Hi Aussiest,
If your account is set to $AUD, you can borrow $US dollars to finance US stock purchases.
Or, you can have USD in your account as well and trade US stocks with them
But, if i bought $USD at 72cts in the dollar to trade US stocks, and then converted back to $AUD after the Aussie dollar sank against the USD, i would be losing out.
Surely, if you converted AUD to trade US stocks and the AUD sank, you would be in trouble, ie, your funds would have gone down and you'd be stuck with a whole lot of depreciated capital?
How would you combat this problem? (apart from waiting)
You can have $AUD sitting in your account earning 2.675% then you borrow the $US equivalent to fund your US stock purchase paying 1.65% interest.
So the only time you need to do a currency trade is when you sweep your $US dollar profits into your base currency ($AUD I presume).
PS. I must admit, i am a little nervous about having my funds held with Citibank.
Thanks Cutz.
I just thought: if the funds are swept back straight away, after the trade, then there wouldn't be much descrepancy between the AUD and USD? Therefore alleviating the concern for fluctuating value between the currencies?
I hope i am interpreting your post correctly?!
(thanks for taking the time to answer it, it helps me out immensely).
BTW. Personally i'm not to concerned about citibank, apparently it's only used as a conduit of funds.
Here's some info on how IB holds your funds.
http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/general/education/faqs/safetyFAQ.php?ib_entity=llc#3
What are the spreads for Indices and oil and gold futures like? (perhaps i can find answers to this elsewhere on the forums)?
l'm looking at going to IB in a few months myself.
The broker who l use at the moment is charging me an arm and a leg. Just have to wait for a few circumstances to change before l can make the switch. $6 per side on a trade is very cheap. Goes to show how much profit all the other brokers are making.
Thanks Captain Black. Having a look now.
I am currently demo-ing the platform and it only has EU & US stocks, and options on it. Have looked in the FAQs, sent an email to IB, but have not heard.
I really need to demo it in ASX listed shares & Indices (and preferably Futures).
Thanks Captain Black. Having a look now.
New question:
How do you populate the IB trading platform with ASX shares, Indices, and Futures?
What are the spreads for Indices and oil and gold futures like? (perhaps i can find elsewhere on the forum)?
I am currently demo-ing the platform and it only has EU & US stocks, and options on it. Have looked in the FAQs, sent an email to IB, but have not heard.
I really need to demo it in ASX listed shares & Indices (and preferably Futures).
Aussiest You seemed to be a little lost as to how futs work. the spread has nothing to do with IB.
Yes, i probably am a little lost .
On IG for Gold, it has the "sell" price as $870.1 and a "buy" price of $871.00.
Wouldn't this mean the spread is $0.9?
Whereas on another site i am demo-ing, the sell price for Gold is $869.62 and the buy price is $870.35, thus making the difference between the sell and buy $0.73.
*I thought the spread was the difference between the buy and sell price??
If you take a look at futures, forex, options or US stocks, you'll find that $6 and 0.08% is very expensive!
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