Foreign Currency Spot Market?

Is it possible for a retail customer to buy foreign currency in the spot market?

I am a US customer. Can I buy Swiss Francs or Euros? Can I simply take a long position in the raw currency?

It should be obvious, but I'll say this anyway: I do not want to walk in to a bank and buy foreign currency, and hold it in cash somewhere in a safe.

And I don't want to buy futures, or foreign currency options, or forex pairs.

Suppose I have US$10,000.00 in "cash" sitting in my account, and I would prefer to hold that money in some other currency. Is this easy for a retail customer to do? Is it even possible? What type of account would one need for this?

BMK

 

The easiest and cheapest is thru CFDs if you want to do some trading with smaller amounts. See for example https://www.oanda.com/rw-en/

If it is for a more permanent exchange, many banks will let you open an account nominated in another currency. Different banks do probably have different rules and minimum requirements.

 

Yes, you would sell that 10k and buy Canadian dollar, or whatever else. Electronically at very tight spreads or at a 1.5-2% spread at your local bank. What's the challenge here?

 

You could check https://www.tiaabank.com/investing/currency-access-account

 

Why not buy/sell with forex pairs? With 50:1 leverage your U.S. dollars needed to hold this position is 50x less than the amount your investing in.
It's the simplest way & lower cost than using a financial institution.
Oanda is a reputable forex broker for U.S. customers.

 

This is the successor to Ever Bank.

 

You could try currency ETFs.
https://etfdb.com/screener/#page=1&tab=overview&asset_class=currency&leveraged=false&inverse=false

 

I do not know if this is the case for all retail banks, but in general, banks should be able to open accounts in different currencies for customers.

 

One of the few things IB does well is this. You can hold a number of different currencies and convert between them at minimal cost compared to most banks.

 

Most of the answers given to you show the wrong or hard way to do this. Your question is simple. The simple most forward answer is as Sig suggested, open an IB (Interactive Brokers) account as a US citizen and transfer your money to them and you can buy any and all the major currencies. Don't bother with CFDs either.

You can buy in a second and sell in a second. This is exactly what you asked for. Ignore all other post