Currency conversion losses with online brokers?

[SL100]

Hi,

I asked this question before but the title may have been confusing so I'll try to maybe rephrase it slightly: I am wondering how you avoid currency conversion costs when buying shares in multiple markets via an online broker.

For example if you use interactivebroker or firsttrade presumably the conversions would be:

Euro -> Dollars -> Sterling (to get funds into your broker account and then buy in the UK)

or even worse:

Euro -> Dollars -> Euros (to get funds into your broker account and then buy in the Euro zone)

It may be that I have missed how this works so the question does not make sense?

Or is it actually worth having a US, a UK and Euro online broker account to avoid currency conversion losses if you want to buy shares in all three currencies???

Cheers,

SL100

 

[demoivre]

You can lodge euro to your Interactive Broker account and have that as you base currency ie convert through IB to £ or $ as the need arises - fx rates / charges are competitive imo. Somewhere along the line you will have fx charges ie if you open a GPB account with a broker you will still have to convert € to get the GBP to fund your account.