
Ask HN: Converting USD to EUR for max gain - tawayusdeur
I&#x27;m a Spanish dev working for an US company. Recently my stock options vested, and I sold everything getting USD in return. I used an USD account instead of converting to EUR the same day because the USD&#x2F;EUR change was pretty bad (now is getting better). Those are money that I will have to use for my family for the years to come, but unfortunately I&#x27;m not exactly a market expert. Here there are people that are good not just with code, but also with this matters. Please, could you suggest me a simple strategy in order to avoid doing a mess while exchanging to EUR? For instance I could convert 20% every time the EUR looks weak, like today, or should I wait for months before changing? I understand noone has the magic answer here (otherwise you would be rich), but probably there are rules to follow to avoiding doing the worst conversion ever. Thanks.
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jxub
Maybe just convert it all if the USD/EUR exchange rate on a given day is under
n-day average, or dolar-cost average on a weekly basis. But I think holding on
indefinitely to $ may cause devaluation of your capital because of inflation,
and you might be better off putting some % of it in ETF's.

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tawayusdeur
Thanks jxub, I need a short term strategy indeed. In about one year I'll pay a
large amount in taxes to the Spanish government so anyway I need to exchange
everything within the next 12 months or so. The ETF looks like a good idea,
but if you look at the oscillations there are currently in the USD/EUR
exchange rate, it is possible to make the same you make with ETF in one year
in just a couple of days. This is why I think to have some decent strategy is
useful in this case.

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jxub
I see what you mean, go with it if you think you can pull it, be aware however
that if your order is quite large you might influence the market, you could
sell it in batches though to minimize risk. If you want to make a profit it's
already active trading, and I'd be wary of doing forex with this sum of money.
Anyway this stuff is quite far from my area of knowledge... Just never trust
the market completely. Good luck!

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hhmc
Unless you're trading >$1M you're not going to move the EURUSD market, and
even then you're almost certainly fine. It's big institutional 9 figure orders
where you need to worry. EURUSD is one of the most liquid markets in the
world.

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xstartup
It depends on when you need that money and for what without which it's
difficult to give you any advise.

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tawayusdeur
Pay taxes within one year (a large part unfortunately), and investing to
counterbalance inflation.

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mtmail
[https://transferwise.com/tools/exchange-rate-
alerts/](https://transferwise.com/tools/exchange-rate-alerts/) has a tool that
can email you when a certain exchange rate hit a two-week high.

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tawayusdeur
Thanks, this can definitely be useful.

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thrway_463845
There is no winning strategy. If there was one, you could use it in both
direction and get infinite money.

