I might be moving to Canada this year.

I've just missed a peak in the exchange rate where I could have 2.32 CAD to the pound. It's back down to 2.28 now..... and it was 1.99 a year ago. The fluctuation will obviously make a big difference.

I've seen all sorts of speculation on the boards.... dollar (and by association CAD??) to crash, dollar to rise, pound to be devalued..... I'm at a loss and not savvy enough to know what to do.... change it all now or wait until I'm over there, which could be several months away.

Secondly, what's the best way to do it? I know I can open a currency trading account... but they don't pay interest, do they? I could do it with the bank probably, but am bound to get a crap rate.

Any savvy help would be most welcome.

your probably best sticking your cash into a high interest current account over here and trading when you get the chance.


i don’t think it will be easy for you to set up a transfer into Canadian dollars AND put it into an account earning interest




so unless you plan to move soon that is what i would do.

one other thing to note. if the BOE increases interest rates from 5.25% to 5.5% that will strengthen the pound somewhat.

Cells

Thanks very much for the advice. It's identical to what an exchange service (who beat the banks rate by a lot) advised me to do.

Definitely don't use the banks - the exchange services are very helpful in my experience and MUCH cheaper.

One lower risk strategy is "pound cost averaging" - buy your dollars in several tranches, preferably buying on the dips.

I have to buy a some euros recently - by buying them in about 4 chunks on sterling good days, I got my Euros for about 1.47 after all costs. PCA is pretty efficient for exchange services as they don't have fees, which can reduce the effectiveness for shares. The advantage of PCA is that if the market moves against you, you don't suffer as mcuh, and if it moves with you, you still get some of the gain.

if you decide to transfer some money i think http://www.oanda.com/ is one of the cheapest.
they seem to only charge spread and best bit is, they give you interest too, and they calculate it to the second

its not the best interest rates out there, but they are not bad. off memory they give 4.2% for pounds. don’t know about CND


also say you moved your £££ into CND$$$ then they would also give you interest in CND too (at what ever rate is competitive there)

so its basically like moving money from a savings account in the uk to one in Canada

http://www.xe.com is quite good too for international money transfers.

Hey, I'm Canadian and living in the UK at the moment. I use www.xe.com to transfer to my bank back in Canada. There are no fees except the spread, so all the bank transfers are free. They are quite competitive and have a facility to lock in a rate for 30-days or up to a year (at a slightly reduced exchange rate).