I think it is a good idea to post the content of such an email; I have never seen one or heard from it. I have worked with EUR as base currency and for years now work with USD as base currency. No emails. But there’s also no balance kept of / in any currency.

What you see in the 1st attachment could be useful to understand what is going on; this is about your portfolio in other than the base currency. It emerges when you make profit in the not-base currency. Thus, if you make 250 profit on your MES, then the form behind that button will show you 250 in foreign currency which is for you the USD. For me it would show nothing because the base currency *is* USD.

The 2nd attachment shows that I ever made a profit of 6254 in EUR, which is still there ready to be converted to my base currency, which I do or do not (I did not for a longer time in this account). And, as long as I do not, it is subject to the EUR/USD relation. The EUR rises against the USD and as long as it does, I think it is good to let it be. In fact it is a EUR/USD open position, which will unwind as a real trade when I balance it out (this form will do that for me per the button in the bottom right.

*When* I do that, nothing will change to my portfolio, because the net value always already contains the value in USD – just as if it would be an open position.

But no emails anywhere.

Also, no shortage can be possible because I can just have a base currency in USD, would I trade e.g. DAX (which is in EUR) only. But … I can imagine that by now there is a setting for those emails somewhere in PRT. Can that setting be in IBKR ? hard to image but ask GPT.

General advise, which is personal but you kind of ask : I have my base currency in USD because otherwise it is exactly as you feel it : you will get mad by movements which are not of your interest. Oh, it *will* change your net portfolio amount, but you want to see how your trades are doing and not how the relation EUR/USD is doing.

but

It gets more difficult when you also trade DAX (etc.) next to US futures (or stocks for that matter) because then the movement is unavoidable (when you have an open position in that other currency than your base currency).

Also : say that I moved my Base Currency from EUR to USD in the period the EUR/USD was 1:1, then now I have lost 20% with the USD at 1,20. But, I never look back and don’t intend to convert back (that’s my stance), so no worries. But true it is – I lost 20% because of that.

Reality : I put my base currency to USD when the USD was 1,30, so … 🙂 … So you just can’t influence this and just have to make a decision on it.

Last one on this : you can convert from the one to the other (base currency) in a second – it is just a setting in IIRC IBKR. It’s even done for free (unless things changed).

(with IG it costs something like a ridiculous 6% or something like that).

Your deposit from NOK to EUR (if I got that right) is unrelated (no NOK now anymore anywhere).

Next answer in the next post.

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hi jebus,

I can’t comment on FX-related issues you mention, since i have no experience, having eur-account and trading only eur-contracts, which is dax only so far.

regarding rollover, what I do is closing all open positions until end of the day according corresponding instructions in the code on the day before contract expiration and quitting algos automatically then (quit command…), restarting then on the new contract same evening after market closure or next morning (expiration day of old contract) – or on weekend. earlier I used to close positions on the expiration day, but with bad experience: due to reduced volume/liquidity on old contract on that day I had regularly lot of slippage with those exits.

why I restart some algos on weekend only: it turned out for almost all of my strategies to be more or less of value to ignore any signals on expiration day, does not matter if instrument is futures or cfd.

if I recall correctly you mentioned that your s&p strategy keeps positions regularly for several weeks. well, that might be serious factor, but still – you sure can code and back-test, what impact does it have on long term performance if you exit positions by default on the day (before) contract expiration. I have only one strategy which by desing can keep position kind of “for ever”. in reality my “generous” trailing stop is being hit in approx 80% of cases during first (=entry)week, in approx 15% of cases within second and the rest within third week. according backtest of that strategy, exiting positions day before expiration and ignoring entry signals on the expiration day changes the long term performance only very slightly (in fact it increases slightly total profit, but also max drowdown slightly as well).

cheers

justisan