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I have found this too. For trading I find video tutorials much easier to understand than books, or better yet practicing it yourself! Trading reminds me of learning to drive, its a practical thing and you can read all the guides you want. Actually doing it is what counts. Trading is more mindset than anything. It takes nerves of steel to actually execute a strategy and hold to it, without getting greedy or panicking when things go south.

I chatted with an IB representative who was very helpful. In short, it seems like there is nothing to worried about when it comes to the exchange rate. I don't think you have to convert everything to USD (or deposit in USD) either. Here is an example. If I have $1,000 CAD and $0 USD and I want to buy a $100 stock, then I am borrowing $100USD from IB. At this point, I have -$100 balance in USD. If I have a winning trade and now I sell the stock at $120, then I have a $20 profit. My USD account balance now will be $20. If I lose and sell the stock at $80, then now I have -$20 balance in USD. For -$20, I will have to pay some interest to IB or you can convert the amount from your CAD balance. As you can see, there is no place for the exchange rate to come in because I would be simply trading in borrowed USD, not CAD that is converted to USD. However, the exchange rate changes every day and when it comes to the total balance shown in USD it changes every day even if you don't trade at all. With the $1,000 CAD scenario, if the USD/CAD exchange rate is 0.8, then your balance in USD is $800, but if the rate drops to 0.78, then the balance will be $780. You would still have $1,000 Canadian. If the CAD value drops significantly, then the total value of your balance in USD drops significantly too and even if you win some trades (in USD), you may have less USD equivalent (as your base currency) at the end of the day than when you started trading in the morning. I think it is what happened to the OP. But I believe you would still have your original CAD balance in your account (plus the positive USD won in the trades).

Good news, I fanally solved my problem. Since IB where busy with the Covid-19, it took me 3 weeks in total to make all arrangements and have my USD account working. First, I took out my CAD $ from my IB account. I've then opened a USD account over the Internet with my current Royal Bank of CANADA but it did not work. They could not make a USD transfer to a Canadian provider since it was going to convert my USD deposit to CAD and I could not link this account to IB. They had to transfer me to another department for USD account with RBC in USA. I then checked with Bank of Montreal where I have another account ond opened a USD account. Took me 2 minutes over the Internet. I then linked my account directly with IB. After the verification, I was able to make a deposit in US to my account. Now, everything is working perfectly, I don't loose even 1$ from my gains. Hope this topic could help someone.

I think this is the issue. You don't want to change your account you just want to deposit USD into your Canadian IB account and then trade with that. I just opened a chat with them a few hours ago trying to figure out this issue for you. They stated that if you deposit USD there will be no currency conversions; you will trade US stocks with your USD.

I opened an account with IB Canada (separate entity), and here is what I have been doing to trade US stocks: 1. Funded account in Canadian dollars (CAD) 2. Set base currency to USD in Account Management (only for display and reporting purposes) 3. Converted a small amount of CAD to USD to cover initial losses. This video tutorial was very helpful 4. Each day, my Buying Power in IB/DAS is converted from CAD to equivalent USD 5. I day trade only US stocks and close out all positions at end of day 6. I stay well below my BP--again, calculated in USD in DAS 7. Profits and losses are settled in USD automatically 8. Commissions are deducted from USD balance 9. USD balance increases/declines with profit/loss at the end of each day Note that the majority of my equity used for buying power and margin is still in CAD (+90%). When I am profitable, I plan on converting the USD gains to CAD on a monthly--maybe even weekly--basis. This way I am not exposed to long-term currency risk. Not sure if any of the above is helpful at all, but I've documented it here for future reference. Best of luck!