do this NOW or soon.

[Bimmerteck]

think of it this way = if you have $100,000, that would be 83,333 euros at a rate of $1USD to 1.2 euros. if and when it goes back up, the rate will be 1.6 euros to $1 USD. you will make $33,300 on doing nothing.

OR you could look at it this way, 33,300 less Federal and State (IL in your case) taxes and the cost of currency exchange(x2) and you'll walk away with around 18k. Not that hard to replicate in a decent market with an experienced trader here in the US. Way simpler than bringing money in from overseas banks and dealing with the tax/income issues. Or if your under 30 fund a ROTH ira with your post tax income to it's max(or as much as you can) and you'll end up with a much higher gain TAX FREE.

I have lots of experience recently having money stuck in foreign currency, unfortunately most is tied up due to wanky foreign laws ATM.

[PHAS3D]

This seems like a very poor decision. Thats like investing in bonds right before the Great Depression...

[RedE46Bimmer]

I was the one asking about stocks...but it's soo complicated, and i'm soo lazy that I don't care to learn lol......or loose a shit load of money that is hard enough to come by as it is for me.

[Jenewein]

Isn't the Euro having a lot of drama because of Chile or whatever?

I've heard Chile's economy is totally collapsing on itself and it's going to cause the Euro to be worth a lot less.

Last year when I went to France the exchange rate was 1.8 and now it's only 1.3 and it's supposed to continue to go lower.

[Skibum291]

if its such a good idea then why aent all of wall street doing it?- seems like a great idea- the only problem is that for a currency to rise that much barring some amazing event- takes years and years- whereas you can make a similar profit in a few months- plus its not gauranteed to go up- especially with spain and greece in the shitter right now- the only thing that is going to make the Euro rise stupidly fast is if the Eu accepts turkey - which i dont see that happening anytime within the next 3 years

[chev_chelios]

i guess we'll just wait and see if me believing in this would pay off.

[aar0n.]

I do this for a living and I would NOT put money into Euros right now, there's no indication that it's going up anytime soon and there are a lot of analysts and traders who think that it will get close to parity with the USD in the near future. The EU is a mess, Greece is really making a mess for the entire Eurozone as well as the global economy. Portugal, Spain, and Italy are in trouble too with way too much debt as well which is where the problems in Greece stem from. Euro is at yearly lows against the USD and I've seen it push past previous yearly lows multiple times just this week alone! (It was as low as 1.2142 on May 19th).

Just FYI, a lot of individuals are getting into trading Forex, it's grown quite a bit in the past few years and you can look at it like day trading stocks, except with a lot more movement and room for big profits (but equally huge losses as well). Currencies are very macroeconomics-based and are an indicator of the economic strength of a country. It's a very leveraged market (up to 100 to 1) and therefor big money can be made even without huge moves in price, as currencies are bought and sold in lots of $100,000, mini-lots of $10,000, and occasionally micro-lots of $1,000, so for something like Euro, price moving from 1.2550 to 1.2530 is a $200 profit on a single full lot on the 20 pip (point in percentage) move at $10/pip on full lots, $1/pip on mini, and $0.10 on micro lots.

In my opinion, the European Union is a mess and hasn't functioned as they had hoped when it was formed, with Germany pretty much being the only nation in the EU that did anything right economically and they are now being forced to pay for the mistakes and poor planning of other nations such as Greece in the EU. If Germany decides to leave the EU and go back to the Deutchmark (and this has been mentioned), the Euro would go into a freefall and markets would be a disaster. The British pound isn't a great place to put money either, as GBP has steadily dropped over the past few months as well and their economy is far from stable and the same holds for their government.

One more thing about how currency rates work. They trade in pairs against each other (such as GBP v USD, EUR v USD, USD v JPY, etc.). What this means is just bc a currency gains strength (lets use USD for example), it doesn't necessarily mean it will gain strength against all other currencies. USD can be strong against the Euro but weak against the CAD, which would mean that CAD is stronger than the Euro and the currencies to trade in that instance would be long CAD against Euros.

WOW that came out a lot longer than I expected, sorry if I bored anyone lol. Bottom line is that Forex is a very very volatile market and there's no guarantee that rates will ever hit the levels they were at before or never go past a certain level. 2 years ago 1 GBP was over $2 and 1 Euro was $1.6050ish at it's highest and look at where those rates are now

[Steve]

Do you know anything about the global economy? At all?

[BreakMyWallet]

my head is going to explode

[dr.kelly]

[Ezze90]

my head is going to explode

my head exploded after aaron's first paragraph lol

[chev_chelios]

don't the guys who trade stocks well drive $50,000+ cars & live in swanky abodes? my point being, the average trader never hits it big thus lives across the street from my parents where they moved to retire and who both worked average jobs their whole life.

this is a route where you could lose 10 cents or gain 40 cents and it's not a short term/overnight investment. all the world right now including the usa, will want/need to get the euro up and germany just stepped in hardcore.

we will see and how can you say fail when it hasn't happened yet ...........and what job were you guys doing during the 90's recession? you were probably in middle school where they didn't teach you that there is a recession almost every decade.

[chev_chelios]

LOLWUT? yes sir

[1badg35]

anyone ever heard of FOREX? lol
yes in theory this is a good idea, but the euro has slowly been dropping, so not the right time for this.

[SeanDub]

A+ thread, would read again