This is likely a sacrifice of 1% or so – and who wants to needlessly donate 1% of their portfolio?! When this transaction occurs, Canadians are effectively taking their CAD, converting it to USD, and purchasing a stock/ETF – all at the same time. The other obvious example of investors needing to pay attention to exchange rates is when Canadian investors purchase stocks on a USA stock exchange (such as the Nasdaq or New York Stock Exchange). For instance, if you’re looking to purchase real estate in the US, you’ll need a lot of USD, and if you’re not careful about how you exchange your CAD for USD, you could lose thousands to unfavorable exchange rates and fees.
Well, if you are a savvy investor (which you clearly are since you are reading MDJ), you want to research all investment options to make sure you’ll get the most bang for your buck. What does this have to do with the cheapest way to convert CAD to USD you ask? Assuming that the condo did not appreciate since 2014, the condo today would cost $126k CAD. In November 2014, it would have cost $113k CAD (forget about foreign exchange fees for now).
Well, say you want to purchase a $100k USD condominium in Florida. At the time of that post, it cost $1.13CAD to purchase $1 USD, or a 13% premium.ĭue to falling oil prices and inflation, it now costs $1.26CAD to purchase $1USD. Updated November 2021 to provide additional information in regards to converting large amount of CAD to USD using Currency Brokerages/Money Transfer Comparisonīack in late 2014, we wrote about how great it was to be holding US Dollars (USD) due to the declining Canadian dollar (CAD).