When buying foreign stocks, do you stock up on foreign currencies when it is at a low against SGD? Or only when u want to buy a foreign stock, you exchange whatever rates the brokerage give?

I wouldn’t stock up currencies when the rate is “low”, for a few reasons.

1. You’re essentially playing with forex here, rates can go either way

2. If you’re trying to time forex rates, what is your money doing in the mean time, just sitting there earning ?? Interest? How about after you exchange? Is your foreign currency just going to sit in your brokerage account?

3. Typically, but not always, if a currency e.g. USD drops, stock prices tend to rise. So if you wait for USD to drop, you get more USD when exchanging your currency, but stocks become more expensive, which kind of defeats the purpose?

You can change the money when rate is good without deploying it