Hello all,
I just opened an account with IBKR Japan because I wanted to have exposure to some ETF not available in traditional Japanese brokers. My question to you today is: should I keep the margin account I have right now or should I switch it to a cash account?
I am not interested in trading in any way. I am not interested in shorting nor in leverage. But apparently, with a margin account I can purchase US ETFs without needing to convert JPY to USD. Practically, I spare the conversion cost (which is quite low afaik, something around 300 JPY and it seems fixed).
Holding the margin account makes reading my stats less clear because of the USD-JPY conversion.
So I wonder: what's the downside, given what I said about my preferences before, to switch to a cash account except for the initial USD conversion?
IBKR- Margin vs Cash accounts
Re: IBKR- Margin vs Cash accounts
I'll answer myself, in case someone will be interested in the future.
I asked directly on the IBKR support chat. Basically, when having a margin account it's always advised to convert some of your base currency to cover the trade position you have in order to not pay any margin interest. Also to be considered the fact that "as cash account can only trade with settled cash, for any funds from selling stocks, it will become settled funds and ready for purchase T+2 days". There are no additional costs in having a margin account wrt a cash one.
If it wasn't for the delay in being able to trade with a cash account I would switch immediately, but for the time being I will stay with a margin one and see how it goes.
I asked directly on the IBKR support chat. Basically, when having a margin account it's always advised to convert some of your base currency to cover the trade position you have in order to not pay any margin interest. Also to be considered the fact that "as cash account can only trade with settled cash, for any funds from selling stocks, it will become settled funds and ready for purchase T+2 days". There are no additional costs in having a margin account wrt a cash one.
If it wasn't for the delay in being able to trade with a cash account I would switch immediately, but for the time being I will stay with a margin one and see how it goes.