New member with a Question

[d.o.g.]

Am I making comparisons from the right place?

XE gives the mid-market rate which is the rate between the bid/ask. You CANNOT get the mid-market rate because nobody makes any money exchanging for you at that rate. It is strictly for reference only.

If you get 1.2746 and XE says 1.2739 the difference is about 0.5% which IMHO is pretty good, unless you transact millions of dollars regularly, in which case you could ask for a slightly better rate. It will still not be as good as the XE rate though.

I know UOBKH and Phillip both publish their bid/ask rates online. For me, as long as the spread is 1% or less I'm not complaining.

[vader1671]

As far as I know, DBS Vickers doesn't charge a custodian fee for US-listed equities unlike the $2 per counter every month for some of the other brokerages.

Any other alternatives available?

Their exchange rate is horrid (though there are ways out of this). They gotta make the money back somehow.

Hi Vader,

I never noticed the FX rate! But thing is, I'm looking at my DBS Vickers a/c now and it says the exchange rate is SGD/USD is 1.2746. Taking a quick glance at XE.com, the quoted SGD/USD rate there is 1.2739 which means that DBS Vickers is actually giving me a fair rate.

Am I making comparisons from the right place? Do you mind sharing your way to get about the horrid FX rate?

Other comments welcome too.

It's horribly convoluted and I don't recommend doing it unless you really want to save money but this is what I do for very large amounts of money.

I usually trade in HKD on the Hang Seng Exchange. I do have a bank in HK which has a superior exchange rate, so I TT money to and fro and DBS Vickers provides that service for free. So technically, if you have a HKD or USD denominated account you can potentially move your cash there and seek a better exchange rate.

But as MW said, the loss you're incurring on the exchange rate is not very big (but you do get hit twice) so you may be ok with that.

[kazukirai]

It's horribly convoluted and I don't recommend doing it unless you really want to save money but this is what I do for very large amounts of money.

I usually trade in HKD on the Hang Seng Exchange. I do have a bank in HK which has a superior exchange rate, so I TT money to and fro and DBS Vickers provides that service for free. So technically, if you have a HKD or USD denominated account you can potentially move your cash there and seek a better exchange rate.

But as MW said, the loss you're incurring on the exchange rate is not very big (but you do get hit twice) so you may be ok with that.

Thanks Vader. But probably not for me since I don't fall in the 'very large amounts of money' category yet.