Singapore online trading platform comparison
Are stock trading commissions eating away at your profits or increasing your losses? Well there are some new players in town! They are MUCH cheaper and offer similar features. Who are we online about? In addition to trading fees, keep an eye on annual maintenance fees if you are below the minimum balance, and especially foreign exchange fees. Most discount brokers will hide the fee in the exchanged amount. As you can see from the charts, there is no perfect brokerage that would suit everyone. However, there are some general guidelines: I personally use a singapore bank for my RRSP and Interactive brokers for my non-registered trading account. Update Jan E-Trade AND Questrade now offer free DRIP! There you have it! A simple review of some of the discount brokerage options out there. In the mean time, look at your personal situation and see if any of the companies listed in my review suit you. You can potentially save a substantial amount of money. If you are interested in stock trading, here are some free online stock trading tools that I have used and recommend. This is especially the case when buying US stocks within a Canadian based RRSP. The same applies for selling, you can sell the same stock as many times as you want during the day and be charged for only 1 trade. This still may not be the lowest cost solution for the small time investor, but once you start making bigger trades, CIBC has the lowest trading fee of all brokerages in Canada. I commend CIBC for taking the initiative that the other big banks have not taken, that is to reduce trading fees for Canadians. I just recently signed up to ShareOwner Investments. Traciatim, Does ShareOwner Investments have RRSP accounts? Thanks for thus FrugalT, I was just about to open up an E-Trade account, but now I think I will reconsider and open up one at IB. Co-Op trading saves cash by bundling trades with other people making it so you can buy any dollar amount of a stock or ETF. They kind of collect up a bunch of orders and then buy them all at once on your behalf. A nice easy way to put some investments on auto-pilot. If you do decide to go with IB, make sure to try their demo software on their site. Actually… they do RSP accounts I think. Not too sure how to set it up. Shareowner does sound like a great way for a beginner to get started. Thanks for the heads up. The last time I emailed E-Trade, they did not support DRIP. Hmm… that makes it very interesting. Now, E-Trade offers everything a big bank offers, but cheaper. So really, there is no reason to stay with the big banks, E-Trade offers platform much the same thing EXCEPT they are much cheaper. That is a very interesting review indeed. Do you give me permission to reproduce this table on my website? Of course with proper attribution Discount Broker Review: Sure, you can reproduce the table on your site providing that you provide a link back to me. I think every one concern the investment safety. Are they safe to your investments? Because all of us know these big banks well. Haha: Both IB AND Questrade are insured by CIPF which is the exact same insurance that the big bank brokerages have. Great articles — been reading some of the stuff throughout the web, but great to see someone compile everything about Canadian Finance into one site. I wanted to ask about the ease of transferring your hard-earned cash into these discount brokerages. For those thinking about implementing the Smith Maneuver, you would not want to sign up for the DRIPs under the non-reg plans because you would want to use those dividends to pay down the mortgage, re-borrow, and then re-invest. Qubikal: In terms of transferring cash to the brokerages, this is how I do it with IB, Qtrade, and CIBC: IB: EFT, you go into your IB account and request the money from your bank account. Takes around 10 days in total to get approval process Qtrade: Bill payment from online banking. CIBC: Request trading cash transfer from within investors edge. It is true that IB and Questrade are insured by CIPF but what it does not tell you is… you are not covered if IB or Questrade is stealing your money fraud. Singapore about the Norbourg scandal. CIPF provides coverage for members trading the event of insolvency. Not too hard to reach that in an account : I know Questrade has been in Canada for a few years now. Any input would be much appreciated, thanks. Dw: Identity theft will be a risk where ever you go. The key is to be proactive in protecting your information and regularly checking your credit report. I believe that most, if not all, discount brokerages will require your SIN. I believe they would need your SIN card to report any income you receive from your investments. When they send you your T-slips, it has to show your SIN number to be valid for tax purposes. Credential Direct, owned by the credit unions is the cheapest. Flat commisions, and free level II quotes. I have used them for 6 months and am very happy with the service. John: Thanks for pointing out Credential Direct. I manage my accounts as if they are one big one and must do all my own spreadsheets to do rebalancing etc. The downside is that you need to call them on the phone before you do such a transaction. Another useful piece of info is the fee charged to transfer an account out to another brokerage. These fees can be fairly punitive as the brokerages want you to think twice before leaving. Conversely, will the destination institution reimburse transfer out fees to get the new account and how much will they reimburse? I just wanted to correct a few points on the Canadian Discount Brokerages table. It will be done shortly…. When do you expect that Questrade will offer free real time charts for Canadian stocks in the web trader? The new WebTrader Platform is expected to be available in the next month or 2 if everything goes well. I have not heard anything regarding free real time charts. If you are starting off with a smaller portfolio, Questrade may be your best bet to keep the costs down. Hey Sam, Instead of comparing fees alone, why not compare the services. Questrade, I believe, is geared toward a more active investor. With the bank, you can purchase small amounts of each mutual fund every month for NO FEE. Questrade does not have any monthly fees, inactivity fees or platform fees if you go for the WebTrader basic platform. That will offer you direct access trading without forcing you to make a minimum number of trades. We offer 2 commission plans. When it comes to Mutual Funds, Questrade may not have the best commissions, but one way to get around paying the MER is to buy the biggest holdings of the Mutual Fund. You have to keep in mind that ShareOwner will only allow the purchase of their pre-selected list of securities. I figured with the co-op investing that they could offer it for that price since they bundle everyones orders and there would always be someone paying for the transactions. Plus with the other fees for selling and transfers I figured they would get you in the end anyway. It seems to make much more sense the way you describe it. I am just getting into DRIP and have an existing E-Trade account. Also does DRIP in your chart refer to DRIP and SPP? Warren : The DRIP indicated on the chart represents the reinvestment of dividends when you purchase a dividend paying investment with no fees. However, this only works if you own enough of the company that the quarterly dividends are equal to, or greater than the price of the stock. Is that dependent on both the brokerage and the company supporting it? Some public companies that offer DRIP offer fractional DRIPS. Yes it is, thanks for the clarification. SPP sounds like a great tool, but obviously there are some more steps to get into one. FrugalTrader: What i was wondering was if you already have a separate review on these discount brokers about the topic of customer satisfaction, customer service, and accessibility of the money? And one more thing, comments on their performance about sending out the tax slips on time and in proper format. I just want to know whether it is safe if i open an account in Questrade? Is Questrade a big trader? Questrade is a member of the IDA and every account is protected by the CIPF. I am living in Singapore and am interested in investing in Canadian stocks? Does Questrade accept accounts from people from other countries. I live in Singapore and I am to benefit from the boom in Canadian Stocks. We accept applications from clients all over the world except United States. Does anyone know if the trading brokers charge different amounts or use different spreads on the conversion? Anyone have idea how Interativebrokers charges the exchange rate? I got mixed information about questrade. In other words, a very low spread relative to other brokers. Thank you for this very informative article. I have a question about IB. Clarification would be much appreciated. Hi, Thank you for this wonderful info. I want to trade options and will want to trade from 15 to 20 trades a month. Questrade has the same price of and is equivalent to others. I also want to maintain a US account instead of switching to CDN funds each time. Has anyone had any experience working with Tradefreedom? I found their trading platform extremely confusing. Thanks Penny Penny, if you are new to investing, you may not want to start with options. Questrade offers a free direct access platform called WebTrader Basic. With that platform you will only be charged the commissions whenever you make a trade. A more advanced direct access trading platform that is excellent for trading options is CyberTrader. You can trade multilegged options and pay 1 commission for 2 legs. Tradefreedom does not have a platform that allows multilegged option trades. The Canadian commission on stock trading is not flat. IB is well priced, but do not expect any service from them. If you are having problems with the platform or the trading, better solve it yourself. I have confirmed this with several IB traders. I think IB will admit it if you call them up. The best value for you money is definitely Questrade. It is very well priced, and it offers the support that is so important when needed. The application is done online; it will take about 20 minutes to complete. There is no charge for opening or closing an account with Questrade. One thing that would be really useful is a rough idea of the forex rates for the various accounts. I can say from experience that TDW is around 0. This would definitely be a column worth adding. I will do some digging and post the info. Can you tell me if Quest Trade offers such market commentaries. Thanks for your help and keep up the excellent work. This is a great benefit to many people. Hey Paul, thanks for stopping by. As far as I know, Questrade does not offer market commentaries. What you could do is keep enough in your RBC account to avoid the maintenance fees, and put the rest with another brokerage. I am currently in a trading course and paper trading for experience. I have started to research canadian discount brokers and I am very impressed with the info and knowledge I have found here. Then I heard about QuestTrade and their fees work even better for me as most trades will be under shares. My biggest concern with a Registered account is the exchange rate to USD. Am I misunderstanding how this fee works? The automatic currency conversion in RRSP accounts is only 0. I would not recommend trading very actively in US markets inside your RRSP account since the fee will add up. You will definitely need a direct access platform in order to minimize the costs of trading. I would caution you if you are thinking of opening an account with CIBC. Moe, if you want to USD stock actively, then doing so in your RRSP is not recommended. As you pointed out, cash needs to be converted every trade. Even if you wash trade with TD, it would take WAY too long for an active trader. Keep your active trading outside your RRSP so that you can maintain a USD account to avoid the fees. However, Questrade is a decent choice also. Direct access technology is a desktop software or web-based trading application. When linked — ideally by a high-speed connection — to the Internet, that platform becomes your own personal trading floor. Live market data from market makers, securities exchanges and ECNs update in real time. Traders or investors can spot price differentials, trade volume, liquidity, and other market intelligence, and act on it directly. This is an enormous change from pre-direct access, when information was masked by the middleman — full-service brokerages — and all trades had to be funneled through a number of steps — any of which could slow or alter the original trade. In fast moving markets, order execution speed can be the difference between a gain or a loss, between taking advantage of an opportunity and missing it entirely. Direct access almost eliminates the time gap between execution and trade confirmation as well. Slippage, the gap between the estimated cost of the transaction and its real cost, is an important factor when executing a trade. This is particularly relevant in a fast-moving market. There are other hidden costs at non direct access brokers as well that affect the prices that consumers receive. Direct access is the most transparent method of accessing the markets. Yonge Street, SuiteToronto, ON M2M 4G3 I understand the direct access platform, thank-you. Does your WebTrader still offer the same level of control and speed as your CyberTrader platform? The CyberTrader platform is not available anymore. QuestraderPro is another software based platform that we have. QuestraderWeb is a direct access platform as well. It is slightly slower than the software based platform. Yonge Street, SuiteToronto, ON M2M 4G3 Hi Emil — Yesterday, I bought some US securities in my rrsp at Questrade — I phoned to find out an exchange rate and one rep said they charge 0. Rest assured that the automatic currency conversion in Registered accounts is 0. Yonge Street, SuiteToronto, ON M2M 4G3 great blog. Looking for the lowest possible fee for currency conversion heard tradefreedom is 20 basis points. Better to join a few days before the end of the month. Just wondering, do you folks have a good way to get broad exposure to the TSX Venture Exchange? Any suggestions for the best ETF site with decent service? I am a new investor looking to open an account. However, Interactive brokers and questrade look even better. But, do either of these services protect against fraud. The october review by the globe and mail does not indicate that questrade guarantees that members will not lose money if their account is acessed by a hacker? And interactive brokers were not even reviewed? They only require a login and password. E-Trade and Interactive Brokers now require a keyfob encryption passkey with every login along with the pwd. Melvin, the keyfob encryption is basically a device that gives you a passkey to type in at the time of login. In terms of security, they both use the same web encryption as any other brokerage does. It really comes down to the user keeping their passwords safe imo. The two most important things to me is security and low fees. So i guess i will research further. This may be a silly question, but how does trading U. Melvin, there are a couple ways that you can trade US equities. You can purchase US dollars exchange fees — see article aboveand purchase US shares. Or, you can get a margin account and purchase US shares with that account. Purchasing with the margin account will hedge against currency flucuations, but interest will be charged. Im just about to go ahead and open an Interactive broker account. Ive done my research and what not. Just wondering, anything that stands out in your minds that i should address or consider before I go forward? The paperwork is quite extensive. How secure is this process of opening an account? All of our information is being sent over the web ex. Social securitycorrect? Melvin, IB uses secure web encryption like any online bank. Also when you get your account, they will require a login, password, and encryption code before you can start trading. Definitely among the more secure online brokers out there. But you can make instant transfers into your other cash account and buy from there. Where are not expensive Canadian ETFs RRSP and US funds — exchange rates is one of te issue. It looks it is a big advantage to save money on exchange. Can anybody comment it? The exchange rates are listed in the article. Canadian Capitalist has written about wash trades a few times on his blog. Paul — I joined TDWH in September with a lot of cash and began building a Portfolio over the past two months with a lot of US trades. Just make sure when you do the washes that you check that they have been put through on the settle date. Staff is good about it but just look over their shoulders. Hi Trizi, Your oppinion, is wash trade worth it? I see that it is not in the comparison chart and I am wondering why as it seems to have all the same services as the others… Also, looking for info as to which online broker would have the best interest rate on cash balances both in RSP accounts and non-RSP accounts. Any info would be great! I opened an account on IB, but on the very last minute, they changed the minimun account requirement from 5g to 10gs! Cant seen to find anything as cheap with a lower required minimun cebolao, This table is updated on a regular basis. Hi Frugal, thanks for the quick reply. Specially after I have completed, singed, and mailed all the forms! Does the Canadian Gov guarantees the funds deposited in these online brokerages just as they would with regular Canadian banks? Or is there nothing preventing IB from going belly up supposedly and taking all you cash with it? Is there a credible source where I can look up the credibility of online brokerage firms? Ie any place where these companies have to be listed? Like a government run institute? Frugal: thanks allot for the info. CIPF website will be most useful. Yes I did see Questrade,but to get that price, they want over 100k of assets or over trades a quarter, otherwise they are no different than TDWaterhouse, is that correct? Since I am a recent college grad,and just starting to trade, I am out of that category. So would IB be my best bet for now then? You can find my questrade review here. Thanks FT I have just read the review. Looks like a good choice for me. I will read more about it later. But one of the comments following the review brought up the point of wash trading. From my understanding, at IB being a Canadian, to buy any US stocks I need to open a margings account, and buy any US stocks on marging. And then pay for it using the daily exchange rate. Now how does that work with Questrade? So if you were to use it, you really have to pay 1. No mins, low commissions, and free quotes. You can however use margin to buy US stock also. If you open a non-registered account, then you can purchase USD and trade US stocks as you please without paying forex with every trade. FT, thanks for explaining all this. I will call them tomorrow, and hopefully everything goes smooth. Meanwhile, when you said I can buy USD without paying forex, you mean Questrade wont charge me the 1. If you buy stock within a non-registered account, then you can buy US dollars directly and only end up paying the FOREX once unless you want CAD again. This quietly happened sometime in the last three months. Can I have 2 accounts:? You definately should have two accounts. That minimizes currency conversions. If I chose to buy US stock and my account is CND, or Vice versaI have to have a margins account, and buy that stock on margin and repay later. So far still playing with the questrade web. And i dont see an option for currency exchange more question to ask them. Does any one offer a trading platform that has an API. Hey guys, Ok, I called and got most of my questions answered: Yes I can have both USD and CND accounts with the questrade, and link each to a USD and CND account at my bank. And all accounts are defulted to be margin. If any of you can point me to a thread that explains this a little better that would be great! Cebolao just reported 1. Fees are restructuring; in one pocket and out the other. Hoping a Questrade user enlightens us here. Will report on the results next week. Osmium, thanks for the note. I was unsure about this number until I had web chat with one of the cutomer reps, who later comfirmed this again on the phone. Seems like the registered RRPS remains to be 50PIPS. You can register there and get a permanent papermoney account to use the software, which is amaazzzingg. Now why do they need to know where i work, and all my work related info? I am really uncomfortable giving out all that detailed private information! Feels like I am serving myself on a platter for identity fraud and asking for trouble. So my question is this: Which part of the application do I have to give them truthfully, and which part i can get away with random BS? Better than outright BS. Jacky, A non-registered trading account is one that is not registered with the Canadian government. Does anyone have any experience with this one? Thanks Osmium, i just got it over with and finished the application. Lets hope that I was being overly paranoid. Hey FT, I just mailled the paperwork for Questrade. I put Milliondollarjourney under my referal, just like you said under your questrade review. Now they told me that person who refered me need to mail them my platform address for this to work? However, it may be to your benefit to consolidate the accounts into one to reduce annual fees. Hello, I was just wondering if IB accepts EFT in USD with major Canadian banks like RBC and HSBC. They have great rates, and great Windows platform. The Windows app is great, real time quotes, blotter, watchlists, all that you need. I suspect ScotiaBank will try to bundle some products there I hope. I would like to see great FX rates and great premuim interest rate for cash balances. With TradeFreedom you can have CAD or USD balance on the account. To transfer money back, you need to call them, and after password validation on the phone, you can tell them to EFT your cash amount back to your bank. I like this platform, and I hope it gets better with new management of ScotiaBank. TradeFreedom is literally the most expensive of the direct access brokers. Disnat Direct and ETrade are both far cheaper, if you are doing any volume of trades at all. With every trade, you will pay more. Perhaps TD ActiveTrader might be the one exception for back office handling. So you are getting the same tool, and for all or almost all brokerages, the same back end processing. Bear that in mind when looking at costs. If your account is relatively small, and you do not trade very often at all, then TradeFreedom is a good provider. However if you are at all active — even swing trading I push through more than 30 trades a quarter — the transaction costs will quickly make TradeFreedom the most expensive choice. Re commission, the devil is in the details. All of them have different approaches. These pennies all add up rather quickly. Better to pay for your tools up front, unless you only plan on trading a few times a year. If you are trading larger sizes, this is very useful in holding costs down. For those with larger accounts, you can get their platform and commission rates without meeting minimum trade volume. This might be useful for those who trade more actively at different times of the year. TradeFreedom is unable to be negotiated on pricing, but they tell me that they are going to have to respond to market pressures. TD is really putting pressure on people. Bottom line is it pays to complain a little, as with pretty much anything in life. I agree with Bruno, and in fact over the two weeks prior to sitting down with TD Waterhouse, I had called Scotia Macleod more than 6 times to a complain about rates, and receive an adjustment not enough b seek any information they could give me as to whether they were working on any programs which would be better suited to me, an active trader with a non trivial account, c see if their subsidiary, Tradefreedom, could come up with a suitable program they tried, but not in time. The only conclusion I could come to was that SMDI is quite content to market to a specific type of customers and let the larger banks get the rest, which happens to be the lions share. The problem with these organizations — common to many sales organizations — is that they are not motivated to do anything they individuals are not specifically compensated for. No doubt the New Accounts group get bonuses based on the intake; while customer service and operations do not. Before I launch back into the topic — Bruno, can you comment on your deal with Disnat? Is it ALL IN? Or plus 1 cent a share plus removing liquidity fees, if applicable to a specific trade? Back on topic: In fact over the two weeks prior to sitting down with TD Waterhouse, I had called Scotia Macleod more than 6 times to a complain about rates, and receive an adjustment not enough b seek any information they could give me as to whether they were working on any programs which would be better suited to me, an active trader with a non trivial account, c see if their subsidiary, Tradefreedom, could come up with a suitable program they tried, but not in time. You will be charged a separate commission if you place multiple orders for the same security on the same side of the market in the same day. I have the commission bills to prove this. Re the — that was a cut and paste error… not sure where it came from. SMDI is closer to 16 — 17K for the example basket of trades I used to model costs. Is it possible they are charging some people for multiple fills, and not others? SMDI is not well organized for the active trader crowd. Looks like it was an error in your comm charges in that case. Partial fills should not trading charged a seperate commission. They are consolidated overnight. If however it is 2 separate trades than it would be subject to a separate commission. However that is a not what is was happening and b specifically not what one of their reps informed me on the phone when they set me up. I was struck with the impression that they are actively seeking to discourage people from going to the flat rate. No surprise — flat rate as I modelled it is 16K; the non-flat rate model puts the same basket of trades at 160,000 in commissions. High rates effectively work to reduce activities; at times Comparison would neglect our RRSP accounts and just work on income producing trading in futures. SMDI loses in both respects. This cycle is a little different. I see multiple commission hits on some multiple fill orders; on others I see commission values which make no sense whatsoever shares, multiple fills, commission. The real problem with SMDI is that they have not recognized that the industry has multiple types of participants and they are not catering to several subsets of participants. If only they were pro-active they could earn more customer loyalty. Their web interface is somewhat better with the revisions they did over the last year or so than TDW WebBroker, but certainly is not on par with the direct access features offered by Active Trader and similar competitive offerings by the other, smaller, firms. One penny on a trade pays for platform fees — if I had to pay them — for brokerages that charge fees for such things. Acceptably powerful order entry, advanced order types. No powerful order entry or advanced order types, not even a trailing stop. My accountrs are with TD Waterhouse. They do not offer trailing stops and GTC orders. Stock prices in the account are updated next day so cannoy sell a stock based on the price shown. Amertrade was able to offer both traling stops and GTC orders. TDW bought out Ameritrade and yet they do not offer what Ameritrade was offering. I am sticking with TDW because I have consolidated my registered and non-registered accounts with TDW plus because I have banking relationship with them for a long time. I have written to them about this but they are content to be the largest discount broker in Canada! I am thinking of moving at least the non-registered accounts to another broker. Does E-trade offer trailing stops and GTC orders? How soon they update the stock prices of securities already in the account? IB offers good order management, but, sadly, does not offer registered accounts and its probably a safe bet to take that they never will offer registered accounts. I am interested in finding a discount brokerage that allows me to set up a non registered account but I am planning to only do a couple of transations a year buy ETFs and rebalance once in a while, think couch potato investing. You recommend Interactive Brokers for non registered but when I read description is seems more suited to active traders. Any other recomendation for hat I am looking fore with low budget to start with, about 5 to 10 k Thank! Emma Hi Emma, for a non registered, low activity and low balance, there are 2 practical low cost choices. Or your decision might partly be based on where you live — if you are from Toronto you can go to the offices of most brokerages and sign up there with knowledgable help right in front of you. Larger brokerages have remote offices. Disnat would be a good choice for folks from La belle province. Given your account size, you are likely to be trading smaller sizes than shares more often than not. QTrade or IB both have the cost edge for sub share trades. If you only plan on trading a few times a year, costs are not quite as big an issue as they might otherwise be. But if you expect to trade more over time, or have other accounts which will bring your total account value up to the minimums that some brokerages require before they give their lowest fees, then perhaps you should look more closely at the range of offerings. I am with InteractiveBrokers from more than 2 years and I am really happy with them. They are about 10 times cheaper than BMO and all data is real time. Their website is reliable, they answer emails very fast… but they have nothing distinctive that could make someone switch to them. I am currently considering other brokers, this thread was really useful to learn more about the different alternatives. Lack of DRIP aspect is a negative. Do I borrow half of what I intend from my HELOC, purchase securities and then borrow the additional money from IB to purchase the remainder of securities? CF, IB is a good choice for low margin rates, howevermargin usage runs the risk of margin calls. When the cash balance goes below zero on a purchase, margin will be used. Yes, its a lot to pay if you have a small amount of funds to trade with; but that should give you some discipline to trade less, but trade better. Having all our accounts in one place, a big chartered bank, one not as tainted by the credit issues going on CM isgives me some comfort. This is the reason I dumped scotia mcleod and went to tradefreedom, which charges less than a tenth as much BNS not only gouges, but conceals the evidence of the gouging in their statements. The forex amounts never specify the fees, just the totals. If you are in Canada and mainly play with US stocks, you have to suffer the loss of currency conversion every trade. Another broker TradeFreedom charges much less, 0. This past January, Questrade launched a USD in RSP service that allows clients to hold both Canadian and U. In other words, clients can settle U. I hope this helps! If you set up your IB account to be funded by a bank account using an EFT, you first have to go through a test to make sure everything works. They put in a small amount into your account and then withdraw a small amount. Once you go through that phase which takes a up to a few daysyou are then ready to be able to transfer large amounts into your IB account. In there you have an option to choose the name you assigned to your funding bank. You then go to a page which only has one input — a dollar amount. What you do NOT see is the name of your funding account so if you have multiple ones, you better be sure you chose the right one. You then enter a dollar amount and hit continue. The transfer instruction is gone and there is nothing that can be done about it. There is no confirmation page summarizing what you attempted to, there is no do you want to proceed. No, the EFT instruction has been sent and good luck if you made a mistake like I did. Cannon, yes the IB interface is not very intuitive. I would suggest that you run through the demo a few times before making trades. OK, hopefully this post gets seen somehow. My question: I bank and have a credit card with BMO and also a long history of 15 years or so. How much of an advantage is there in sticking with BMO for my investing? Hey Greenhouse, picking a broker is a highly personal thing. One thing I would point out though is if you are starting with no investments it may be better to buy some index funds or something along that line until you can get a few grand together making your transaction fees lower. Say for instance you open a TD E-Funds mutual fund account. There are no transaction fees at all and you can set up a monthly payment plan. On thing you may want to look at is simply setting up a high yield saving account with a regular automatic savings plan and once this amount gets over a pre-set amount say bucks then search for one single stock to purchase or try something similar to this with ShareOwner Investments. So I keep referring back to this often as I consider changing my discount online broker. A great addition to this review would be to include whether or not the discount broker offers electronic trades on the Pacific Exchange. This is of particular interest to me lately since I hold several Vanguard ETFs in my RRSP account, and they were recently moved from the American Exchange to the Pacific Exchange. I would expect that many other people hold Vanguard ETFs in the investment portfolios as well, so this information may be of interest to a large group of people. However, when I did this I found it very slow and time consuming — generally just an inconvenience. This would be a great piece of information to add to help me make my decision on who to use for a discount online broker. A good friend joined RBC DS and we were working with him. In hindsight, the lack of DIY with RBC DS was far too restrictive for me. I held mutual funds which was fine, no fees. About 6 months ago I sold all my mutual funds and switched to etf, 3 to be exact. Ishares shortterm cnd bond and 2 vanguard etf, cheapest in the business. From the customer service to the ease of navigating the site, like I said was great. Rino, Questrade, Tradefreedom and Interactive brokers all offer super low commissions. Do you consider e-trade to be superior to these? I want my online broker to have a performance history either be it on a monthly, quarterly or yearly. If i read right etrade offers this. But my experience so far has been anything but frustrating. First of all, they are really slow in opening my account. It took them several weeks to open the account. Then, funding the account has been near impossible as I have been trying so many different ways in the last four weeks to move the money from my bank account to the Questrade. I thought everything finally worked after two weeks when I got a notification, so I logged in and made some purchases. I immediately made another authorization. It has been another two weeks and half. They took the money, but I am still without access to the trading platform. Now they are tellling me to exchange currency without knowing how much money that I have in my account and rejecting the request if I guess it wrong. The whole process is very confusing, and the customer service tells me there is no tutorial : I never had anything this confusing and bureaucratic process. Does anyone know it any of the Discount Brokerage Houses offer Investment Loans? Would I be able to use this loan in my Margin account? I have been with TD Waterhouse for many years but I am thinking to change to Questrade. Does it cost anything to tranfer money to Questrade or back from Questrade to the bank account? How long this transfer take? My experience with Questrade has been horrible at best. After hearing so many good things about questrade from Frugal Trader this siteI transferred part of my international portfolio when I moved to Canada and have since wasted countless hours just to execute simple trades. I can understand if FT decides to remove this posting but I sincerely hope he would respond. Thus you have editorial content which may or may not favour advertizers, sometimes unknowingly. I expect a blog is little different — either advertising is supplied from a subscription eg. Therefore, if RFD, or Questrade or others wish to advertize on MDJ, they contact the publisher and enter into a contract, or they address it through some form of aggregator where the ads are distributed to blogs. Beyond commenting here, continue to press for resolution with Questrade, and if you choose another broker, drop by with your experiences. Yes, I can see how it appears to be a conflict of interest. In addition, I had a public poll on MDJ a little while back, and Questrade won the poll as the favorite discount brokerage in Canada. Finally, I only get my trading credit after referrals get their trading credit after trades. I hope this clears things up. He is usually very quick to respond to any client issues. Which one would you recommend? Amongst the big bank brokerages, which one is most preferable? However, note that they all charge fees if your account is below a certain balance. If you want a cheaper solution, do your research on tradefreedom, Questrade, and e-trade. Singapore review links are in the post. I managing my friends account in Etrade. She has both registered and margin account. The interest on credit balances is almost nil. Actually they offer MM but require holding of 3 month which defeats the purpose of transfering cash to MM. There is a penalty charge for early withdrawal. I am looking for a direct trading brokerage to open a TFSA and move her accounts from Etrade. Her total portfolio is about 90k. My personal account is with TDW and is on lowest trading fee schedule. Assuming 12 trades per quarter do you have any suggestion? Balabu, Does she have the same home address singapore you? Processing new accounts is ever so slow, and they will no contact you even if there is a problem They just put your account on hold and wait for you to call them. Is there an issue if I open up a Trading account with any of the above listed websites. Also would I be classified as a Professional Subscriber or Non-Professional subscriber what exactly do those represent? I will not recommend Trade Freedom to anyone. Their customer service is absolutety horrible, always on hold and was treated terrible as well. Even the smallest problem is not taken care of, Account Managers who do nothing and their servers are still not reliable in Their data fees are not cheap and they want you to do trades per quarter to have any of them waived, which is pretty high. Questrade also charges for their platform and data fees unless you do 40 trades per month which is also very high. IB not having RRSP is really a deal killer, I mean they need to get with the program, that is an awful lot of business they are throwing away. This is etrade Canada with Scotia makeup. I got an email from my Scotia Mcleod account saying they will be integrating all the accounts. Their fees are cheap compared to the rest of the discount brokerages in Canada, but based on my experience with them, they have the worse customer service. It takes on average more than 5 business days for them to reply to emails. I have tried to call them during business hours many platform, and found myself waiting hopelessly for eternity for a agent. In fact, I seriously think they are very understaff! I usually wait about 1 month for them to process my pre-authorized deposits, so by the time I actually get the funds transfered into my account, it is already too late and I would miss my buy points of the stocks I follow. Research tools are very poor. TradeKing offers the same low fees as Questrade, but their service is very good — in fact one of the best. I remember posting an email after hour and 5 minutes later I received a phone call from their end — I was very surprised at that level of service at such low fees! I would advise those who seek quality of service to go with the big banks or at least not with Questrade. I am actively spreading the word of my ordeal through any medium I can until the problem is fixed I have gotten a letter to the editor posted in the Kingston Whig-Standard and am awaiting publication of my letters to the Toronto Star, Toronto Sun and the Globe and Mail. A few months ago I left them for Questrade because of the cheaper commissions and their favorable consumer ratings. Up until the morning of March 5, I had a very good experience with Questrade, I even got my account set up in only 4 business days, which was very impressive! Also, I have a TaxFreeSavings account, which means no margin account, no loans, no borrowing, no overdrafts. I can do transactions up to my current cash balance, any more money and it will reject the order because of insufficient funds. Boy was I wrong, the real fight had just online as I spent 2 hours and 06 mins. He at one point 30 mins. Apparently Rob is a superhuman adding computer… either that or a bald faced liar. I called him on the amazingly quick audit he was able to do and he hung up I have a witness who was also listening to the callafter 45 mins. I asked if Questrade was found to be at fault, would the audit be free? I then attempted to go higher then Rob by using this excellent comment post and contacting Emil Vojkollari and Nicholas Roussos who seem to help people on this blog solve problems with Questrade, and guess what? I have left 2 messages platform Emil seeking assistance in the matter and 4 for Nicholas asking him for help as well and both HAVE YET TO RETURN ANY OF MY 6 MESSAGES. THIS AGGRAVATION HAS GIVEN MY WIFE AND I WEEKS OF SLEEPLESS NIGHTS AND UNTOLD STRESS. Questrade are at best a terrible company with horrendous customer service and complaint response, and at worst criminal with gross misconduct on the part of ROBERT CHANDLER. Shame on you Questrade. I was about to open an account with Questrade…. Is this allowed without having the CRA penality? Can I use the profit I make from that 5K to buy again and expect no tax on them? I am steer towards Tradefreedom right now. And what would be the difference between a TFSA and a Cash account eg Etrade, no margin etc besides the 5K limit? Difference between the different brokers you mentioned are mainly cost. FT has pointed this out in his comparison, as have i. They are somewhat comparable, but itrade still cheaper with their regular commission vs TD and their TFSA account does not have a fee. As well the min. In spring I wrote about moving to TDWaterhouse from Scotia. I had carefully entertained moving all our accounts to various other brokerages including Questrade and TradeFreedom. ETrade I never seriously considered. At the time I did the comparison between brokerages most had per-share, ECN, or removing liquidity fees. What I notice most is the consistency. TD acts the same way, in my experience, all the time. I did not experience that consistency as an active trader with Scotia McLeod Direct Investing. I had to go out of my way to get a cheaper rate, despite having known some of the people in the active dept. Their systems, and front line staff, just are not geared for folks like me, nor the ongoing trend in the industry. Perhaps wtih iTrade that will change but I remain a sceptic for now. While my style and level of trading is clearly not for everyone, if you are an active trader, particularly singapore you focus on Canadian markets as I do ad trade in some size, TD Waterhouse Active Trader fee structure is very cost effective. ETrade always used to bury the notice about market fees deep in its website; I see iTrade carries on that tradition. Nowhere are they clearly linked, a deceptive sales practice bordering on the fraudulent. Aamir, for your needs, sounds like Interactive Brokers is the only choice. Note that they do not offer RRSP or TFSA. Tks Scotia Itrade is pathetic. Their customer support is terribly inadequate. Itrade is notorious for losing personal documents in their departments, causing unecessary delays in opening and administering accounts. This has resulted in lost investment opportunities, for which I trade takes no accountability. They regularly lock up funds and assets due to their own incompetence. Their representatives are incompetent and have been caught lying on the phone. Stay away from this company. They are expensive, their investment platforms are inadequate and their service sucks. The integrity of this info is as low as it can possibly get : For beginning investors i would reccomend Q-Trade. As much as the commissions may be high, the help desk is top-notch. I call probably once a week. It is like having your personal trading encyclopedia just a phone call away The same people work at the call center daily! No turnover as far as i can tell. The commisions might be a problem later, but comparison is more valuable right now. Last winter I investigated all the online brokerages, and decided to go with Qtrade also. I was a trading beginner, and also find that their help is very, very good. They have been great. I now have over 100K so got my commissions reduced greatly. Does anybody deal with Disnat? I want to open up a Interactive Broker account to do some day trading possibly. I am planning to invest 10K to open up the account, maybe withdraw 5k back once the account is open and do my trading with 5K. Should I be aware of anything with Interacive broker? Secondly does anyone know if 25K minimum limit also applies for trading in canadian exchanges for day trading. Finally if anyone is already doing day trading, how do you report income from dividend, capital gains? I have very bad experience with questrade and look for a good canadian discount broker. I love the site. I have a question that I hope someone can help with. I am just getting started investing my TFSA, using Credential Direct. I have a question about the fees for online trading. How are they paid? Zig, yes, the cost of commission is added to the cost of purchasing. Thanks for the quick answer. I finally tried to purchase some U. Is this due to the stocks being in U. Is anyone familiar with Credential Direct or is this a TFSA issue? Zig, when you tried to purchase these stocks, was it after hours? Otherwise, US equities are allowed in a TFSA. Just an update to my issue with purchasing a US equity through my TFSA. I tried again today to purchase a US equity with my TFSA, after the market opened, but still an error message displayed as TFSA ineligible. I called Credential Direct and they stated that AMTY, the stock I was buying, was an over-the-counter OTC stock and as per CDN Govt rules, could not be purchased with a TFSA. This seemed a little odd to me as singapore is listed with NASDAQ — I am not quite sure what identifies it as OTC — I wish I had asked, but I was not near a computer at the time of the call. Does anyone know a broker in Canada that will accept these? I must have contacted at least 20 brokers and no one accepts them. I recently called CIBC investors edge from what i understand they make you buy a pkg of 12 trades. The only one for which offers anything but the North American markets are Interactive Brokers. But none-the-less, I found out that HSBC offers many European and Asian exchanges direct and non-direct. And you can also have RRSP and TSFA accounts to do this too. They may not be too competitive in price and support but at least one bank non-Canadian offers it. Does anyone have a US brokerage account. I have had it for 10 years. Does anyone know of any brokers that are accepting non resident accounts?? Any help would be great!!! Not a heavy trader, comparison trying to direct my own tax free savings. Will likely go with Questrade unless I hear of another low-priced competitor with fewer complaints on this site and others… I am looking for a good and cheaper discount broker too. But definately I will not choice Questrade. There are so many complaints from Questrade clients. Questrade does not treat its client well and so many people switched out. You better read customer comments before you open an account with them. Do not open an account with iTrade. It has been a month and they still have not been able to open an on-line account for me, due to their incompetent staff. Their customer service phone line is always busy, and you are on hold forever. Be warned, iTrade is the worse. I would like to open a share trading account with a online brokerage from Canada. Brokerages rarely tell you everything on their site until after you open an account. Very bad business practices. You should not be charged this fee, and I will put request to rebate you this amount. I am puzzled why TD-Waterhouse has not been included. Real time quotes provided as well as reports from most major companies that have reviewed the stock in question. A lot of features are included. David, are you actually with TD Waterhouse? And believe me that once you actually ask questions about their platform and fees, you realize that they offer nothing but standard bank services and fees. You must maintain the trading levels or loose it and must re-qualify each time! I heard TD Waterhouse is good but the price is high. I know Questrade has low price but their customer service is bad. I am thinking of using iTrade because it has lower price. Is anybody still dealing with iTrade? Is iTrade getting better now? CIBC Investors Edge has no compassion for small time investors. They have no consideration at all. Try questrade or trade freedom. I have several years experience with Questrade, and I am planning to switch my last account with them. I have aready transferred out my major accounts. They lost my mails to them for at least 2 times. Their service is as cheap as their price or even worse. Sometimes you have to use it like DRIP request. Moreover, my accounts with them always have unknown credits and debits though balance is zero. Does anyone have any experience with RBC Direct Investing? We have a financial advisor at the moment but we have lost confidence in him and are thinking of becoming DIY investors. I would appreciate any comments! As a DIY investors one of your big priorities is to have fees and costs under control. I for one, have been transferring my business away from them and have been splitting it between many other smaller brokers. Of course you can do this via some funds or ETF, but its not the same. For this reason, you may want to look at HSBC and Interactive Brokers. What are your thoughts regarding the fees, etc. How do they rate with all the other brokerage companies? I have been reading through many articles on this site and find them to be a great read and highly educational. With that said I have a few questions of my own in regards to Dividend Investments. I am new to this stock exchange business and I have decided to pursuse a steady stream of income using Dividends. I am looking to trade mostly US since the yield is much better than CAN. I know that I would probably not be doing much trades as this is for a long term investment. I also feel that i would not use DIPS since I am capable of doing it all manually when the time comes. Does the TFSA have any upside like the RRSP with regard to FOREX? How do I get hit with fees and what can I expect? From what I can tell on this page, there no easy winners with regard to brokerage houses in Canada. Despite their problems, Questrade may still be a better way to go? Is Questrade the same as Qtrade? I use Vanguard in the states and could not ask for a more honest and reliable company to deal with; not to mention price conscious and competitive. Tough sledding so far. I have also used Etrade in the states and have been very happy with them. Scotia now owns itrade is a bank, however, and well, banks are banks, not places to invest unless you are buying their stock. When exchanging funds in a Questrade TFSA comparison. For all registered accounts Questrade clients can choose to have their free cash settle in one of three ways: Canadian, U. Users can change their preference at any time. Note — Questrade does not have any yearly or administration fees for any of our registered accounts — including TFSAs. Folks, I often stop by this blog to read experiences others have shared and have learned a lot in the process. Currently I have an account with Questrade for simple trades and so far I have had no issues with them. I am trying to open a TFSA account and at one point in the application form, under spousal information, there is a mandatory field for SIN number of my spouse. Has anyone else had an issue with Questrade asking for this information? I can confirm that way back inwhen I opened my account with them, they also asked for the spousal SIN. I remember because I too found that weird. Then at the end, the system told me that I have to send in a W-9 form. But that form is only for the use of U. There is no other way to apply for the account, so I will have to wait for them to alter their application process. No idea how long that will take, I am now thinking of going with TD Waterhouse. Kind of sucks, since I have accounts with Questrade already and it would be nice to have my TFSA there too. I am very new in trading and just opened my account with Questrade. Please anyone has a share certified through Questrade clarify with this question. Questrade is a joke. I am trying to open an account for almost two weeks now. They provide no support or help. They just keep telling me to try again later. I see that the information above has not been updated in some time. I ended up researching brokerages and settled on Qtrade which has been an excellent experience. Brokerage fees are low and if I call or email, the call gets answered by a PERSON! Emails are responded to in less than a day. Thanks for the review. I must say that so far two weeks into my dealings with Questrade, I have been very disappointed. It still shows as incomplete application even though everything is received as they confirmed. No emails with updates, no confirmations that application is still being processed… Nothing. Here is the link. If you buy a Canadian stock on the US markets, they will still convert it to the Canadian version, so when you decide to sell, the exchange box will automatically fill to sell on the Canadian Exchanges eg sell LULU populates the screen as LLL on the Canadian Exchanges. You can enter a One-Triggers-Other trade so if your trade fills, the stop-loss is placed automatically. I have verified this for equities and options. It took me about a month to convince them online trading options inside a TFSA account was allowed by the Canadian government. I trade index options and when the market moves I can make huge profits. Today one of their representatives told me on their live chat line that after my account is credited with the funds I will have to wait another 1 to 2 days before placing a trade. Their attitude toward their clients is terrible and their policies are archaic. Questrade has these low prices because they are a small shop. Reality is that YOUR timing simply sucks! True, this is easy money right now like back inbut your missing out on it because you decided to transfer money during this time… has nothing to do with their brokerage services. But anyway, as for your first part of the comment… trading options. I get frustrated with many brokers who refuse to trade options or other fancy transactions in a RRSP or TFSA. My hedge is as good as options in my opinion just a lot riskier than options. If you were that good, you would own your own trading platform with fiber-optic connections… at home. In registered accounts Questrade clients can choose to buy and sell put and call options, and sell covered calls. In margin accounts i. At least I know what I am getting into from the comments I have read. Low price but the service is not so great, I can live with that. Making big profits trading options in an extremely volatile market is not a big deal. So 5 days went by in one of the most volatile markets since the fall of and I was locked out of my Questrade account because my account number had been changed — and nobody thought to tell me. Fortunately I was still able to trade through my Q-Trade account, in spite of the fact their commissions are about 3 times as high as Questrade. You get what you pay for! And I find I get a relatively good deal for one of the lowest fees that can be found in Canada! But if you make so much cash trading, move on to a competitor and concentrate your efforts on trading rather than posting non-constructive points. Not all brokers are made for everyone! They have even cheaper rates than Questrade for active traders, plus you get access to more stock markets than you can deal with. JEACH If Questrade is so good, why is it ranked so low by an independent survey done by the Globe and Mail? When I ask why, they always have a good excuse! As I have mentioned earlier, each trader has specific needs, for example, mine would be for Questrade to add European and a few Asian stock markets. So how could you rate a broker on such different needs? You go out and use your own tool to do the analysis and research, then you come back and trade with your broker. So did RBC gain a 17 ranking with all of that crap they have added in the last few years? In my opinion, a broker should not have everything analysis tools, videos, trade simulators, fancy graphics, etcthey should specialize in a few things and do it well. From my point trading view I gave up on full service brokers about 15 years ago and have used online brokers ever since. I learned long ago that to be a success options trader I have to trade online. It does require and average of 50 trades per month for 3 months to obtain these rates with TD Waterhouse. Comment did point out some negatives about TDW but you can call at any time and speak to someone knowledgeable. The autowashes come in very handy on my RRSP and TFSA. And with a good online broker you can see the bid and the offer and you can instantly make changes as the market changes. Commissions are only a secondary consideration. There are a few terms being used within this blog which are incorrect. Plus, by law, if you trade too often during the course of a day I think or too quickly buy and sell within minutesyou are labeled as a day-trader. Might sound prestigious, but being labeled as such means that you can no longer get regular customer prices from ANY brokers. For example, to get Level II quotes will cost anyone a couple of dollars… but day-traders by-law must be charged in the hundreds of dollars. Normally, you will not need a trading platform for this since you can comfortably transact online or calling in. Most importantly, they are made to bring up quotes charts with a single touch of a key or mouse click. Most are made to be able to trade also with a single touch of a button or mouse click. Normally you can also program trading algorithms for program trading. And also, you can buy baskets with a single touch. For example, when I was a day-trader for a firm, I would pre-set my volume of shares to and would also program certain keys to be buy or sell on a specific ECN of my choice. So that at any moment, I could press a key and I could have bought 1K shares of XYZ on the BATS ECN. A few seconds later, another press of a button to sell 1K shares on ARCA. They are great if you have a lot of money and little time to manage your money because they really keep an eye on your money for you and constantly keep in touch with you. Customer service is dreadful. They insisted it could only be done by phone I made two separate calls and it quickly became apparent they only wanted to try to convince me to keep my account open. The agent offered me a bonus? Getting my funds returned was even more difficult. They insisted that I provide either a void cheque or a stamped and signed deposit form from my bank, in spite of the fact I had added funds from that same bank account less than 2 weeks previous. They apparently expected me to order cheques that would never be used in order to satisfy one more of their anal rules. I reminded them I had also provided a stamped and signed deposit slip and they quickly backed off. They offer cheap commissions but in my opinion their poor service and trading problems are far more expensive in the long run. I am already paying the higher trade amount on the per trade than many other brokerages. Shocked at the incompetence. Talk about not seeing the forest and staring at the tree! Oh, and I have been an account holder for over 20 years with BNS and 11 yrs with SMDI. If so, you may be in luck because they have branches everywhere and I would recommend you walk into one. Many, many years ago, I had issues at RBC in my trading account similar to what you are describing. So I walked into my RBC branch and demanded that I talk to a person authorized to take decisions normally you have to talk to lower people, they saw that I was furious… but respectful. I ended up talking to the bank manager. These people that you usually call at some help desk have almost no power and also are not mandated to think for themselves. But a bank manager will recognize your business value and can change things. I was wondering if there is a Canadian online brokerage that does the same. I would rather not have the added complication of maintaining a short position on the stock in order to write a put when I either want to just collect premiums or I want to actually buy the stock New To Options: I just checked with OptionsXpress Canada and they told me I can trade Cash-Secured Puts in my RRSP online. I had been meaning to ask them for some time and your question prompted me to do so. Will try that this afternoon Trizi — Please post your results here or PM me. Singapore would be useful to also detail what level of permission and whether you have to do anything special to apply for platform permissions, or whether they automatically give it to you. Can someone reccommend an online brokerage in Canada that offers OCO orders? I am using Tradefreedom but their order offerings are woeful. No OCO orders so you have to be glued to your screen all day. OptionsXpress Canada Margin, RRSP and TFSA accounts, USD only and ThinkorSwim Canada Margin only, USD only I trade major Canadian companies on these platforms, I just do it in US dollars. I checked again, this time with the trade desk and a Cash Secured Put requires a Level 2 authorization for US retirement accounts. Canadian regulations are the culprit. When I called them they said dividends will only be reinvested if their value equals or exceeds the cost of a share. So they will not purchase partial shares. Is this your understanding too? That comparison, you need enough in dividend distribution to cover at least 1 share of the underlying stock. As well, some ETFs allow partial shares as well on DRIP. The same result may arise where a plan trust engages in a short sale, i. An RESP that is carrying on a business is revocable. An RRSP or a RRIF will be liable for income tax on its taxable income for any year in which it is carrying on a business. The types of investments that qualify for TFSAs are generally similar to those that qualify for registered retirement savings plans RRSPs. I would absolutely stay away from it. I am looking for an on line brokerage that will allow me to trade the Toronto stock exchange. Costs are important and this table helps. It does not tell me if the company offers street-name ownership or registry or direct ownership. How do I find this information? Any information would help. Also info about share registry options in Canada. At a bank, you will lose all monies greater than what the government protects. But at a broker, you own the title to your securities, so it can go broke all it wants, those titles still belong to you and would get transferred to whomever would take over. I use scotiaitrade formerly tradefreedom since and it is horrible service and they still havent reversed the fees they illegally charged me. I been out for 2 weeks now as they promise to call me back to fix a technical issue with my platform. I been promised a callback everyday now and they just dont return calls or try to resolve issues. Tradefreedom was great, Scotiaitrade is incredibly horrible Does TD Waterhouse have USD trading account? Would TD fit the bill? They also offers TFSAs. How come it does not come out with a high rating? I am with TDW Canada. You can prevent it with a different type of order if you need. They allow trading any kind of stock, including penny stocks. No confirmation is required for sell. If an order is required to be confirmed over the phone, in some cases, such as buying a lot of shares, you can set your order in such a way that it will never be executed. Later you can modify your order the way you like it on line without calling them or cancel it, also on line. Customer support is available Once I called them at night during a holiday, and I got all I needed without any problem. I would qualify their customer support as very good one. Never had a problem. I do call them a lot. DRIP is also free. My TFSA account is also bound to stocks. As of now they have auto washing for US dollars. You just need to call once and sign for it. Opening an account took me 1 hour. Even so that I was told that my account would be activated after approval for the next business day, it was active as soon as I got home. I have all possible trading accounts with them. No fees for inactivity or minimum balances. If you sing for e-services, there will be no fee for maintaining your orders history. If you have other business with them, such as a checking account, loans, mortgage…, you might be qualified for a flat rate with much less money in your trading account. If you are a day trade or a short term holder, you should not trade if your profit is expected to be less than a few hundreds dollars. If you have other business with them, you might save much more money with your mortgage, for example. I have a lot of business platform them and as a result my mortgage is only 2. And it was as low as 0. I pay a little more for my stock trading but I save thousands of dollars in other places with them. You need to call them and ask for your options for your trading account. You might be surprised to find out that there much more than a general description on their web site. The orders are executed instantaneously. The orders can be modified or canceled before they are filled. The set of different type of orders is more than enough for basic trading. I use other online applications for L2 support and life charts with all the tools I need. It works for me better and actually cheaper so far unless I become a full day trader. Then having another broker and custom trading application might be my next choice. Stay with your bank unless you want to become a full day trader. Unless then having everything in one place even it is a little more expensive, still gives you a lot of advantages that you might not have with an independent discount brokerage. Do the brokerages engage in hypothecation and re-hypothecation of the clients assets, if so what are their policies in this regard? I am a foreigner looking for a brokerage where I can trade the Canadian stock exchange in the name of a trust. Any information you can help with would be most appreciated. Thanks for the comparison tables, very helpful. Reading all these comments was very entertaining too. I would hate to do customer service for any of these brokerages; if the comments are any indication, there are a lot of customers with little money and even less knowledge expecting the world from their discount broker. Globe Advisor did a story on discount brokers a while back. Any thoughts or suggestion on how I can save some money here. Should I purchase some USD and deposit in Questrade? I started out with TradeFreedom and was happy there. Then when Scotia iTrade took over, it kept getting worse. I got the same e-mail from iTrade. I called iTrade and gave them a piece of my mind. Though as a side note, switching your accounts out of iTrade is still prob a really great move. But its only a online of time before that goes too…. Thanks for posting that Andrew. You must make a minimum of trades per quarter about 50 per month to be eligible for this rate. I did a lot of research and find them to be the best priced online trading firm in Canada. What will you do about this situation? I am not affiliated with any Questrade competitor. I do not profit from the posts. After reviewing multiple documents including financial, communication, phone, chat, e-mail and listening to pointless phone conversations with Questrade, I just could not believe what is happening and neither could the bank managers being ignored by Questrade while trying to recall the funds. So many try to talk to Questrade in private or file official complaints with the regulators, hoping they will do the right thing, without any results. My best advice to anyone having serious issues with Questrade is to file official comparison with the regulators and then contact a good lawyer and your local media, because the regulators will not help you. What are the regulators doing about Questrade? Questrade function with near total impunity. My personal experience is in sharp contrast with those reviews and closer to the bad experiences of the other customers. I confirmed with Questrade that I would be able to transfer funds from and to my bank account since the bank verification is complete, validated, accepted and I have a void cheque and valid ID on file with them. I was able to return, using EFT, part of my funds back to the same bank account that was originally used to send money to Questrade using bill payment. All I want is for them to return my money and close my file, but they decided that my money was better off in their pockets. You should be able to transfer your funds. They also refuse to put a supervisor or manager on the line. They do not care about their current or future clients. If you made an online bill payment or you paid by cheque, the amount will be refunded to you. Questrade is making money with my money and making a fool out everyone. Please do a quick online search to find all the horrible experiences and the negative comments from their current and former customers. Some Questrade reviewers have also been duped. Think about all that you risk loosing, if a bully decides to steal your money and refuses to give it back. What would you do, if you were in a similar situation? Honor what you have put in writing. No one likes a bully, liar or a thief. No one is above the law. I just shook my head, closed the account, and stayed with my account at TDW. Thank you Paul for the feed back. It is good to know about this. Fortunately for me, I do not trade options. This account with RBC would be for my registered accounts. I really hate forced currency conversions and washing up trades is something I feel I should not have to do. For options, if your account is Non Registered, should try Interactive Brokers. Fees are low and their platform is very powerful Thanks for the tip re:Interactive Brokers as well. Please update the table for Questrade Forex spread as it is no longer. That was quite a shock I received when I converted a small chunk of cash. Any recommendations on an ideal stock? Are there any plans to update this list with current offerings? They refused to refund me on the spot I was never able to get a hold of a customer service person in a timely manner. It was always a circus to get to talk a person at Questrade. I have moved my business to BMO Investorline. I would rather pay 10 bucks per trade, now that my play money has passed 50k, and never deal with Questrade again. At least now, I get through to a customer service person any time I need to. Is there anything i need to know when you closed the account with them. Is that inactivity fee for not having any securities on your account. Did you just held Cash? I moved my acct from questrade after their mobile app failed several times. I suppose they are platform Walmart of retail with their prices but you definitely get what you pay for. Their trade is nothing but a deception. Recently, I paid commission for a trade of shares. So, in order to avoid ECN I was told to go less than the ask price and sure enough they got me again. Because I said GTC they filled it in 3 separate orders. They never ever tell you the total cost before you place the order or how they are going to fill it. I keep my RSP and TFSA accts at RBC Direct. On each of the 4 transactions across a few days, I was only charged between 8 and 12 pips above the Bank of Canada closing rate for USD. This works out to just over 0. Have you compared HSBC Invest Direct with any other brokers that listed in your? Is this low activity admin fee tax deductible too? If so, does it go under Line — Carrying charges and interest expenses? Hi great articel and information: Any advice for a Canadian looking for a brokerage account that is currently non-resident living overseas for the next couple years? Do I have limitations? Trading I better off getting a US based brokerage account or a Canadian based brokerage account? I am probably looking at buying a mix if both US and Canadian stocks, probably not Mutual Funds, as I belive I may not be able to, being non-resident? Thank for any advice or pointers. In my search for my first discount brokerage Google often leads me back to this page. Elsewhere Globe and Mail ranks Virtual Brokers as a good option. But here I read there are customer service issues with both Questrade and Virtual Brokers. Perhaps, I am worrying about nothing and everything will be fine or perhaps not. My primary bank is TD with which I have TFSA — e-series account. I also have an RRSP with them which currently has mutual funds but that too I am thinking to convert into an e-series account. There are comments here about TD but they are back from Have things changed since then apart from some fee structure changes they did earlier this year. Several months to respond, borderline of being thiefs. Despite a good rating on Globe, I would never recommend them to anyone… I have found a nice test for the qualification of the stock broker. Ask them about form V2A Non-Resident Form V2A from Irish Revenue Agency. Briefly, this is an equivalent of famous W8-BEN but for the Irish-based companies, like Seagate Technologies for example. How many brokers know about its existence? I have just tested the downtown branch of TD Waterhouse. Even when I insisted. Until I forced the guy ; to read few short sentences from the document I have brought to his office. I am going to try this test with IB as I am moving some stuff from TDW to IB now to see where they stand ; Commenting on my own post. TD Waterhouse at least has accepted the information about he form and promised to deal with it if I fill it up properly. InteractiveBrokers has refused to honour the form even if I fill it up myself. I am wondering if they are legally obliged to honour the requests from the transfer agent. While by itself it is not really that big of an issue V2A, foreign tax, we can offset it when filing the tax return it looks like it opens an interesting issue. IB told me that they are, essentially, US broker and, even when it is about the Canadian customers they are still considered US entity. I think this creates some interesting consequences — especially when you have anything significant on the account. Maybe I am wrong but I think some more research is needed. However, looks like QTrade charges a quarterly admin fee for smaller accounts. Trade washing, even automatic, was very annoying and did not work for everything. Not to mention that it was difficult to track and verify. No, but Self-Directed Dividend Purchase Plan, which will automatically purchase selected stocks with dividend proceeds. For example if I had 10 million dollars could I margin another 10 million? Or would I have to open multiple accounts due to margin limits ie. I think TD has a 750K max for margining mutual funds Using margin is at all is highly risky and probably a bad idea. You never want to be forced to sell at the bottom! There are also No Margin Call loans for mutual funds that are easier to qualify for. But avoiding any risk of margin calls significantly reduces the risk. Questrade is in general a good system but as a day trader I had nightmares with them. They crashed for about 4 hours on Monday morning December 1s, I was playing risky oil stocks of which I had to sell that morning at as oil was going down…long story short I started the day with an account of on margin, was trying to sell at in the safe zone but was unable to. I was trying to make a phone trade to liquidate my whole account and was kept on the line for 2 full hours until it got cut. I was chatting with them on live chat as well begging them to liquidate my account and all the guy said was to call in and they will fix it as soon as possible. Long story short if you are a day trader I do not recommend them whatsoever. They can be as good as they sound but their systems do bug and you are left to suffer the consequences. My first name is Mehdi and im sure they can find me in their systems and double check my story as it is true! The fact that Interactive Brokers now offers RRSP and TFSA accounts makes it a no brainier for me. I have used them for my non-registered accounts for several years and the savings on commissions, forex and other fees is amazing. I am now switching all my accounts to IB. They do not offer RESPs unfortunately. On small trades that can eat all your profits. Looks like it will be more important this year. I have just learned that I can no longer sell DSC mutual fund units online with TD Waterhouse because of new IIROC regulation. So, apparently, they have to call the MF company, confirm everything with them and get back to you with the exact numbers! IB offers RRSP and TFSA?????!??!! It is not April 1st but I do see it now in their FAQ. Somehow I have a feeling that I will be transferring more accounts from TD Waterhouse this year. Thanks for the tip! I just made the mistake of opening and funding my TFSA for …will definitely be closing everything and moving over. Anyone have any experience linking them together? If you close your TFSA and withdraw the funds, then you get your contribution room back only next year. Better do account transfer instead. But you know what? I took my statements from TDW for two last years and laid down all commissions I paid them in each year. I ended up with pretty large numbers. I tried to calculate how much would I pay to IB and even my most pessimistic scenario was still interesting in terms of savings. Thanks for the heads up — I plan to leave some of my TFSA at questrade since its free ETF purchases and does nicely for a passive portfolio. Starting tonight PM EST you will be able to open linked TFSA account directly from you account management. Make sure to select the TFSA account type. However, I am tired of their inflexibility, lousy reports I had to write quite a bit of code to be able to extract the data I needed for taxes. And on top of that — very high fees sometimes discouraging me from doing relatively small but still profitable trades. And thanks for correcting me — it does seem like there is no fee for TFSA. This sucks because in the past I was able to move USD to RRSP and TFSA without incurring any extra fees. Essentially, I was telling the broker how much CAD I want to transfer and they would tell me how much will it be in USD. And the transfer was done using money-market mutual fund, in kind. I think this is a serious disadvantage. I have been doing in-kind transfers to my registered account in the past yes, I know about the deemed disposition ; This is particularly important for US securities. And if I already have the security in margin account — pay two commissions A bit unclear if IBC actually allows US securities in RSP and TFSA. They do not seem to say they do not but I am going to confirm with them. While I hope these comments help future readers which brokerage to pick — I would like to add that I tried opening the TFSA today under account management but it appears you need a beneficiary designated before you can proceed. There is something good to say about almost every broker, I think. With TDW I could relatively easily grow my RSPs initially with TD e-series funds. Considering that their MERs are reasonable and transactions are free it was a good alternative to index ETFs. Well, in fact these are index ETFs that have appeared later as an alternative ; IB does not offer MFs. This means that some investment strategies like cost-averaging or reinvestment of relatively small amounts of dividends are not possible or have to be done differently. I know for sure it is not mandatory. By the way, I have asked a bunch of questions about USD and in-kind transfers, waiting for the response on my ticket. Will relay the answers here once I get them. There is one more thing that surprises me at IBC — they seem to be limiting the number of sub-accounts under family advisor account trading 5. Again, waiting for clarification from them. Maybe I misunderstand the meaning of the sub-account. Skipping RESP because IB online not support them. So, that makes 6 or 7 accounts. It would be silly if I can only have 5 out of them. So I have exchanged a few messages with IBC support and found the answers to my questions. Personally I am not entirely happy about the answers. I may be wrong but I believe my current broker allows me to buy long puts. I consider it as a major issue even if you do not receive any income in USD. I often send these shares or USD proceeds to registered accounts. Plus, you may simply want to move a stock you own that is hovering around your ACB to TFSA in the beginning of the year…no way to do it with IB and I was told that it is not something they consider for near future — they currently limit the advisor account to 5 sub-accounts. But I was told that because of the recent introduction of new account types this is something they will change soon. So…some food for thoughts. My biggest concern is really the lack of way to move USD to these accounts. Thanks for the update! Family advisor account seems to be a special case — when someone wants to legally manage the account s for close family members. But I was told that this inactivity fee is assessed for the entire set of accounts. I have been with BMO Investorline for over 15 years. In the past year their service deteriorated to the level on totally unacceptable. Most problems are with online access and underlying trading system. Here is the list of problems, some of them are extremely critical Poor security. Online login to your account taxes maximum of 6 characters in password and these passwords are not even case sensitive. Any teenage hacker can break-in to your account in less than 10 minutes. I raise this issue with IL over 3 years ago and they told online that this will be fixed soon — nothing is done as of Jan Overloaded servers. Try logging in to your account around am or 4pm. The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. Even when you are successful with login it takes up to 3 minutes delay until you get to your portfolio page. Often, you get disconnected for no reason just because their servers cannot handle that many simultaneous connections. I reported a number of problems using their support system — the answers I received were either inappropriate e. This problem is intermittent, but it occurred to me at least 4 times in the past month In on one of my accounts I actively trade in options and in the past 3 months I encountered at least 5 days when I would not be able to see bid and ask for all my options for hours. Suddenly, all bid and ask values go to zero and even when you click on the option to trade you get zero values in trading screen. As you can imagine, this is totally unacceptable for options trader. Comparison just love the answer I got from IL support the screenshot was taken at the middle of the trading day and showed zeros for options, including GOOG, BX, CNQ, ENB, etc. At this point I had enough and will be moving to another discount brokerage. It is too bad as IL used to be the best in Canada. While I think BMO InvestorLine could use a few improvements such as commission free ETFs, lower trading costs, a better streamer with more indicators and more tools for dividend investors I have not encountered any of the problems Mike listed in his 2, 3 or 4. Once they have implemented the full USD support for RRSP and TFSA I can no longer use my full buying power in RRSP. Before this change I could easily just buy it. Now it is not the case. So either you are forced to always keep excessive amount of USD or manually convert most likely excessive amount from CAD to cover your trade. You are missing one of the major discount brokerage providers on here : National Bank Direct Brokerage. One of the leading brokerage plateforms in canada but doesnt seem to get the exposure or recognition that it warrents. I have been hoping for a long time for IB brokers to allow registered accounts.
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