Lost 30 Chf by converting CHF to USD and buying VT

Investing / Funding & Currency conversions
1

I made my first transaction of rougly 5000 chf to my newly opened ikbr account. No fees as expected.

After converting the CHF to USD, a decrease in my portfolio value caught my eye: I lost 1.81 USD(commissions) and 9.81 USD for “transaction”, according to the performance review. Is the latter normal or did I do something wrong?

After the conversion of the cash I went on to buy VT stocks for roughly 5300 USD. After the completion of the trade, my portfolio value lost another 17.87 Chf, which I cannot locate on the performance review pdf.

Do you think these sums are normal or did I do something wrong? (As you may have guessed, I’m new to IKBR)

2

It sounds strange, but you should be able to find the reason in some reports.
Converting currency should be 2 CHF.

Regarding commissions:
Did you activate tiered pricing already?

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3

Thanks for response!

No, “tiered pricing” wasn’t activated at the time of the trades. Changed the setting as of now.

Any ideas which report I should look into? Only took a glance over the activity report, on which I found the 9.81 transaction costs and the trade confirmation report, which concluded that I paid 1 USD in commissions…

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this is a screenshot of the Forex MTM summary

5

I’d expect (with tiered) that you would pay about 0,30 USD for a 5000 USD purchase of VT, normally.

Reports->other reports->transactions cost analysis

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Can you make sense of these numbers? There’s no mention of the 9.75 transaction cost listed in the summary screenshot above…

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Seems indeed that report is a bit too much detail… maybe your monthly activity report is better?

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this one right here?

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You haven’t paid any transaction cost other than the commission. You can find the commission/fee in the Trades section of the Activity report.
The transaction P/L that you’re looking at is an accounting thing that you shouldn’t care about.
And your portfolio is fluctuating as the currency exchange rate moves.

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10

Thanks! So according to the trades section I payed 3 dollars in fees in total for both the currency conversion and the VT-etf acquisition.

Those 11.56 in transaction P/L are nonetheless missing from my portfolio value, which apparently does not happen to other users. Any way to avoid this next time?

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Furthermore, I still can’t quite grasp how I lost 23 chf in total by just simply converting currency and buying etf-stocks :frowning:

12

You can’t avoid it. The loss/profit item is there because the market value of USD / VT has changed between your purchase and the last price that day (or something like that).
Nothing to be concerned about. You’ve lost value because the thing you’ve bought is worth less. Tomorrow it might be worth more, or even less. That’s normal

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Thanks for your reassurence! What still baffles me is the magnitude of the loss/profit ratio. According to the portfolio tab the value of my VT stocks have increased by 0.07%, so the 20 chf loss must solely stem from usd to chf exchange rate fluctuations?

14

This is an equivalent of 2 USD, exchange fee, in your base currency.

Was it “booked”, deducted as cash, or just shown as Profit & Loss?

I think you have a misunderstanding of what is happening. These “losses” are nothing else then the difference between the current value and the purchase value (cost basis). It is constantly changing. Just ignore its momentary value.

P.S. exactly what I meant.

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Means a change due to the transaction made that day. Tomorrow it will be"position ".

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16

Thanks a lot for your reassurance/explanation! I wasn’t aware that such “big” fluctuations in my portfolio value could happen within such short timeframes (few hours). I guess I just have to get used to it :slight_smile:

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Was the currency conversion already settled? :thinking:

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18

You’ll live through it I’m sure.

Before you know it day fluctuations will range in the hundreds, then thousands. In 20+ years it will hopefully be tens of thousands, it’s all normal.

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Yes. To my understanding, trading with unsettled cash is not possible.

20

Hopefulley haha!

I just wasnted to make sure I didnt‘t mess up in some way, especially in the hindsight of upcoming investments with bigger sums!