Using a FOREX platform to actually change money
"FX trading platforms are not used for exchanging money, they are used for trading currencies. ""I know there are cheaper services like transferwise, charging about 0.5 %, but there is little/no control over the exchange rate, you just get the rate at the time of execution."" With FX trading you don't have control of the exchange rate either, just like the share market, FX markets are determined by supply and demand of one currency over an other. So an individual does not have control over the exchange rate but will just get the rate at the time of the trade being executed." If you wanted to spend money in another country, a specialist credit card would be the most cost-effective way. Near-spot exchange rate, zero-loading, no/low ATM fees. Likewise a pre-paid debit card would also allow for money transfer across borders. If this is the right situation, FOREX trading platforms are overkill to achieve a valid solution.
This forex training video illustrates the proper use of the stop run reversal forex trading strategy. The stop run strategy effectively spots banking manipulation in the forex market, thus allowing us as retail traders to take the same trades as the mega banks. Learn how to trade forex with the banks using this forex training video. "It looks like these types of companies have to disclose the health of their accounts to CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission). That is the gist I get at least from this article about the traders that lost money due to the Swiss removing the franc’s cap against the euro. The article says about the U.S. retail FOREX brokerage: Most of FXCM’s retail clients lost money in 2014, according to the company’s disclosures mandated by the CFTC. The percentage of losing accounts climbed from 67 percent in the first and second quarters to 68 percent in the third quarter and 70 percent in the fourth quarter. Side note: The Swiss National Bank abandoned the cap on the currency's value against the euro in mid-January 2015. But above paragraph provides data on FXCM’s retail clients in 2014. It could consequently be concluded that, even without ""freak events"" (such as Switzerland removing the franc cap), it is more likely for an investor to NOT make a profit on the FOREX market. This is also in line with what ""sdfasdf"" and ""Dario Fumagalli"" say in their answers." I've been using xetrade for quite awhile, also used nzforex (associated with ozforex / canadian forex, probably ukforex as well) -- xetrade has slightly better rates than I've gotten at nzforex, so I've been using them primarily.  That said, I am in the process of opening an account at CurrencyFair, because it appears that I'll be able to exchange money at better rates there.  (XETrade charges me 1.5% off the rate you see at xe.com -- which is the FX conversion fee I believe -- there are no fees other than the spread charged).  I think the reason CurrencyFair may be able to do better is because the exchange is based on the peer-to-peer trade, so you could theoretically get a deal better than xe.com.  I'll update my answer here after I've been using CurrencyFair for awhile, and let you know.  They theoretically guarantee no worse than 0.5% though (+ $4.00 / withdrawal) -- so I think it'll save me quite a bit of money. "Last month I spend about 3-4 days totally diving into the Kindle, e-books, DRM, etc.  My goal was to basically replace my entire book collection online with books that I could annotate, edit, etc.    The result?  Kindle and the DRM suck.  The pirate experience an order of magnitude BETTER than the Kindle and DRM experience.  1.  Not all books are even available on the Kindle or other DRM platforms.  Pirated books?  Not a problem. I can pretty much get any book I want in a matter of minutes.  Sometimes I have to spend a while to find them... maybe 10-15 minutes.  2.  The quality of the DRM books are horrible.  For Kindle they use fixed-width bitmap graphics.  However, many of the PDF books that I've been using use PDFs and vector graphics which means they look NICE on my 30"" monitor.  4.  I can use Skim to edit and manipulate the books ... I can attach annotations, I can copy text out... I can add bookmarks, I can highlight pages.  In Kindle I can do this but it's VERY basic and frankly the highlighting sucks and is hard to use.    5.  The Kindle books are handicapped by the publishers and they won't let you actually copy text from them.. SOME of the publishers do let you do this but I want a CONSISTENT experience. I don't' want to be reading a book and want to copy a paragraph to a friend only to find out that this is disabled.  6.  Some of the magazine editions SUCK... they are the same price as the news stand one but don't actually include the FULL magazine!  And no where on the site does it say this... some of these do end up getting downvoted in the amazon reviews but I've accidentally purchased a few of these and felt screwed.  7.  MANY/MOST of the books you use don't actually have an appendix.  They're just flat out stripped/removed.  This is because the Kindle pages and the book pages don't line up... However, in PDF versions they are there and they're working.  I think the PDFs are the leaked master copy which they use to print the book.  8.  Some of my Kindle books are far inferior to the print edition that I actually own due to misc errors.  For example, one of them is missing a whole 2 chapters at the end which were author notes after the book was written but the Kindle version says it's the same ISBN / edition as the one I own.  9.  What about Errata / bugs...?  If they make a mistake do they give you a NEW copy of the book?  For example in #8 that's clearly a bug... they should have included those two chapters.  Do I get a new copy of the book when they fix it?  Will they EVER fix it?  Do my notes/highlights work with the new version? Do I get to keep the older version.  In short... I do NOT mind paying.  In fact I allocated the money to upgrade my entire book collection to electronic.  But I'll be damned if i do that now... the experience is SO bad that I don't want to give them the satisfaction of taking my money for this crap.  Further... e-books could be a REVOLUTION in the way we perceive books.  Why are we limiting ourselves to JUST text?  Why not interactive graphs, spreadsheets, charts. I should be able to manipulate the examples, change numbers, zoom in, etc.    High resolution images for example that look AWESOME on my 30"" display.  Video included/embedded directly into the book.  Audio and audio commentary by the author.  The entertainment industry went this way with DVDs to encourage people to buy this format over the VHS version.  We need to do this with audiobooks too!    One could do this with HTML5 but it needs to be done right.  Some sort of simple .dmg / zip with HTML inside which can be viewed by normal browsers.   I'll also say this.. I'm not TOO concerned about the DRM.  Just in terms of innovation this would be a major step forward.    Books and print media is dying... but we could revolutionize it and EMBRACE the digital publishing medium and really kick ass!  EDIT.  Holy shit that was long... the Adderall must have just kicked in! :-=P" "Im not sure, but let me try. ""That person"" won't affect the value of currency, after two (or three) years (maybe months), agencies will report anomalies in country. Will be start the end of market.  God bless FBI and NSA for prevent this.  Actually, good ""hypothetical"" question." "Without going into minor details, an FX transaction works essentially like this. Let's assume you have SEK 100 on your account. If you buy 100 USD/RUB at 1.00, then that transaction creates a positive cash balance on your account of USD 100 and a negative cash balance (an overdraft) of RUB 100. So right after the transaction (assuming there is not transaction cost), the ""net equity"" of your account is: 100 SEK + 100 USD - 100 RUB = 100 + 100 - 100 = 100 SEK. Let's say that, the day after, the RUB has gone down by 10% and the RUB 100 is now worth SEK 90 only. Your new equity is: 100 SEK + 100 USD - 100 RUB = 100 + 100 - 90 = 110 SEK and you've made 10%(*): congrats! Had you instead bought 100 SEK/RUB, the result would have been the same (assuming the USD/SEK rate constant). In practice the USD/SEK rate would probably not be constant and you would need to also account for: (*) in your example, the USD/RUB has gone up 10% but the RUB has gone down 9.09%, hence the result you find. In my example, the RUB has gone down 10% (i.e. the USD has gone up 11%)." If the intention is after maturing to convert back the Rupees into Euro, its not a good idea.  Generally the interest rate in Euro and the interest rate in Rupee are offset by the predicted exchange rate. i.e. the Rupee will fall compared to Euro by similar rate. The point at Step 5 is generally what is expected to happen. At times this can be less or more depending on the local / global factors. So on average you will not make money, some times you will loose and sometimes you will gain. Plus I have shown flat conversion rates, typically there is a Buy Rate and a Sell Rate for a pair of currencies. There is a difference / spread that is the margins of Bank. Typically in the range of 2 to 4% depending on the currency pairs. "Of course. The rationale is exactly the same as always: profit is taxed. The fact that you use intermediate barter to make that profit is irrelevant. To clarify, as it seems that you think it makes a difference that no money ""changed hands"". Consider this situation: So far your cost is $10000. How will the tax authority address this? They will look at the fair market value of the barter. You got gold worth of $20000. So from their perspective, you got $20000, and immediately exchanged it into gold. What does it mean for you? That you're taxed on the $10000 gain you made on your product X (the $20000 worth of barter that you received minus the $10000 worth of work/material/expenses that you spend on producing the merchandise), and that you have $20000 basis in the gold that you now own. If in a year, when you plan to sell the gold, its price drops - you can deduct investment losses. If its price goes up - you'll have investment gain. But for the gain you're making on your product X you will pay taxes now, because that's when you realized it - sold the merchandize and received in return something else of a value."