So, wait, hold on your horses cowboy... I have been saving to open this account in IB, and now 10k usd means 9352.61 Chf... how do I open it? I just transfer those 9352.61 Chf?

You open the account and they give you one month to fund it. Then you send the wire for about 9400 CHF (for example).

Everybody wants their currency week...

Can you explain to me how could it be bad news? The only way I can imagine is if you hold USD cash or if you hold USD bonds.

Well would it not be the case that if I have USD stocks then the value will be decreasing vs the CHF and when I sell in USD and then change back to CHF I will have less than otherwise?

depends in which currency the company makes its revenue - not where it is listed.

e.g. you did not loose too much by owning Nestle just because CHF is now weaker than a year ago

The US stock market has risen far faster than the currency has devalued. The risk is far greater by just holding Cash of any currency, in any case it's trading in totally normal ranges.

I can imagine that in the short term this can matter, but in the long term if they are messing with exchange rate of the USD, it should result in increased inflation (i.e. higher USD prices of things).

If you hold a British company, which only makes business in UK, through an American ETF, then the GBP value of this company will remain unchanged, so it will rise in USD, which will instantly compensate for the loss of value of the USD. Things which are valued in USD (where the value is attached to USD) will react slower to this change, for example real estate in USA.

I have high tolerance to spelling mistakes, but come on, lose and loose?

It depends on your investment horizon and when/where eventually your are going to sell your stocks and use the money for retirement. Effectively, there is significant risk if one of the currencies moves against you too fast.

Hmm ok, cheers.

Of all spelling mistakes, that is among the easiest for those suffering from dyslexia to make. Lets not bother pointing out and drawing attention to petty things like that when all we are interested in here is to discuss trading.

richdog is right for once, its a typo, what's your problem?

It's not as if you will take all your money for retirement on day 1, as retirement will likely be 30 plus years you need to stay invested in equities throughout retirement if you want your income to rise faster than inflation.

It is far more complicated than what your are posting here. Tax/health and many other parameters such as FX can have a significant effect on your income post retirement age.

Sorry, I got carried away . I have seen way too many "loose" in the recent times. If everybody ignores it, then more people will write like this. Now back to the topic

Hi,
I am trying to buy EUR and i have CHF. so in web trader, i buy XXXX amount of EUR.CHF (after calculating using the current exchange rate) by selecting in the dropdown EUR Idealpro CHF (in forex section) and set the limit price same as ask price. but the trade never executes and i dont know what the problem is. i even tried to change the limit price to ask price but still no change. is there something i am missing? of course i am convering small quantities (around 2000 CHF) each time.

cheers
happycreature

The quantity is irrelevant. What you are doing sounds correct, but since I usually use the app, I dont have the drop down menu. I also only have a limit price and never an ask price.

Maybe if you posted a screen cap of your window, we could assist you better.

Yes i also have only the limit price in web trader but the ask and bid prices are displayed below the screen when you select the currency pair. so i just set the limit price as the ask price. what i want is a guaranteed execution so that i cna have the amount in the other currency that i want to buy a stock but i get stuck many times with this conversion itself.
can anyone suggest an easy way of doing this (i mean how to set the right limit price)? i obvioulsy dont want to execute at market price.

and for you, how quickly does your trade get executed when done from a mobile app? i hope there is no difference.

cheers
happycreature

I might have an idea what is happening. So you are trading 2000 CHF at a time? If that all the francs you have in the account? Usually when you are confirming a trade it tells you “you will get X euros and your cost will be y francs”. Make sure that the “Y “ + trading fee (for me $2) is less than or equal to the amount of francs in your account. This used to frustrate me as I didn’t have a margin account before so IB did not let me go even a penny into a negative balance with francs.

If I am trading a small amount and it is the middle of the day sometime I put in a market price. I have never had an issue and the trade is done instantly.

When using the app, if I do market price my trade is instant, like .5 seconds after pressing submit. Obviously a limit will vary based on how far I am from market price

Hi all,


I'm thinking to open an account with IB and am choosing between them and Schwab.


I'm an investor, not a trader, and not at all interested in any shorting, margin, options, etc. - my only interest is buying stocks.


IB seems very cheap for trading and a decent platform. I don't want a complex trading interface though, a simple one would work fine. The $10 monthly fee isn't so good but there is no fee if you have over $100k value.


I do like IB's ease of multiple currencies - I will be funding the account with CHF and GBP and then would buy stocks (probably only ETFs actually) in USD/GBP/EUR.


Any opinion on the best broker for me?