US Stocks in CAD and USD.

4063 Views 1 Reply 2 Participants Last post by leslie, Aug 9, 2009

NorthernAlex

Discussion Starter · Aug 8, 2009 (Edited)

Hi everyone.

As a newbie investor I sometimes tumble and fall while using my direct brokerage. Today was such a day.

I bought a couple months ago through my US$ account some GE shares. Last two weeks I started to average down and bought three times cheaper.

With my last transaction I noticed that I didn't have enough cash on my USD account and told my brokerage to use my CAD account (as I thought, that they will automatically convert to USD).

Now I noticed that I have GE in my USD account AND in my CAD account and am confused how to prepare that in my excel list as learned here.

In a chase of elimation should I first sell one position (let us say just from the CAD accounts) or what should I do? Would that make it easier to keep it as simple as possible? How will it be later taxation wise?

(btw, unreal performance of GE in this week)

Thank you all for your help.

Northern Alex.

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leslie

· #2 · Aug 9, 2009

1) You should not be 'telling' your discount broker anything much. Certainly not on a basic trade. They are not set up to give personalized service or advice. Use their input computer screens.

2) Buy any security to be paid for in US dollars from within your US dollar account. If that puts you into an overdraft you then make the decision to either pay the interest or cover it from your CAN$ account. The broker will have an input screen for that transaction as well.

3) By splitting the order in to two (part in each account) undoubtedly they will have charged you two transaction fees, as well as the fee for personal service, as well as the FX conversion fees.

4) When you eventually sell the GE stock sitting in your CAN$ account you will be charged FX conversion costs again, whether you want to keep the currency or not. Phone (check first they don't have a screen for this transaction - probably not) and ask the broker to "moves the GE shares out of my CAN$ account and into my US$ account, please". This might be free.

5) If you are using Gummy's Excell I don't know how it works. If you are using RetailInvestor's then all transactions are input in CAN$ anyways, so there is no difference between the transactions.

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