Ah got it now my bad didn’t see this first time round.
Great idea!
i agree, a good idea. can we combine the idea (and votes) with the feature request for multi-currency accounts? [Feature Request 🔧] Multi-currency accounts 💵 💷 - #81 by soko
Many brokers offer foreign currency wallets. It’s good for hedging against currency rates. If the £2$ rate became awful you’d already have USD to spend without having to get a terrible rate.
1 Like
I like this idea but then we would have to face the fact FT would need to find a new area to replace the income from FX fees and that would then be upsetting to some so content as is.
You also can’t hold foreign currency in an ISA & for long term wealth building an ISA is a no brainer.
3 Likes
I was just investigating a strange issue i’d had with the last few US stocks i’d traded, where my actual profit was almost £10 less than the profit that my portfolio told me I was going to make.
I eventually found out that this is because every time I convert my GBP to USD, and then back again, i’m paying an additional 0.45% exchange fee. So that’s 0.9% per trade after you’ve bought and then sold the stock!
Given that a lot of people on here, myself included, intend to only trade US stocks, allowing us to leave our currency on the app in dollars would save us a whopping $9 per buy/sell, meaning we only need to convert them once when we first convert them to dollars, and once more when we’re ready to deposit!
1 Like
If someone want to sell them stocks in euro or dollars or yen they don’t need to be converted in pounds directly. We can create some pots where you can exchange different monetary or sold stocks.
Maybe we can’t use that money to reinvest in stocks but we can decide when to convert.
It can help as well people that want just to convert currency. Is someone know dollars will raise in a week but know that company is going down . They can profit from this pots.
3 main pots Dollars Euro Pounds
How would this work in practice.
So… You can’t do it in an ISA due to ISA rules and likely can’t do it in a SIPP either*
*TBC
So there’s a problem with this in a non tax efficient account. The same problem I have with my stake account.
So a stock pays you 23¢ once the witholding tax is deducted.
If you have to declare taxes via self assessment you then have the problem of figuring out what the exchange rate was on the day/minute and hour.
If tax is a faff, a hassle, then this just added an extra layer of complexity into something that’s already a hassle for most.
The only way it could be made to work is if freetrade introduced tax vouchers as a way of “spelling it out” which shall reduce the extra hassle.
1 Like
I like freetrade for the wide range of stocks I can trade, but I dont like the hefty forex transaction charge. Im using Freetrade to buy/sell on the NYSE, NASDAQ etc Ive done ok taking profit on Eli Lilly then buy into another US stock but each trade I lose a big chunk of capital in forex fees. Can you not provide option for users to keep spare cash in USD if a US listed stock is sold. Maybe dual or even triple currency account, GBP, EURO, USD?
6 Likes
When one reads this post, it seems it is not a problem only for £200K trades.
Not only would the biggest cost saving be on transactions but it would also give the ability to save cash in the currency of our choice and especially in USD at a moment when interest rates are so high on USD and lots of people get > 4.75% on their USD cash balances with other brokers. Hence, this is no longer just about execution costs. LY, Interactive Investors, Revolut, IG, Interactive Brokers, etc. offer it so it looks like the case for no longer offering it has gone stale.
Adding a multi-currency feature in a Plus or higher tier subscription would make lots of sense.
2 Likes
Any currency is allowed on SIPPs. Cf. Interactive Investor multicurrency account also in their SIPP.
1 Like
A multicurrency account (including within SIPPs and ISAs) would be a fantastic feature - I am not alone, I’m sure, in wanting to hold cash and investments in multiple currencies. Maybe this feature would attract additional users who would trade between currencies, occasionally or when rates suited them, and there may not be an overall reduction in FX fees for Freetrade? Just having GBP was fine when I was first learning how to invest, but with growing experience I’d really like to see multi currency support.
1 Like
Agreed. I’m 99% sure multiple currencies are allowed in a Sipp but not an Isa though.
1 Like
ISA: Correct, for some reason the government only allows GBP.
1 Like