Hello, I am a EU resident and i want to trade intraday on US futures ES and NQ without overnight positions IB offers me an Universal account based either on USD or on EUR wich is the most interesting financialy for me? Ty
Ok should I convert my Euros in USD before or after the deposit at IB???? and after if i want to withdraw my deposit (Universal account USD) can I convert USD in EUR before withdrawal??? TY
if you are going to use a bank for the Fx transaction you will most likely get a very poor rate. You could open in Euros and convert to USD via IB at a tighter spread than the Bank would offer. Alternatively, you just open in Euros and trade the US products. Profits/losses would be in USD while the balance of your cash would be in Euros. Assuming you make good money, you would just do an internal FX transaction back to Euros if/when you desire. The process of trading is transparant with the universal account - i.e currency doesn't matter.
Except that you're charged margin interest on balances in other than your primary currency, right? So, you have to either pay the commish and spread to convert profits back to base currency routinely, or eat the margin interest for some period of time until you convert. It would then seem better to set up a USD account and only eat the bank spread on deposit or withdrawal, instead of commissions and (smaller) spread repeatedly.
Of course, the best solution would be for IB to accept and dispatch wire transfers in multiple currencies, regardless of the account's base currency. This allows users to obtain the maximum benefit of IB's narrow FX spreads, avoiding ever paying the banks their spread.
I was told when the Universal accounts were created that the multicurrency transfers required additional programming and given sufficient demand in the future, they'll be added. If its something that you really want, the best place to target would be IB's web site discussion board. BTW, speaking of the influence of that board, have you noticed that trailing stops are available now for all futures exchanges which IB offers stops. [ CBOT, DTB, ACE, EUREX, FTA, CME (GLOBEX), NYMEX, HKFE, IDEM, MATIF, MONEP, NYFE, SOFFEX ]