Sidinuk,
Yes thanks, that makes sense, although your advice seems to differ somewhat from Trader333`s.
He didn`t mention any margin financing costs for USD trades if you maintain your security in GBP. If you converted your security to USD and didn`t need any margin for your trades, presumably such financing costs would be avoided, albeit at the risk of adverse currency movements?
He also didn`t mention any currency spreads. The spread that you quote on currency conversion amounts to about 0.18%. On a stock priced at $40/share this equates to $0.072/share. Add in dealing commissions at $0.01/share (<= 500 share position size) and currency commissions at about $0.007/share, then I calculate it`d cost about $0.089/share on each side of the trade assuming that you wished to convert currency for each & every trade. If this is correct, then it would seem the spreads on US stocks used by Deal4Free ($0.05/share + slippage) are competitive!?
The currency issue (& CGT) has always deterred me from going down the Direct Access route. Can you convince me that Direct Access is so much better than Spreadbetting/CFDs that it`s worth either adverse currency fluctuations or the extra cost of frequently converting GBP to USD and back again?