Genesis

God it sounds bad. Is it that bad that the Mrs who has a rather large inheritance should exchange the lot right now?? I figure that if she does a transaction now she could potentially lose $20-$30k over what she would have got a few weeks ago..or hoping what the $ V GBP may have repaired to in the coming weeks.

It looks a bit like the last chance at the OK corral does it not? Is the GBP really done for. The default situation seems like a scenario that would take eons for the reputation of GBP to return to some semblance of decency.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place. I was worried that Kate was over the UK banking insurance amount..all that seems not even worth worrying about as the UK if it goes into default will be poorer than a church mouse and thus have no money to pay any one.

giraffe

[QUOTE=Black Sheep;7195679]Reading this thread, I'm wanting to ask: have none of you thought to play the currencies game? With the unusually drastic ups and downs over such short periods of time many of you could have possibly (and may well still be able to if you take care to figure out what you're doing) made a killing by now and set yourselves up for life! Such opportunities are rare....


I'm with black sheep - you've got to play the game a little. We put some of our savings in to the us dollar in august at 2.85 as we knew we would be moving to nz and thought that the pound was about to tank. We';ve just converted them to the kiwi at an equivalent rate of NZ$3.3 to the pound. Theres still some movement left. Wish we had transferred all our savings at thin august but we were cautious - we're going to change the rest in to something else tonight and hope that the same things happens. Obviously the levels of volatility have decreased so its unlikely to make the same gains but it seems to me that the worst place to have your money is the pound at the moment (with the kiwi probably running a close second). The kiwi is probably going to drop aswell as their fundamentals are pretty poor so my advice and i am no expert is put it somewhere else and wait for the kiwi to drop. The question is where?

CarolineSwan

[QUOTE=giraffe;7199791] we have spoke about this but is it easy to open an account in usa? how did you go about it?

caz

Genesis

[QUOTE=carolineshewan;7201514]
You can open a foreign currency account in NZ..costs about $10us a month to run and the interest is virtually zero..some banks will pay zero interest..I guess you make your money on the foreign exchange fluxuations.

giraffe

We just opened up a savings account with Citibank in the UK. Its online and they have about 10 or so different currencies you can put your money in to once you have the UK account up and running. Dead easy to do - exchange rates aren't too far off spot but i think they vary depending on how much money you are playing with.

Stoof

hiya Giraffe.... what was the name/type of account you opened? better still, could you link to it? (don't ask much do i?!)

thanks everso!

southerner

I recommend caution - yes, its fine getting up to speed with some basic understanding so you can maybe pick your time to change money.

But joining the poker game and trying to beat the markets (and professional players) is very risky - you may win some and you may lose some. And note, you will be incurring transaction costs on every trade you do.

So well done on picking it right last time - but my advice might be quit while you're ahead.

Genesis

Totally agree with you mate..hindsight is a wonderous thing..but playing the money market on a regular basis is asking for trouble..if it was that easy no one would bother with rental properties!!!

Am Loolah

Proceed with caution ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7833090.stm

Stoof

thanks! and to Southerner too! we always err on the side of caution anyway so doubt we'd do anything as we can't afford to lose what we have, but thought it was worth a look!