Share dealing exchange rate rip off

doingwhatican

Just been ripped off by halifax sharedealing. Well I feel I have been ripped off. I bought some shares of an international company and only after the transaction did I realise they took 120 quid in the form of an exchange rate fee of 1.25% Thieving gits.


Can anyone recommend a broke whom I can transfer the shares over to so that when I sell them I dont get hit for the same type of fee.


TIA


Matt

Alexland

Assuming it's a long term investment I would be tempted to just leave the investment alone as the fee structures might have changed by the time you want to sell.

doingwhatican

Well, I will leave it in place so I get the next dividend and then I intend to sell them.

System

I am pretty sure that Halifax publish their charges online, which you checked beforehand? IG would probably be cheaper:
https://www.ig.com/uk/investments/share-dealing/comparison

bowlhead99

If you were exchanging £10k of currency on the high street you would easily be looking at 1-2% unless you had booked a deal in advance ; travelex might be 2.5-3%, or 5% at an airport where you're desperate.. Banks are poor places to do currency deals because their core activity isn't FX translation, and similarly,neither is it the core activity of a stockbroker.

Saxobank usually has competitive charges for foreign currency stocks as does IG. Interactive Investor ("ii,"), formerly TD Direct Investing lets you hold multicurrency cash in your trading account so although the fx fees aren't cheap, they're mitigated because you don't need to move the cash back and forth into sterling between deals (unless it's an ISA account which isn't allowed to hold foreign currency cash).

bought some shares of an international company

Not all brokers can trade on all international markets for you - so where the stock is and what currency it's listed in, has a bearing on whether you can buy and sell at competitivel prices

doingwhatican

What irks me is that the exchange rate fee is not really clear in monetary terms. the 1.25% fee should be shown in the summary of the fees as I belive in my case it would have changed my though in doing the transaction as I would have looked for a cheaper broker.

Glen_Clark

Like Current Accounts isn't it? - some services are 'free' because they overcharge on others. Supermatrkets do it all the time - sell some things cheap to get you in, then overcharge on others to make up for it. Look at what you pay overall and it isn't too bad - especially if you can avoid the over-priced services.