To those of you that trade US intruments through IB from Britain

[tss42]

Assuming you draw your monthly living expenses from your trading account (after converting USD to GBP using IB's Ideal), how do you hedge against currency fluctuations?

Do you hold equal amounts of dollars and pounds so they balance each other? How do you hold dollars in a UK bank account? Is that even possible?

Do you open currency hedges? How do you adjust its size (as your account size would change daily)?

Are you even bothered?

Thanks.

 

[nine]

1. I think you can have your IB account denominated gbp. You can have it in aud so I'd guess gbp would be fine.

2. You can have UK bank accounts in gbp.

3. Having some of your money in EUR or USD to counter having the rest of your assets in gbp is actually a good thing as it gives you some protection against holding all your assets in one currency (eggs in one basket). Don't overthink your life by hedging if it really brings you no benefit.

 

[tss42]

Nine
Thanks for that. The thing is, yes, you can have GBP as your base currency, but when trading IB converts the margin to USD, and then when you wish to withdraw money you need to convert it back to GBP using Ideal.

Of course you can leave it as USD, but then you can't withdraw it to a UK bank account.