Any Canadians trading IB - f/x - is it straightforward currency wise when trading US stocks? I'm asking for a friend...if you are a canuck and canuck dollars in your acct; when you buy US stocks is it a simple easy peasey "buy APPL x1000 shares" (with the exchange done in the background) or do you have to convert your cad dollars into us dollars first and then do the order? Basically asking since other cad brokers like Questrade charge 2% fee on cad/us xchange so you pay $2k on a 100k order. merci.
Any canadians trading IB - f/x - is currency fx straightforward when trading US stocks?
- Thread starter klattermusen
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IB will not do a forex trade automatically in case you trade a stock in a foreign currency. It is up to you how you want to handle the situation.
Suppose you have CAD cash. And you buy stock in USD. Then you'll end up having the stock, plus the CAD cash plus a negative USD cash position. If you want, you can then do a forex trade to sell CAD to buy USD. Or you keep the negative USD cash position until you close the stock position. And then decide what to do with the remaining USD cash position.
Of course does IB charge a commission if you do a forex trade.
Suppose you have CAD cash. And you buy stock in USD. Then you'll end up having the stock, plus the CAD cash plus a negative USD cash position. If you want, you can then do a forex trade to sell CAD to buy USD. Or you keep the negative USD cash position until you close the stock position. And then decide what to do with the remaining USD cash position.
Of course does IB charge a commission if you do a forex trade.
If you are trading from a margin account you can buy US stock without having a US $ balance as long as you have adequate margin available.
In a retirement account or non-margin account you would have to exchange CAD for USD before buying the shares.
Currency exchange in IB is very efficient. You can trade at the spot price and the commission to do the trade is minimal (about $2 in my experience).
In a retirement account or non-margin account you would have to exchange CAD for USD before buying the shares.
Currency exchange in IB is very efficient. You can trade at the spot price and the commission to do the trade is minimal (about $2 in my experience).
thank you very much. So if it was a TFSA for instance you'd do the conversion first....since its non marg...that's a huge help you gave..