Hi,
An idea just crossed my mind today. (This is just out of interest)
Say my account is in USD, and I want to acquire some JPY cash.
Would it be possible for me to go short on USD/JPY, and request physical cash to be delivered when the contract is closed?
When trading retail forex there is no such thing as delivery. Your “contract” is rolled forward each day.
Yes I understand it is a contract. And yes I understand it normally rolls over to the next day.
(I did not ask about contracts rolling over.)
My question is whether it is possible to receive physical cash, instead of it appearing as P&L on your screen.
You can “receive physical cash” by withdrawing your profits from your account. Your withdrawal will be denominated in your account currency, which is USD.
Your broker is not in business as a money changer. He does not buy dollars from you, and he does not sell yen to you. Unless he’s a Japanese broker, it’s highly unlikely that he even has any yen on hand.
When you trade forex in a USD account, your deposits, balance, equity, profits, losses, and withdrawals are all denominated in USD. You are simply speculating — in dollars — on a price change between two currencies. It’s like betting on a horse race. If you bet [I]dollars[/I] on a horse race and your horse wins, you get paid in [I]dollars,[/I] not in horses.
What part of [I]“there is no such thing as delivery”[/I] in Rhody’s reply did you not understand?
I agree with you completely on the overall point however some brokers are different on some of the smaller points.
Interactive Brokers for example if I trade USD/JPY my PnL will be quoted in Yen and my account will show a negative dollar amount and a positive Yen amount or the other way around depending on if I buy or sell.
After my trade is closed I will then have the amount I either won or lost showing up as a positive or negative Yen number and if I want that transferred into USD I will have to create an actual trade for it which I would pay commission on.
I agree I cannot get the Yen amount or any other currency paid out though but my account will still reflect the actual currencies I buy and sell 