My account with IB is now open and I want to send funds to them. I am surprised to find that they will not accept cheques. My base currency is GBP . I have to send the funds by CHAPS transfer for which my bank will charge £23. Is there any other way to transfer funds in order to avoid above charge. Thank for help and information.
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All banks can send it via electronic transfer, which takes three days, and there is no charge for this. So if you send it Tuesday it will arrive at IB's UK bank to clear at close on Thursday, and I would expect funds to be in your account ready to trade with on Friday late afternoon at the latest.
Remember that you are sending it to the UK bank which notifies the UK IB office, which in turn notifies the US IB office, which credits your account. So do bear in mind the 5 hour time difference between UK and US, and the number of processes it has to go through. IB's US office opens at 2:00pm UK time, so therefore it will take them an hour or two to go through all the credits which have arrived, hence you might not have credited to your account until 5:00pm UK time.
Just make sure that you complete the online funds deposit notification form, and check with your bank the cut-off time for transferring funds by this method. Mine is 18:00 UK time, but the deadline for CHAPS (£18 fee) is 14:30 for same-day transfer.
Remember that you are sending it to the UK bank which notifies the UK IB office, which in turn notifies the US IB office, which credits your account. So do bear in mind the 5 hour time difference between UK and US, and the number of processes it has to go through. IB's US office opens at 2:00pm UK time, so therefore it will take them an hour or two to go through all the credits which have arrived, hence you might not have credited to your account until 5:00pm UK time.
Just make sure that you complete the online funds deposit notification form, and check with your bank the cut-off time for transferring funds by this method. Mine is 18:00 UK time, but the deadline for CHAPS (£18 fee) is 14:30 for same-day transfer.
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Depends on how affected you will be by the GBP / USD exchange rate fluctuations, and how often you intend a) depositing, and b) withdrawing funds.
Trader333
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Boy,
Your base currency is unimportant. If you think that the £ is going to go down against the $, as it has by nearly 9c in the last few weeks, then you can buy a number of dollars which are held in your IB account. Last week I bought 30,000 dollars so if the £ drops even further my account will still have the same number of dollars I bought last week + any successful trades I have made.
Make sure that you set it up with the "underlying" as "USD" as I made a mistake to start with.
When you want to draw money from your account you just sell a number of dollars back to your base currency and withdraw funds as normal.
This is without doubt the cheapest way to hedge against the falling pound. Of course you will lose out if the pound rises but for me I wanted to be sure that I will always meet the PDT funding requirements without worry of exchange rates.
Cheers
Paul
Your base currency is unimportant. If you think that the £ is going to go down against the $, as it has by nearly 9c in the last few weeks, then you can buy a number of dollars which are held in your IB account. Last week I bought 30,000 dollars so if the £ drops even further my account will still have the same number of dollars I bought last week + any successful trades I have made.
Make sure that you set it up with the "underlying" as "USD" as I made a mistake to start with.
When you want to draw money from your account you just sell a number of dollars back to your base currency and withdraw funds as normal.
This is without doubt the cheapest way to hedge against the falling pound. Of course you will lose out if the pound rises but for me I wanted to be sure that I will always meet the PDT funding requirements without worry of exchange rates.
Cheers
Paul
Trader333
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Trader333
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Now when you want to buy some dollars you click on "Ask" and type in how many you want to buy as shown in the next image. Make sure that "Prem" is GBP as shown. When you want to convert dollars back you click on "Sell" and type in how many dollars you want to sell back. In my view it is very good.
I hope this helps
Cheers
Paul
I hope this helps
Cheers
Paul
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