The 100 CHF are already on the account. Don’t know what it should work.
Live chat seems useless, damn it.
App still not working, still getting invalid username or password.
Did you open a margin account? I think the minimum balance for margin accounts is $2000.
No I didn’t. My account type is cash.
Ok got an answer from the live chat: “As your application was approved and opened on 29 October, 2019(Today), would request you to wait for 1 business day and then try.”
Ok guys, everything is working now. Client Portal is fully setup and the app works too. I transferred an additional 2900 CHF to the CH account of IBKR and it was credited to my account just 1 hour later. Wow that’s very fast!
USD.CHF and VT in my watchlist/favourites. Nothing more that I need.
2 Likes
Thanks for the heads-up, this tool definitely makes converting currency with IB easier.
However, and bear with me as I do not have an explanation for this, the exchange rate you get in the mobile tool often times is below what you get when converting e.g. via the portal website. This is also visible when comparing the current ‘value’ on the graph below to the suggested exchange rate listed above.
I mean, unless converting huge amounts of money this is probably negligible but I just thought I’d share my observations.
1 Like
CHF.USD maybe 
So it’s easier to sell a specific amount of CHF.
Also don’t forget to leave some money (~20CHF) in the base currency to pay for fees (on the 3rd of every month I believe). Otherwise they randomly sell something to pay the fees.
Thanks for the info. My base currency is CHF.
FX fees and commissions for buying ETFs get deducted from the 10CHF/month right?
Yes. If you have 10CHF of trade commissions per month, IB is basically free.
Also don’t forget to switch to Tiered Fees, they seem to be generally a bit cheaper.
Btw, where do I get realtime market data for VT?
I switched to Tiered Fees when I opened up the account, thanks.
yahoo finance. Or you can pay 1 cent for a snapshot.
Or switch your base currency to USD as your assets (VT) will be in USD so tracking is less messy; and also no need to leave any CHF sitting around (but USD).
Yeah that sounds even better.
No problems at all for tax declaration in Switzerland?
On another note: do I need to use the limit order type? Or will market order do it for me? For FX and buying VT.
Is there any risk in doing market orders?
I could not really reproduce what you are seeing.
Here is a comparison I did just moments ago:
mobile app:
web platform:
The exchange rate is fluctuating, so it is hard to make screenshots at exactly the same time. But as you can see, I have the same rate both on mobile and in the web app.
It would be interesting to know why you made a different observation.
1 Like
For FX you can do a market order without problems. The market is very liquid and spreads are almost 0.
For anything else do a limit order where the limit is the current market price (or maybe a bit higher). It’s safer, not more difficult and IB will send you 100 warnings if you do market orders 
I agree, it definitely is weird. Sometimes the rates are the same/similar, but sometimes they are not. It could just be something like update interval differences (although from what I have seen that it not very likely). For a concrete example, this morning I had 1.0055 in my mobile app and just a few moments later, I had 1.0085 in the portal. I then switched back to my mobile app and it still was 1.0055 while the graph clearly showed a current rate around 1.008. I reloaded the ‘currency conversion’ window to no avail.
But anyway, nothing too bad, I guess - I will simply continue to check the rate/use the portal for conversions.
If my base currency in IBKR is USD, how do I know what my net performance in CHF is? How do I keep track on how much CHF I sent to IBKR and how much I own today?
I suggest you create an excel documents. That is what I do especially because I have 2 brokers
1 Like
One way is to track it by yourself, e.g. via the Google Sheets doc I shared with you above. 
There are probably others too.
It’s a tradeoff I guess, I wanted to keep it simpler when I look at IB portfolio through their apps; and CHF in vs. status I track myself.
If I switch the base currency to CHF in lets say 5 years, will the performance adjust? So I don’t need to keep track of it myself.
Otherwise I will use a Google sheet.