I'm about to set up a live account with IB, but would welcome some advice from people who live in the UK and have done this. There is a UK based subsidary of IB (Interactive Brokers UK), but I'm worried about how the exchange rate fees will be handled if I have an account in Pounds Sterling but am constantly converting to dollars for every trade. Basic question is - would I be better off setting up an account with the US based IB and transferring my funds in one hit to US dollars or use IB UK? I've been looking at their help pages but things are a bit vague, they mention a $2 fee per trade for automatic conversion on the fly or a manual conversion with an unspecified fee, setup prior to initiating a trade, but I'm not sure if I can convert $25000 and keep it permanently in that currency for multiple future trades over several weeks/months or if it is a daily/single trade thing? Finally of course I'm not certain whether there are hidden fees embedded in the actual exchange rate they use ie Buy at $1.40 sell at $1.20
A releated question - would trade order execution by significantly faster if I use IB US v IB UK to place orders on the US Stock markets? I would be using DAS who servers I believe are based in New York. Thus if I trade through IB UK, my route to order would be from my location in UK to the DAS Server, back to IB UK, back to NASDAQ to actually place the order. Crossing the Atlantic 3 times. Whereas if I used IB US, my route to order would only cross the Atlantic once. Or am I misunderstanding something?