Postfinance E-trading vs. USD dividends

[nabalzbhf]

Can’t really find information online, so maybe there are some e-trading users around who would know.

(Otherwise I’ll try to ask PF, but I’m not a customer so might take a bit of time)

I would have a few questions:

• for USD distributing securities, does PF just give you USD (no implicit – costly – conversion to CHF)
• can you then transfer those USD proceeds out? (I guess might need a USD private account with them, but it seems to be “free”)

Trying to figure out what the cost would be of having some passive holding at PF. You’d have the 90 CHF per year (usable as trading credits), and potentially transferring the dividend proceeds out – if exhausting the trading credit since then it would be cheaper to move it to e.g. IB instead (IB also pays USD interests unlike PF).

[Dr.PI]

@nabalzbhf

for USD distributing securities, does PF just give you USD

Yes.

@nabalzbhf

can you then transfer those USD proceeds out?

Yes.

@nabalzbhf

I guess might need a USD private account with them, but it seems to be “free”

Yes.

Interactive Brokers for dummies

Thanks all for your posts and help. It’s done. In case it helps someone in the future I write how long each step took: Open a PostFinance USD account - 1 day Sell the PostFinance USD fund directly into that USD account - sell order made on Friday, money arrived in USD account Monday Transfer the USD to IB - transfer order from PostFinance to IB made on Monday, earliest execution date selectable was Tuesday. Buy the USD ETF - money arrived in IB on Wednesday and ETF bought on Wednesday. Tran…

[rolandinho]

Yep, can also confirm it’s as you assume.
I do it that way, for example once a year for the $ that have come together from VWRL dividends in my Postfinance.

Only “cost” is the $5 wire transfer fee (or was it about $10 ? sorry, i forget), Postfinance to IB.
In addition, at the same time, I buy my partner’s $ dividends & transfer to my Pf and then to my IB. $ transfer from Postfinance $ account to someone else’s Pf $ account is free.

[nabalzbhf]

Thanks for confirming!

[MUFC_OK]

What you need to have as well is a USD currency account opened in E-Trading. Otherwise they convert it to CHF with a poor conversion rate. Keep in mind that they keep back an addtional 15% (on top of the 15% that the US do) as all Swiss brokers do.

[Bojack]

Hi all, did you hear that PostFinance now allows trading 9 currencies at spot rates? I haven’t tried it yet. But if true, would it make sense to hold VWRD USD in favor of VWRL CHF? If you keep CHF, at least converting USD should now get much cheaper.

Spot foreign currency transaction

[ProvidentRetriever]

Are there really no spreads? So if you would buy and sell immediately you would be back to the original amount? Spot rate can mean market spot rate (close to those of a forex platform, which has no physical delivery), but they can also mean the spot rate of the bank and may or may not include a spread…

[jay]

I just checked the rates and there is a 1.2% markup (2.4% spread), at least for EUR/CHF.