Want to buy the euro while it's cheap? Here's how

published 13 March 2015

150313-currencies — The Caxton FX account might be a good place to look if you want euros

The euro is down 8% against the pound this year alone. That's made a good many people anyone thinking they might go on holiday in Europe, or perhaps buy a house in Europe soon-ish, for example - feel like they would like to hold some euros.

But if you aren't planning on spending the euros immediately, what's the best way to hold them? Mattresses aren't a long term solution, and currency cards can't take very large amounts of money. Foreign currency accounts have long been a pretty clunky option in the UK exchange rates are generally pretty bad; the accounts don't come cheap (think monthly fees); and the range of currencies can be limited (Barclays offers only euro, sterling and dollar accounts, for example).

I'm pleased then to set that Caxton FX has now launched its own currency account. This is a simple online bank account inside which you can hold 24 different currencies for as long as you like.

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You go online (24/7), open an account, choose your currency, buy it (Caxton's rates aren't the absolute best in the market, but they are good and they are certainly better than those from the big banks) and that's it. Job done.

You won't get interest, but these days that's no big deal: you aren't going to get much anywhere else either. You also won't get charged for the account itself only for any transfers you might make from it.

So if you want euros, it might be a good place to start looking.

Me, I'm thinking of Danish kroners. I'm going to Denmark in the summer, and I'm not 100% sure that the Danish central bank can hang on to its peg with the euro until then. It might be a long standing and politically important peg but it is forcing Denmark into something of a monetary corner at the moment. If it breaks, the kroner will soar. Good reason for me to lock in the price of my holiday money right now.

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Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast - but still writes for Moneyweek monthly.

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.