Trading US indexes with my sterling account

Hi,

I'm new to IB. I have used dollar based brokers in the past, but now I am with IB with a sterling funded account. I want to trade ES futures, so I presume I have to convert my sterling to dollars first. How do I do this? I have been in an online chat with someone from IB and I think I have a fair idea, but I just need some clarification.

Let's say I want to convert £5,000 to the equivalent in dollars. How do I do this?

Also, the IB rep pasted a section of the user guide which covered this, but I think it was missing the first part. Could someone direct me to where I'd find this?

Thanks for your help

If you have an IB universal account, it's all transparent. You don't need to covert to USD. Your profit or loss will be in USD, which you can convert to GBP if you wish, or leave in USD.

It is a tradeoff. You can keep pounds and pay interest on USD that you are borrowing from IB to cover margin. No interest will be charged if you are daytrading only. You can buy USD on IDEAL and do not pay interest. You will depend from currency exchange rates in this case.