Guest voldemar Posted May 11, 2011 Posted May 11, 2011 Believe it or not but there is a line of thought that Dollar may strengthen. It is attributed to the end of second round of quantitative easing and this is a viewpoint of Bill Gross from Pimco and now of Jim Rogers. Keep in mind that QE2 is supposed to end in the end of June. It is difficult to say what specifically happen with pair USD-THB but recently it well correlated with Thai stock market. I therefore not in a hurry to exchange my "summer Dollars" to other currencies... Quote
Guest fountainhall Posted May 11, 2011 Posted May 11, 2011 What do you think will happen if the Quantitative Easing is continued beyond end June? Quote
Guest voldemar Posted May 11, 2011 Posted May 11, 2011 What do you think will happen if the Quantitative Easing is continued beyond end June? Fed already announced that they will at least pause. They will not shrink the balance sheet but there will be no new money printing at least for a while. Add to the picture Greece and "debate" about debt ceiling in US and we may very well have A Dollar strengthening... Quote
Guest Posted May 11, 2011 Posted May 11, 2011 Believe it or not but there is a line of thought that Dollar may strengthen. There will always be competing theories. In principle for the current exchange rate to be maintained there must be some reasonable balance between people who expect the dollar to strengthen & those who expect it to weaken. If everyone thought the dollar was going to weaken, it would already be falling quickly. I prefer to concentrate efforts on longer term investments, where the odds of me making the right calls are improved considerably. Quote
Guest voldemar Posted May 12, 2011 Posted May 12, 2011 I prefer to concentrate efforts on longer term investments, where the odds of me making the right calls are improved considerably. As a matter of fact, The Dollar already showed some signs of strength since my post most notably vis a vis Aussi Dollar. Even from long term perspective (and I believe that overall downward trajectory of Dollar is still intact), it is important to use moment like this make right investments (e.g. in Aussi currency). And even from tactical standpoint if I need to exchange 10000 US in Thai Baht the exchange rate 32 versus 29 gives me 30000 baht difference. I do not know how about you but I can definitely use this money during this summer... Quote
Guest Posted May 12, 2011 Posted May 12, 2011 I agree with your logic of taking advantage of movements in exchange rates when moving investment capital abroad. As for buying holiday currency in advance, well the most competitive baht rates I can find are in Thailand & I cannot get close to those back in the UK. As I cannot predict exchange rate movements between now & the next holiday, I will probably not buy baht in advance. What I will do is keep all the spare baht from the previous trip in that currency. On the subject of exchange rates, check the rates offered by your stockbroker. TD Waterhouse UK charge 1.75% for foreign currency trades. Then another 1.75% when you repatriate the cash. Halifax charge 0.4%, although the range of overseas markets is much more limited. I don't know if you get fleeced in the same way with US or Hong Kong brokers? Quote
Guest voldemar Posted May 13, 2011 Posted May 13, 2011 I agree with your logic of taking advantage of movements in exchange rates when moving investment capital abroad. As for buying holiday currency in advance, well the most competitive baht rates I can find are in Thailand & I cannot get close to those back in the UK. As I cannot predict exchange rate movements between now & the next holiday, I will probably not buy baht in advance. What I will do is keep all the spare baht from the previous trip in that currency. On the subject of exchange rates, check the rates offered by your stockbroker. TD Waterhouse UK charge 1.75% for foreign currency trades. Then another 1.75% when you repatriate the cash. Halifax charge 0.4%, although the range of overseas markets is much more limited. I don't know if you get fleeced in the same way with US or Hong Kong brokers? It is quite embarrassing for me because people may decide that I am on payroll of HSBC cause I keep repeating the same thing: As Premiere customer with them I can transfer my Dollars from US account to HSBC Thailand account by pushing one button, free of charge with delivery of funds next working day. The exchange rates are excellent. Thus, it is my decision when to push the button and voila... The same is true with Aussi dollar. The same procedure allows me to transfer funds to my Australian account. Here delivery is instantaneous and I see exchange rate before pushing the button. The spread is around 0.5 percent. You hardly can get better exchange rate as a retail customer anywhere... Quote
Guest Posted May 13, 2011 Posted May 13, 2011 Sounds like as nice option for moving investment cash. I must look into this. I also need to investigate alternative international stockbroking options. As for the holiday money, I need to exchange actual notes & that is difficult to change competitively in the UK. Quote
Guest voldemar Posted May 13, 2011 Posted May 13, 2011 Sounds like as nice option for moving investment cash. I must look into this. I also need to investigate alternative international stockbroking options. As for the holiday money, I need to exchange actual notes & that is difficult to change competitively in the UK. One thing to keep in mind is that the whole program (Premiere HSBC) looks too good to be true, so to say. It was extremely successful in attracting new affluent customers to the bank worldwide and has almost unique quality: you are actually not permanently irritated doing banking (my experience with vast majority of other banks).But it is not cheap for the bank. Therefore, it perhaps not surprising that new leadership of the bank came up with three year program of cost cutting in retail banking. I have no idea what it means for the program but I expect nothing good... On top of that Americans are under the worldwide threat of closing their offshore accounts due to the recent US legislation which will take full effect in 2013.. I had opportunity to talk about this in the past on this forum... The theory here is that Global banks like HSBC who are accustomed to various kind of idiotic paperwork imposed by various governments may consider to keep US customers. I am a customer with the bank for 15 years but I was not able to get assurances that my accounts will not be closed though... Quote
