Stoozing ish...is it possible?

justmeonlyme

I was just wondering if it's possible to make a few pennies by transferring money between HSBC accounts.

They have a foreign exchange account (I already have other bank accounts with HSBC.
If I moved say 1k into the euro account, easy to do online and instant, would it then be possible to move the euros back to my HSBC sterling account.

As there are supposedly no charges, if the exchange rate for euro moved in my favour, then there would be a gain when transferring the money back "home".

If it's possible to do that, it would then be ' rinse and repeat" as often as possible.

Ben8282

justmeonlyme wrote: »

, if the exchange rate for euro moved in my favour, .

This is not stoozing it's currency trading.
If it moved in your favour you would make a profit. If it didn't you would make a loss.
You will find the difference between the buying and selling rates to be such that it would take an awful big move in your favour to make a profit.

justmeonlyme

Hi Ben, it is not currency trading.

I am not talking about going on any forex platform.
I have got 4 HSBC accounts, the first one is my HSBC advance account.

I have a regular saver account which I get 5% interest, £250 is transferred into this account every month for 1 year.

I also have a flexi save account with a low interest 0.2% and a bns saver with 0.55%.

All of these accounts appear on my dashboard, and I can move money instantly between the accounts.

I dont use the the 2 saver accounts with the ridiculously low interest, but it is possible for me to transfer money from the 0.2% interest account to the 0.55%.
This would pay me a few pence more in interest per month.

There is no trading involved.

If I opened the foreign currency account, it would also appear on my dashboard, because it would just be another one of my accounts.
Let us say I moved 1k into this new account (which does not have a monthly fee) at the exchange rate of £1 gives me 1.15€, I will not have traded any money, just switched accounts.
Then if the euro rises against the pound to 1.16, I could transfer it back to my sterling account.
If it is as it says on the tin, a free account, zero charges and live exchange rates, then there is a small 'proft' to be made when transferring the money back to the original account it came from.

If the euro goes down, the money will stay in my euro account, it will still be my money, and can be used as holiday money.

There is no greater risk in doing this than buying holiday money in advance, as the rate fluctuates so rapidly anyway.

I see it as being the same as switching bank accounts to higher interest ones, to earn money, which perfectly safe as the money is still mine whichever account it is in.

No forex trading is involved. Everything is contained in my own bank accounts, I would just be using the 'move money' button.

I dont know if it is possible to operate the currency account in this way, that is why I would love to hear from someone who has this type of account.

Duckyduck

Going from £ to € is currency trading. HSBC would just be your platform.

If you opened a share dealing account with HSBC would you not consider it to be investing because you already held HSBC accounts?

justmeonlyme

I really dont understand what you are saying , could you please explain further?
Do you have the currency account?
It is not a share dealing account.

st182

Basically, if you change the currency of your money to a different one, you are indeed exhange rate trading- it doesn't matter how or what account you use to do it.

Terry_Towelling

At the end of the day, if money changes currency, you have traded one currency for another and your bank will have had to make a trade in order to put your sterling into euros.

There may indeed be no fees for operating the account and no (overt) fees for trading between currencies/accounts but there will almost certainly be (as mentioned by Ben8282) a sizeable difference between the buying and selling rates when you make your moves.

What you might want to do is check the T&Cs of the accounts and find out what rates HSBC uses when you switch amounts between accounts. You should also check to see what sort of spread there is between the buying and selling rates from Euros to Sterling.

Yes, you might be able to make money by doing this but the movement in rates would need to be big to overcome the buy/sell rate differential (again mentioned by Ben 8282).

Your example of a shift from, say, 1.15 to 1.16 is actually upside down anyway. If you bought 115 Euros for £100 and then switched them back at 1.16, you would end up with £99.13. You would want the rate to drop for your switch back to Sterling.

Typically, though, the buying and selling rates will have a spread such that buying Euros might cost you 1.15 but selling them could cost you 1.25 (on the same day). So for your idea to work, the buying rate would have to drop dramatically before the 'linked' selling rate got below your original 1.15 buying rate.

PRAISETHESUN

justmeonlyme wrote: »

I was just wondering if it's possible to make a few pennies by transferring money between HSBC accounts.

They have a foreign exchange account (I already have other bank accounts with HSBC.
If I moved say 1k into the euro account, easy to do online and instant, would it then be possible to move the euros back to my HSBC sterling account.

As there are supposedly no charges, if the exchange rate for euro moved in my favour, then there would be a gain when transferring the money back "home".

If it's possible to do that, it would then be ' rinse and repeat" as often as possible.

@OP - as above this is not stoozing. Regardless of how you want to label it, it is at the end of the day essentially currency trading for all intents and purposes, as described in detail by Terry.

Ignoring what you are calling it - yes, you are free and able to do exactly as you have described. If you are able to time it right, you could transfer GBP to your EUR account, and then transfer it back to GBP and pocket the difference. Keep in mind that it is unlikely that HSBC will give you the exact inter-bank rate and you will likely get a watered down exchange rate so you would need a large swing to actually make money off of this. You are also much more likely to make a mistake and mis-time the market like this, so I would recommend that you avoid trying this.

pennystretcher

I must admit, you have made me very interested at the moment - considering the way Brexit is going, there could potentially be some gains made here if you get your timings right..

The_Urbanite

Easier said than done though - things don't always go as expected.

I agree with the above - this isn't an arbitrage, it is trading. There are arbs to be had when a currency exchange firm snoozes and fails to update their rates in a timely manner, but this isn't quite that.