FX Fee £550+ March

How did you set up the other account in USD @qwerki and also is there any saving as you’re still paying the 0.15% or is it only a saving if you convert when the rate is good?

Yes, that’s correct. However, to buy in USD you will have to fund your account with USD first. The base currency of your account will always be the same and cannot be changed. You can set up a multi-currency account with GPB as base currency and other foreign currencies as secondary currencies. You will have to convert some of you GBP tot USD which can be done through “Cash” → “Convert” or through “Settings” → “Manage funds” → “Convert”. After this you will hold both GBP and USD in your account and you will be able to automatically buy in USD (as long as the are enough USD on your account). If you want to change the buying currency you can also easily click the “flag” icon in the Buy screen.

I do believe this is only possible with the Invest account and not with the CFD account.

It will work out to be the same fee if way if you do the above and you will not save on transaction fees, that is correct.

The saving can be done if you now frequently buy and sell USD-shares and convert from and to GPB very time you do this. This will cost you a lot in transaction fees. If you trade a lot in USD shares (or other foreign currencies) the best would then be to convert an amount of GBP to USD and then “keep” these USD by buying and selling in USD. This will then only cost you the FX fee once for the initial conversion (until you finally decide to convert back to GBP again when you will pay the fee one more time). I hope this helps to answer your question.

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As UK tax payer I only use the Invest account to dabble in foreign stocks, so most my balance is generally held in USD. Recently I decided to add to a pie that is stocked exclusively with shares in NYSE. But guess what, “computer says no”. Apparently I still need GBP to fund my pie. :man_shrugging:

Thanks @HRD that was a helpful explanation. I haven’t played with multi currency accounts at all as it sounded complicated. So in theory if I’ve set up $1000 in my invest account and buy and sell US shares, then I avoid the 0.15% transaction fee and also any fx rate fluctuations?

It seems ok, I might put a small portion of the invest account into USD and see how it works? By following the cash → convert settings you shared, does that automatically setup the 2nd account?

Also is the base currency of the account always your home currency where you live?

Yes, after converting to USD you won’t pay 0.15% FX fee until you convert back your USD to GBP. If you keep buying and selling USD shares in USD, you will avoid the fee until converting back.
And no, you will not avoid FX rate fluctuations. Your money will be held in USD and this will follow the FX rate.

The account will stay the same, but a secondary currency will be added to it.
This is a screenshot of mine at the moment (base currency EUR and USD and GBP as secondary currencies) :

I believe you can choose the base currency when you open the account. But you cannot change it afterwards.

A lot of information on using multi-currencies can be found here:

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