Interactive Brokers and Currency

[Bsrr]

Hi - this will go to Mark of course but is a question for the community as well. I recently opened an Interactive Brokers account and performed my first transaction retrieve via FM. I noticed that the transactions (in this case 2 stock purchases) come to FM in the "default" currency that I use at IB - ie USD. I can of course manually adjust the purchase transaction(s) back to the price I paid in the native currency on IB but am wondering if anyone knows how to make sure the retrieved transactions via FM can come into FM in the native currency of the stock in question. I have both investments set up in FM in their correct currency, created currency exchange rate adjustments and set up the Options/Currency Settings etc. and all downloaded prices are in their native currency.

Does anyone know how to make sure IB sends the transaction via FM Transaction Retrieve in it's native currency rather than in the Default IB currency the account is set up in?

(I saw some very old posts about "downloading" via MS Money to resolve this problem prior to FM having supported auto transactions retrieve - so it appears this was a problem via download as well).

Thanks.

[Mark]

Hi Bsrr,

I believe IB has recently made a change that is causing this issue with currencies. If you look at the parsed log after retrieving (Help / Logs / Transaction Retrieve (Parsed)...) and look for the INVSTMTRS section, you will see all the transactions, like under INVBUY. In each foreign currency transaction, they are putting a CURRENCY section that correctly shows which currency that transaction was made in. The problem is that they are incorrectly showing the transaction details, like UNITPRICE and TOTAL in the default currency (CURDEF), instead of that transaction's currency.

This is not correct, according to the OFX spec, and is different from how they used to report it, up until a couple of weeks ago. In section 5.2 of the spec it says:

Within each transaction, specific parts of the response might need to report a different currency. Where appropriate, aggregates include an optional <CURRENCY> aggregate. The scope of a <CURRENCY> aggregate is everything within the same aggregate that the <CURRENCY> aggregate appears in, including nested aggregates, unless overridden by a nested <CURRENCY> aggregate. For example, specifying a <CURRENCY> aggregate in an investment statement detail means that the unit price, transaction total, commission, and all other amounts are in terms of the given currency, not the default currency.

If you're seeing the same problem as I'm describing above, you might want to call IB and ask them about this. I've heard from other customers that IB is quite responsive in their customer service, so maybe they can fix this.

[Bsrr]

Hi Mark - OK great and thanks for the feedback. Wasn't sure if there was something I was doing wrong since the use of other "currencies" than just USD in FM is new to me. Love the way it all works in FM tho!

Thanks for the supporting documentation too. I will talk to IB and see what they say.

[Nisse]

Hi Bssr - Did you get any response from IB?

[Mark]

This issue has been fixed as of 2026.19.2 with transaction module 278. We now treat IB differently in how it reads the CURRATE field.

[Nisse]

Thanks Mark. The price now gets correctly recorded. Would it be possible in a future release to also be able to automatically select the default cash account depending on the currency of the investment? Currently I have 3 cash accounts in my Interactive Brokers portfolio and for each non-default currency investment transaction I must to open each transaction and manually change cash account. When I do, the amount gets correclty recorded in the respective cash account.

[Mark]

Hi Nisse,

Thanks for the confirmation and feedback. That would be a good improvement. One option to have it done automatically now is to create sub-portfolios for each currency, and assign the appropriate default cash account in each of those. This works fine for existing investments, but not for new investments in one of these currencies.

[Nisse]

Hi Mark,

I actually had sub-portfolios for each currency but then I must retrieve transactions 3 times, and for each sub-portfolio deselect all investments i the other currencies. Reconciliation works better now when I have all Interactive Brokers investments in one portfolio. All securities match up. The only issue is that Interactive Brokers only provide one cash balance (INVBAL) consisting of all 3 currencies added using the current exchange rate. However, the daily activity statement has the currencies separated so it is simple to every now and then just check the individual currency balances. At times when I have closed the non-default currencies then a “recorded reconciliation” is achieved. Maybe a “mark as reconciled despite unmatched balances” checkbox could be added to the reconciliation dialog? That would be useful when one manually has confirmed correct balances from the daily activity statement. Having a recorded reconciliation is useful because sometime Interactive Broker’s transaction retrieve includes transaction with dates before the retrieval period, for example corrections to tax deductions. When this happens the warning about import of changes pre-dating the recorded reconciliation is very helpful.

[Mark]

Hi Nisse,

Why did you have to retrieve 3 times when you had sub-portfolios for each currency? Maybe so new investments would automatically be added in the right sub-portfolio? The option I was describing would make it so you only retrieve once, but it doesn't work well for new investments, as you'd have to move them manually into the correct currency sub-portfolio. If you have something like this:

Code: Select all

- Account Sub
  - <US Investments>
  - Currency X Sub
    - <X Currency Investments>
  - Currency Y Sub
    - <Y Currency Investments>

You would just want to have the account number and transaction retrieve property on the "Account Sub" level, and not anywhere else.

If you want to mark an account as reconciled that doesn't reconcile for some reason you can use the "Manually Reconcile" statement source.

[Nisse]

Hi Mark,
The reason for multiple retrievals is as you pointed out new investments. One of my trading strategies is a momentum rotation strategy, which results in me buying several new investments every week. Holding periods are as short as a week up to several months before I “rotate” to other investments with higher momentum. If I retrieve for example EUR investments into the default USD portfolio and then move them, the corresponding cash account transaction is not moved. I must make manual adjustments. Maybe there is an easier way to do this that I don’t understand?

Note that I only have one account number for all investments at Interactive Brokers regardless of currency. One can create linked accounts with different numbers but then these accounts must be funded separately, and I am not sure how that works with cross account margins.

Thank you for pointing out the Manually Reconcile. I have missed that, and it solves my problem.

[Mark]

Hi Nisse,

I should have mentioned this option earlier, but I forgot about it... When retrieving or importing transactions, next to the "Create New Investments as Needed" option is a button "New Investment Options...". If you go in here, you'll see an option:

Put Investments on Non-Default Currency in Separate Sub-Portfolios

This should allow you to define your hierarchy by currency (as I showed in my prior post), and have everything automatically placed into the correct sub-portfolio by currency, with each currency using its own cash investment, assigned at that currency's sub-portfolio level. You can press "Help..." in that dialog to read a bit more on that option.

With this method you would only have the account number defined at the top account sub-portfolio (Account Sub in my example), and also only have the transaction retrieve turned on at that level too.

[Nisse]

Thanks Mark. I followed your instruction and it works perfectly. Thank you for providing such a good product with rich funcionality, flexibility and excellent support!

[Bsrr]

Hi Mark (or Nisse but not sure you would see this unless you are notified somehow),

I am not sure if I understand the currency part of this set up. Can you verify?

I would create a "currency" investment in my IB portfolio for each currency I have an equity investment in and hold that currency investment at the "Account Sub" level. Do I set up the currency just like an Exchange Rate investment? For example, I have EUR in my Exchange Rate portfolio and would set up another EUR investment just like the Exchange Rate one but it would be an EUR currency investment holding my actual EUR IB balance in "Account Sub". Then make the EUR currency investment the default cash account in the EUR folder holding EUR traded securities. Is this the right way to set up the currencies?

Thanks for any help provided.

[Mark]

Hi Bsrr,

I think you're asking about setting up exchange rate investments in addition to tracking investments in multiple currencies. All of your exchange rate investments belong in their own/separate sub-portfolio, not intermingled with any account investments. For example:

Code: Select all

- Master Portfolio
  - Exchange Rate Investments Sub
    - <EUR 2 USD Investment>
    - <JPY 2 USD Investment>
  - My Accounts
      - Account 1 Sub
        - <US Investments>
        - Currency X Sub
          - <X Currency Investments>
        - Currency Y Sub
          - <Y Currency Investments>
      - Account 2 Sub
      - Account N Sub

All of your actual holdings would go in some "Account Sub". If one of your accounts has multiple currencies you can divide up that account further by currency, one sub-portfolio for each currency, where investments in that account and currency are placed. You can use the option "Put Investments of Non-Default Currency in Separate Sub-Portfolios" to automate this upon import/retrieval.

For an explanation on setting up exchange rate investments and assigning them to currency pairs, see our tutorial and the documentation.

[Bsrr]

Hi Mark - yes thanks very much for your response. I am actually familiar with and have implemented what you described in your last response. I think I did a poor job of explaining my question.

When you download transactions from Interactive Brokers and have some currency purchases they only come in as a debit to the default currency/cash account. No corresponding investment transaction for the new purchased currency gets created by FM because the download does not have any such transaction or info to work with. For example, my default currency is USD. If I buy some EUR for $5K USD the debit of $5K against your default (USD) shows up but no "new" EUR investment is created for an equivalent $5k in EUR. I am assuming I just have to deal with this manually but was wondering if there is a better way.

Also, FYI - when you do a reconcile IB only has your default and any other currencies totaled all in your default currency (USD in my case). So the default "cash" balance for the account will always be "off" by the amount of other currencies you own so you would have to manually reconcile too.

Thanks.