Base currency is important in professional applications. If your fees are charged in the base currency (I didn't know that but then again my main account is in USD) then you put whatever currency you have positive balance. Incurring negative balances is not good as the financing costs are high in IB.

Bullshit, it's one of the cheapest sources of credit you can find anywhere as a retail customer, except maybe in mortgages.

How base currency doesn't matter? If there is an event such as that from 2015 (SNB abolishing the peg to the EUR), you can be severely affected.

I would also agree that base currency is irrelevant, the Swiss stock market moved inversely to the currency. Government manipulation in markets is always very dangerous mainly because it's legal.

I've just looked but couldn't see where to do this - would you mind explaining where to find the option please?

Did you even try to put any effort into understanding what I wrote?

Base currency at IB doesn't matter - it's used to generate and show reports to you, you can change it every day like a glove if you want. How the **** do you get any losses from that?

Yes it's true a few types of fees IB charges you depend on your base currency and get charged in the base currency, but I don't make a fuss about a few bucks, do you?

In the bottom right corner of the classic AM, there should be a button "AM beta". But when I went back to classic AM, I saw it was gone. I guess they don't feel the beta is ready.

Ok, my bad.

I also had a hard time to find it, but finally I did it: you have to visit the german site https://www.interactivebrokers.com/de/home.php and here under the "Anmeldung" / log in/ is the "Kontoverwaltung BETA" /Account management BETA/. From this point you can use the site in english as well

How easy is to change account from IB UK to IB US or Canada? Is it a simple address change or you need to open a new account and transfer cash and securities to the new account?

I have dumb questions:

Let's assume 1 Swisscom share costs 495CHF. They offer a dividend of 22chf.

1) That's already 4.5% profit guaranted, right?

2) How this dividend is put into that IB account, one get the 4.5% in money and can transfer it back to another account, or cash it somehow?

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3) If suddenly that share only worth 200chf, is there any penalty or financial consequence beside "losing" xxx chf (well if selling at that time)?

1. It's not profit. To simplify it, your Swisscom share price would drop from 495 to 473. This is the money that went out of the company, so naturally it lowers the company value.

2. You will just find 22 CHF cash on your broker account.

Only if you bought the stock right before the dividend, and even then the tax people will disagree with you. The company generated this cash from operations during the year, it's profit. The company gets taxed on it, and you too

Just because they paid that much last year is no guarantee they'll do again. They're already stretching their financial abilities IMHO: 70-80% payout ratio and 25-27 Fr FCF/share, but it's ok for a mature business with little growth prospects, what else can they do with your money? Pay back near 0% debt? But should the rates jump and they can't refinance their debt at these low low rates I think your dividend would be the first thing to get cut

Only 65% of it. The rest you'll have to claw back in a few years from ESTV's hands on your taxes

Some companies stock price dont even go down when paying dividends...

I read they guarantee 22chf each years (https://www.swisscom.ch/en/about/inv...dividends.html)

What I meant to say is that receiving dividend doesn't automatically mean you are getting profit. It can be that you buy a share for 500, receive 20 dividend and sell for 470, which means that you had a loss, not a profit. If you don't sell, then maybe from a tax perspective you have a profit, but you also have unrealized capital losses.

Where's exactly the guarantee there?

And then depending on how heavily you're taxed wouldnt you prefer a generous portion of tax free stock buybacks with your dividend? The stock's not extremely overvalued so they could've considered it. It also doesn't hurt so much psychologically when it has to be cut

I think this will always be like this, stock prices will always go up and down, but if you have X amount of stocks, and you are not focused on the price of them but rather on the dividend income, then that's a different thing...

I actually read on Swissquote, that it was more or less guarantee to be 22chf, or, to rephrase, they will surely not increase it beyond 22chf (which could imply it could be less).

So it's a maximum possible profit of 4.5%, or should I say "return on investment"?

Yes you are completely right, the actual stock value of 490chf could fluctuate (up or down), I would take that as a gamble. Nonetheless the 4.5% per share appears almost secured!

I am not familiar with the process, tax free stock buyback means you reinvest that 4.5% value into a share? The same share? What if you don't have enough to buy one?

What has to be cut?

So you have 2 shares at 500chf, they give you 2*22chf. That's 44chf.
At the time of that dividend, it's the same stock value of 500chf. So you reinvest that money into the very same stock and get 2.1 share?? Or it would only get a new one when you have sufficient reserves to get 500chf (stock value)?

You mean cut, if suddenly it only worth 400chf, you want to sell, and because it's more stocks, it looks as if you lost less?


Heavily taxed? I though it was "only" kind of 15% using IB and the WB8 form?

Well it appears to me that it's a "almost secure" maximum profit of 4.5%, it seems decent in today's financial market!

So I though everyone was gambling on that, aiming for good dividend, and taking a risk with stock fluctuation.

Seems it's not done that way!?