When I invest into USD- based assets, I first convert into a USD account and then draw there money from here. I notice my bank takes a hefty fee in form of a curreny spread of about 1ppt! It made me think if I should transfer from CHF to USD via Wise instead, which has much lower spread. What do you all do?
Transfer CHF to IBKR and exchange to USD there. Flat fee of $2 for manual currency exchange up to $100k (0.002% for higher amounts). Or if you use automatic currency exchange (not available for margin accounts), there is a 0.03% markup.
If you don’t invest at a broker with low currency exchange fees, Wise is a reasonable option. Typically not as good as IBKR but still much better than probably every traditional Swiss bank.
Saxo charges a 0.25% markup, which might be the best option if you want a Swiss bank/broker.
7 Likes
And buy your USD-denominated assets there, otherwise they don’t like it.
5 Likes