I knew their fees were a little on the high side for US stuff, but my god, the FX rate itself is fucking horrible.
Right now the mid-market rate per Wise is 1.501.
At the same time, SW's FX rate is 1.470.
So the total cost of USD -> AUD FX is really not actually just the 0.60% from FX fees, but more like ~2% due to the terrible FX rate (plus maybe the 0.6% on top of that if the listed FX rate isn't counting that).
There's a hefty $110 AUD fee for transfering non-AU securities out of SW, but given their atrocious FX rate it might actually be cheaper to eat that fee (buying something stable like a cash/bonds ETF so that it can be sold somewhere else) than be subject to their conversion rate.
I am actually shocked at how bad this is!?
Yikes I didn’t realise it was that hefty. I was quite pissed when I discovered my US shares in SW didn’t have voting rights during one of the TSLA voting periods. I haven’t bought any US shares in that SW account since.
Haven’t looked too deeply into moving to another broker yet, but it’s on the todo list. Transferring my AU stuff away shouldn’t be hard, but US stuff could be fiddly and I’m not ready to cop any capital gains issues atm.
Sure they were good way back when I started, but now the value just isn’t there like it used to be.
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