USD account from the UK - mistake?

🤝 Help
1

Need some advice please… I’m in the UK and set up my T212 account in USD.

Now wondering if that was a mistake due to conversion fees. As well as individual stocks I’m looking at doing a long term green energy/EV pie on there and thinking if I’m a little off with fees over years it’s going to lose me a lot.

I have done quite a bit of googling but unclear… do I need to close my account down and reopen with GBP?

Thanks

2

Would really appreciate some help here as feeling very lost with this.
Thanks!

3

Long term investing there have been studies detailing how FX rate changes don’t affect you in the long run so in my opinion if you are a UK resident it would be best to have a GBP account.

However, if you think you are mostly going to be swing / day trading US stocks, USD account would perhaps be better as you can lock in your exchange rates effectively.

4

Ok thank you. I’m not swing/day trading really.

You think it would be best to have a GBP account to avoid deposit/withdrawal conversion fees or another reason?

Thanks, much appreciated

5

Well having a USD account means you convert when you deposit and withdraw

Having a GBP account means you convert when you buy and sell. So if you are only buying and selling extremely rarely because you are long-term investing, in my eyes a GBP account is better.

Other things to consider, are you wanting to invest within an ISA (tax free profits)? If so, can you do that with a USD account?

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6

Ah I see, so there’s less conversion to be done with the GBP account so you’re better off? There will be regular payments in for the pie but guess that still counts as trading rarely

My ISA is elsewhere so that’s not an issue

The frustrating thing is I think I will have to sell my whole portfolio, shut down the account, open a new one and rebuy it!

Thanks again

7

Well you don’t have to do anything, either way it depends on what you want.

I just can’t see any benefits for opening a USD account from the UK for long term investing, presumably you have to pay fees to top up and withdraw? Or is it free with revolut or similar?

There are threads on here asking for multi currency account support so may be read through them to inform your decision.

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