When STEEM price is low, converting to SBD gets you more STEEM that you can power up with. That's a great time to convert SBD on the internal market.
SBD is also good to keep handy if you intend on buying certain products and services (now and in the future) that accept SBD as a currency.
When STEEM price is growing in price, and you plan on investing long term (more than 2 or 3 months) in the system, buying on the way UP and storing it in STEEM POWER makes the most sense, because as time goes on, your STEEM POWER accumulates even more SP just by holding it.
The "CONVERT" feature you are referring to, is if you want the blockchain algorithms to convert SBD to STEEM for you, based on average price feeds in the proceeding 7 days as published by witness nodes.
The CONVERT feature happens automatically when you trigger it, and gives you an "average" price, which is a very conservative way of getting a "fair" price. You can stand to lose a bit, or gain a bit than trading on the Steemit internal market instantaneously. So there's an investment method for everybody (both conservative and risky types of people).
Is there any simple formula then for us non trader non math wired folks to follow? I thought I had it figured out that as long as STEEM is over 1 US Dollar I'm better off buying STEEM, not SBD, to power up. Is that not true? Explain it as if I were a 5th grader please. LOL
"When STEEM price is low, converting to SBD gets you more STEEM that you can power up with. That's a great time to convert SBD on the internal market." <-- That hurt my creative math handicapped brain.
I'm still curious about the details behind "STEEM POWER accumulates even more SP just by holding it" too. Would I have the regular redeem prompt in my wallet when that happens, or does it just slowly go up on its own?
On its own automatically. The one you push is curation + author rewards only.
To see it happen, don't push the one that asks you to claim it. Write down the number of steem you have in steem power and come back in 3 days. Watch it go up and up. Over the course of a whole year, and without you having to do anything, it increases.
Does anyone have an idea what the APR is equal to then?
https://steemit.com/steem-help/@jerrybanfield/steemit-updates-summarized-from-launch-to-19-0
It's part of the quote I used above, but goes into more detail (which is what you are looking for)
It's not a fixed rate. It's a percentage that can change. In general holding steem power always means your power increases the majority of the time. Read that blog post for more.
Thanks!