Do you trade spot FX with IB?

jjk2 · Dec 28, 2007

Quote from Steve_IB:

Assuming you are always trading with a pair that contains your base currency then you can adjust your trade size so that you are not left with a P&L in the other currency.

hi, so doe sthis mean that, if i trade a pair that does not contain my base currency (ex. gbp/jpy), then P/L is automatically converted to USD ?

kiwi_trader · Dec 29, 2007

No gbp.jpy would normally present a jpy result (or gbp if you made the above adjustment).

jjk2 · Dec 29, 2007

ah i see, and it seems theres no automatic feature to automate this process.-

Hurricane · Jan 5, 2008

Out of curiosity, I gave this a try the other day. I completed a trade not involving my base currency (USD) and ended up with 30 CAD net profit. I converted the CAD back to USD using IDEAL but WAS NOT charged a commission. I'm not sure if this was because it was such a small trade or because IB knew it originated from another trade. Any ideas?

forex-forex · Jan 5, 2008

Quote from Hurricane:

I converted the CAD back to USD using IDEAL but WAS NOT charged a commission.

How about a buy/sell spread? If you change the USD back to CAD it probably will be a tad less than the original $30.00 CAD.

jjk2 · Jan 5, 2008

very interesting hurricane.

do you manually place another buy/sell transaction to convert ur profits to ur base currency

Hurricane · Jan 5, 2008

I placed a manual sell of the 30.00 CAD and received 29.98 USD. The transaction was priced at the current bid price (which I accepted) with no commission deduction.

forex-forex · Jan 5, 2008

Quote from Hurricane:

I placed a manual sell of the 30.00 CAD and received 29.98 USD. The transaction was priced at the current bid price (which I accepted) with no commission deduction.

Now if you buy CAD for that 29.98 USD will you get $30.00 CAD? My guess you will get less and IB makes a bit of money on the buy/sell spread.

jjk2 · Jan 5, 2008

yea im pretty sure IB will do that....they are brokers after all.

Tuneman · Jan 7, 2008

So I dont get it, whats the big deal if you dont close it out? Are you guys talking about having to pay the roll?

Also,

How come I placed a order, closed it out and had some realized P&L. Then, I open another trade, and I was losing money on that trade so I had a negative unrealized P&L. However, at some point my realized P&L was reduced. Why is that?

Also,

How do they calculate accrued intrest when you are trading forex?