Hi everyone,
Being a Swiss resident, I have all my bank accounts in Switzerland (like most Swiss people).
I am wondering what is the best way to transfer money on my Interactive Broker account with the lowest possible fees.
The currency of my Interactive Broker account is CHF.
Each transaction costs me 30 CHF fees.
Should I open an account abroad? Switch my IN account to USD?
That’s it, dear trader friends, what is your best solution?
Thanks to all of you
It is 100% free if you use their CH IBAN.
Yeah, you seem to be doing something quite wrong if you pay for the transfer. I transfer X CHF and X CHF arrives on the next morning at IB.
As everyone else, I pay zero fees to transfer CHF to IB. Can’t get any lower than that!
You need to tell more details on how exactly you’re transfering money, what bank, what payment orders are you giving, etc, so we can tell where did you go wrong.
Thank you for your response.
Indeed, I use USD currency on IB. Excuse me.
My IB account is in USD because according to close acquaintances it is favourable to use USD to invest in Vanguard’s US ETFs because it is more profitable. What do you think ?
Which ETF do you invest in ?
Account currency on IBKR doesn’t matter much. It’s just used for reporting, some minor odd charges here and there, and for converting negligible cash leftovers to. For all other purposes they keep track of your balance in each currency separately and converting between them requires you to do an explicit trade to do so.
If you have CHF in your bank, you should just transfer it as CHF to IBKR and exchange there, the transfer is free and you get unbeatable currency fx rates.
If you transfer USD, then it’s no surprise a good chunk of your cash will disappear between different intermediate banks and horrible fx rates all banks charge.
Vanguard’s US ETFs are more profitable because of lower management fees and ability to reclaim US withholding on your swiss taxes. Not because of the currency. Aside from trading formalities, you’re buying exact same basket of stocks, it doesn’t matter if the price is quoted to you in franks, dollars, euros, etc… Once the trade is done your cash is gone and you have your basket of stocks instead - much more important is what’s inside of it.