Hi experts
I dont understand the fees, can anybody help me out? Just bought VT…
What is the Mark-to-Market?
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It is not a fee. It is your unrealised losses I guess
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Yes, it’s how good you were at trading vs. the closing price: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark-to-market_accounting
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Market-to-Market is a measure of performance.
Your fee has been 4.87, I don’t know in which currency.
Since your current cash is 9842 and you deposited 12k, I assume you purchased ~2150 and paid 4.87 (which is 0.22%).
It’s high, but you didn’t provide other information. Maybe in that 4.47 there’s one or two currency conversion fees (~2 USD)
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Thank you very much for your response .
I think this printscreen is way better.
I first transfered 2k CHF and the later 10k.
I then waited a couple of days with investing my 10k, I dont understand why the USD states -365.13? Did I lose some money because I waited with investing my 10k?
Can you tell us how did you exchange your CHF to USD? Did you use the WebTrader? If so, then you should be aware that IB treats these FX trades very technically. That is, it creates a forex position. So they way I read your screenshot is:
- On 25.02 you transferred 2000 CHF to IB and bought 2000 USD with its. That creates a short position of USD.CHF asset (-1’955 CHF). You got 2000 USD in cash, but you also have a negative forex position. (don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong about it). Notice that this position has no m2m profit/loss. That’s because it denominated in CHF and your IB account base currency is, pretty sure, also CHF. So no losses there, 1 CHF is always 1 CHF.
- Then on 28.02 you transferred 10’000 CHF, but this time you made a different forex trade. You sold 10’040 CHF, getting 1.03 USD for each CHF (this is the way I recommend to do it if you want to convert all your CHF). This created a long (positive) CHF.USD position of 10’359 USD. So at the moment of the purchase, the USD that you bought for 0.97 CHF were worth 10’040 CHF, but now the exchange rate is 0.94 CHF, so you lost of 3% on exchange rate. Your USD are now worth less in CHF.
- Then, on 06.03 you purchased a lot of VT. That’s why the exchange rates losses are split: -291 due to USD in cash, -73 due to stocks denominated in USD.
Now, imagine if you were to close your positions. You sell VT, then you buy CHF for USD and pay out the CHF. The green number on your screenshot informs you that if you were to do this, you would lose 365 CHF. The forex positions are “virtual”, they serve a nice function of telling you how much your returns are dedicated to your stock price in USD going up, and how much it’s an effect of the USD/CHF exchange rate.
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Between 02/28 and today USD/CHF lost about 3.5% of value and that’s all that IB is telling you. Your $10k depreciated by ~ 365 CHF when converted using latest market prices.
It’s one google search to find out what “mark to market” means. I’m sorry to break it to you, but if you have trouble accomplishing even that, you really have no business trading anything. Use a robo adviser or something.
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Thank you very much @Bojack
I exchanged 2k with the Forex method.
Afterwards I exchanged 10k with the integrated feature “Convert Currency” (IBKR mobile app).
I think most explanations that pop up on google are dry and technical, and the definition depends on the specific context.
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