International brokers: what to watch when consolidating your portfolio

1. Conversion costs are easy to miss

Every time money crosses a currency there is a spread, and sometimes an explicit fee on top. It is small per operation and permanent, which is the combination that makes people ignore it for years.

Worth checking whether your broker converts on every purchase or lets you hold a currency balance. Holding the balance and converting deliberately is usually cheaper if you contribute regularly.

2. Statements that do not speak your currency

Your broker reports in its own currency, your bank in euros. Consolidating means translating one into the other consistently — and doing it the same way every month, or your history stops being comparable with itself.

This is the point where most manual consolidations quietly break: not a wrong formula, just two months valued with two different criteria.

3. Practical details worth writing down

Keep a short note per platform with the things you will otherwise have to re-discover every year.

• Which currency each account is denominated in.
• Whether dividends arrive in the original currency or converted.
• What withholding applies at source, if any.
• Which reports the platform gives you, and in which currency.

4. One view, one currency, one total

The goal of consolidating is not tidiness, it is being able to answer "how much do I have and where is it" without a calculator. That requires every position in one reference currency, updated, next to your bank balances.

Nothing about taxes is covered here on purpose: rules depend on your country and your situation, and that is a conversation for someone qualified to have it with you.