Why USD instead of CHF?
Interest rate on usd is 4.08 %
Do you a similar rate for chf?
Long term theyâre equivalent (interest rate parity, USD is expected to devalue against CHF by the difference of interest rates), unless you want to bet against the market. And youâll pay more taxes on the higher interest rate.
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Does IBKR have deposit protection like ordinary back accounts?
For USD yes, for CHF no.
Do you have a source for this? As I understand it, cash in foreign currency is covered by both, SIPC and FSCS. IBKR is not covered by esisuisse, of course.
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All currencies should be protected up to 250kusd in case of bankruptcy.
How is my cash protected:
SIPC protects cash in a brokerage firm account from the sale of or for the purchase of securities. Cash held in connection with a commodities trade is not protected by SIPC. Money market mutual funds, often thought of as cash, are protected as securities by SIPC. SIPC protects cash held by the broker for customers in connection with the customersâ purchase or sale of securities whether the cash is in U.S. dollars or denominated in non-U.S. dollar currency.
However this part could be subject to interpretation:
The liquidation trustee will evaluate account-holder intent with respect to foreign currency based upon all of the facts and circumstances, including the pattern of activity, if any, in the account containing that currency.
Holding Swiss securities may prove that parking chf has an intent to purchase more Swiss securities.
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With the interest rate of 0.25% on CHF in excess of 10k I donât find it is interesting to park CHF at IB.
Ah yes, mixed up SIPC and FPIC. Up to 250k this is covered by SIPC, afterwards only USD can be covered up to 2.5M with the sweep program: Sweep Program | Interactive Brokers LLC
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I donât plan to hodl > 10kUSD. Below 10k the interest is 0%
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They forgot the answer ânone of your businessâ. Is there a way to close that message without ticking a box (not an IBKR user, here)?
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Yes, just delete the mail like most spam 
It was an email, therefore easy to cancel. But I was astonished about their promotion and wondering what the community is doing.
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IBKR is an American and heavily American oriented broker, which is completely understandable. There are lots of things which are not relevant to us, so just ignore it.
Hello,
On the path to growing my wealth through investing, I am transferring a fixed amount of CHF every months from a bank account that is converted into USD and then invested in VT (DCA instead of lump sum).
That said, I just received an email from IBKR that caught my attention where they suggest me to have a look at their interest rates: Interest Rates | Interactive Brokers LLC
If I understand correctly, they seem to propose an appealing USD interest rate on the cash balance above 10K USD (4.33% at the moment, and 0.271% for CHF), so I came to realize that maybe I should directly transfer and convert all the amount of money that I plan to DCA in VT in following year. The only caveat that I see is that I wouldnât be able to âDCAâ over the USD.CHF exchange rate during the year, and also that if the interest rate suddenly drops or even become negative, I may have to convert it back in CHF at a worse price and potentially transfer it back to my bank account.
Is there any other caveat that I should be aware of?
That said, even storing CHF in IBKR seems like a better deal than with a traditional bank saving account: for instance with Raiffeisen bank there is a 20k chf monthly withdrawal limit and the interest rate is even slightly lower (0.25%). While for IBKR the only limitation that I see is their 10K tier cutoff.
What am I missing here?
Thank you for your answers,
Antoine
I also got this mail.
The way it is written and with those 3 weird check box options has such a fishy ermm phishy smell to it. 
I have no reason to think itâs not from IBKR though.
I find it borderline shady and unprofessional and am a bit disappointed in IBKR for this.
2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Short guide to CHF fixed income options
Thank you ! It makes perfect sense now.
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What? You are not thankful that you donât have to pay anything? How ungrateful!