I have a quandary and was uncertain how to proceed.
I’m a UK account holder and my chosen currency is U.S.$ - which I’m very happy about as I use my T212 for individual U.S. shares. I also fund my account directly with U.S$ so don’t need to convert any deposits.
About 7% of my portfolio consists of UK domiciled shares. BATS, AVIVA, the usual suspects really for the dividend.
My question is this. Holding BATS (and buying them with U.S$ previously), would you now sell your holding in BATS to remove the fx impact, and then repurchase after converting your funds to British £?
If this in any way constitutes asking for financial advice then apologies to Mods-please delete my post. I was just curious as to any others in my position.
Hi. I don’t know so don’t take my answer as accurate but I would have thought that you simply continue to hold and simply if and when you decide to sell shares you elect at that time (in the sell dialogue box) which currency you want the sale to go to. They are UK shares priced in GBP so the sale is inherently a GBP sale even though you originally purchased them from USD in your account. Thus there would (I assume) be no fx fee for selling them if you have the proceeds go to GBP in your account. If you have the proceeds go to USD then there would be an fx fee because you are inherently converting from a GBP sale to USD.
If you think of a situation (before multi currency accounts) where someone is in the UK, has there account in GBP and buys a US stock then on the purchase GBP is converted to USD to fund the purchase which is priced in USD and they have an fx fee and when they sell the sale is priced in USD and results in USD which is then converted back to GBP incurring an fx fee. This is what would (I assume) happen for you when you previously bought/sold UK stock but converting from the USD to GBP for the transaction.