ) with leading market-makers ( 8:00 to 23:00 ) + Citibank ( CATS )
Arbitrage trading in the same stock between several regional exchanges / MM's can add a new dimension for swing-traders.
Further alternatives could be to have an account with the european branches of some US EDAT brokers ( UK ) and the daytrading centers located in Frankfurt, Duesseldorf, Berlin, Hamburg and some other cities.
regards