I have just thought of this: has anyone bought and sold currency, not on forex, but at the regular exchange agencies? I mean, some of them have great values and the differences between the official value and the one they are buying/selling are not that high. You could potentially start with just a few bucks, but obviously, the returns would be really low.
What exactly are you talking about as exchange agencies? Do you mean agencies that exchange currency from one country to another. I am not sure what you are meaning about this. I am not sure what the benefit would be in doing this. If it was profitable, I am sure some people would be doing it already.
Yes, exactly those types of agencies. Well, I'm doing this with moderate success, but I usually follow patterns and sudden losses of a certain currency. When the dollar is getting weaker compared to my country, I buy several hundred dollars and when it gets stronger, I sell. You really have to time the "market" in order to make a profit, however.
I did so before when a friend and I visited Singapore and returned back to our home country 3 days later. What happened was totally unexpected and purely accidental. When we exchanged our local currency for Singaporean dollars prior to departing, the exchange rates were fair. However, upon returning, the Peso had strengthened to some degre. When we exchanged our remaining Singaporean dollars back to Peso, we got a few thousands instead of just one. It really gave me an idea the next time I went to another country. I guess 111kg, you're doing manual forex. It seems plausible but rather taxing.
Why would you do this? You will ALWAYS get a better rate through a forex transaction since I have yet to see a charitable currency exchange business. They always have a margin so they profit from each transaction. I do not see a single reason why this would be better than forex. You pay more fees, can't choose the exact price you want (limit orders) and on top of everything else you will always have to move your arse over there to make a transaction instead of just opening up your laptop. And they have their own opening hours, sometimes you might have to wait in line for a long time if they are busy etc. Just makes no sense.
I have never tried this although we frequent such exchange agencies. I do see your point though. Right now, the dollar rate from where I am has gone down. From one dollar equivalent to 47 pesos it went down to just 46 pesos. Sometimes, we try and wait it out before exchanging our money from the agency but we cannot always wait simply because we do have expenses. But it pays to be patient since sometimes the rate fluctuates and rises. It even came to the point where it became 48 pesos per dollar. I will definitely keep your tip in mind. I find that PayPal has weird conversion rates as well. Sometimes it's not equivalent to the rate that we have here. But yeah, I cannot do anything about that since they have their own conversion rates over there.
I've never tried manually trading foreign currencies for profit as well. I just remember having to convert from Philippine peso to the currencies of places I'm going to travel into but those are the only times I do it. Before, I also used to have a Dollar account but I eventually closed it and converted the cash to peso. I was on the losing end though because at the time I opened my Dollar account, the peso equivalent was around P54 per $1. I thought that kind of rate would come back again but after years of waiting, I realized that it wouldn't happen for long so I decided to convert to peso and use the cash for more profitable ventures.
I haven't really studied forex and somehow I am having issues with understanding the leverage system that most of the brokers use. This way, by buying currency whenever the Euro or the American dollar drops, it's a win win for me, honestly, mainly because I can either sell it when it gets higher or just use to buy things in Euro (such as trips, for instance) at a lower price.
With the huge commission most money changers charge you for their services, there would have to be huge wild swings in the value to make it profitable.
Not really. For instance, I can buy $1 for 3.99 Ron while the official course is somewhere 3.96 Ron, therefore their price is not that high compared to the official course.
