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moneysense.ca, 31/10/07
Adieu to Questrade
A few months back, I moved our investment accounts to Questrade to take advantage of their rock-bottom trading commissions. Since then, the bigger discount brokers (TD Waterhouse, BMO InvestorLine and RBC Direct Investing) have reduced commissions to $9.99 for some of their clients. Since we already have our RRSP accounts with TD Waterhouse and qualify for the low commissions, I have decided to consolidate all our accounts with TD Waterhouse.
While I would probably stick with Questrade if we still paid $29 per trade, a $5 difference is not enough to offset some of the problems faced with Questrade and one big advantage of consolidation:
- Parking Cash: If you are like me, often you have a bit of cash sitting around waiting for the right opportunity to buy and while you are waiting, it’s best to park cash in a money market fund or cashable GIC. With Questrade, depending on your cash balance and trading frequency, the amount you give up in interest earnings may negate any savings on the commissions.
- Customer Service: There must be some very satisfied Questrade customers as it was ranked #1 that category in The Globe & Mail ranking of discount brokers. Let’s just say I am not one among them.
- Funding Your Account: If you mail a personal cheque to Questrade, it may take as long as 20 business days for your account to be funded. While, it is true that there is an alternate way for the funds to appear in your account a little faster, it is still slow compared to TD Waterhouse. You can walk into any TD Canada Trust branch with your brokerage account number and deposit a personal cheque and fund your account within 2 business days.
- Benefit of Consolidation: Today, our RRSPs have some Canadian equities and investment accounts have some international index funds and I would like to swap their location because dividends from Canadian equities are taxed favourably. Of course, you can only swap if you consolidate all your accounts with one broker.
moneysense.ca, 31/10/07
I’m with TD Waterhouse as well, mainly for the funding. My personal and business accounts are already there – so (re)funding is just a few clicks away, and appears to be instant.
Setup time was also very quick. I went into the branch on a Thurs. and was able to trade by Monday.
Nice of you guys to have 100K in TDW
Note: seems like you need to have 100K asset in TDW for 30 days to start seeing the $9.99 commission, otherwise it’s $29.99 until 30 business days?
Good to know that you can take a cheque into TD and have it in your WH account in 2 days.
I typically transfer it in from another bank automatically, but as a transfer instead of a preauthorized payment. While this takes 4 business days, I can adjust the amount without visiting the branch or making a call.
Good idea about the money market or GIC to park cash. I typically buy e-series all the time, but money market may mean less tracking plus being able to buy when there’s a dip while waiting to have enough to buy ETF’s at $10 per trade.
Questrade is implementing USD EFT – 1 month time frame
I’ve been using Questrade, but several of my friends who are serious about trading use Interactive Brokers. It’s 1 cent per share ($1 minimum per trade), and it offers features like options trading that Questrade doesn’t have. I can’t comment on the funding process or the interest rates, but the commission are a killer deal.
http://individuals.interactivebrokers.com/en/main.php
Of course the other thing about TD Waterhouse is extra services like their fairly good stock screener , research reprots, and online facility for buying bonds.
I still staying with the Q because of the low commissions and they meet my needs.
I don’t have any accounts anywhere else – if I did then certainly the chance to have all the accounts in one place would influence my thinking.
Mike
I have used Questrade for 6 months and found it satisfactory. There are some things I would like to see improved, such as the ones CC mentioned, but until I have 100K QT seems like the best option for me. If commissions were to come down across the board(especially at my bank) then I would have to reassess my options.
Rookie: If I were still paying $29 elsewhere, I’d keep my Questrade account. I don’t trade much and I’ve concluded that a $5 difference isn’t worth the hassle for me.
Mike: I found Questrade works as long as you don’t run into any problems or want to do something that is slightly “not normal”. Then it’s like you are Alice in Wonderland. For a $25 difference per trade, I’ll put up with the quirks. But not for a $5 difference.
I am sort of caught in the middle a bit. I opened a Questrade account with all intentions of using it for all my future trading. But before my first trade on Questrade, BMO Investorline made their announcement of lowering their fees. So, I still have a Questrade account open but it only just has some cash in there to hold it open.
BMO’s interest rate on cash in my Investorline is a measly 1.85% rate the last time I checked. It’s better than 0% interest I guess, but not by a whole heck of a lot.
Not exactly on topic but what kind of trader are you Phil? (I’m just curious) ie how often do you trade – how long do you hold stocks etc?
Mike
Hi Jan,
You mentioned that Questrade is implementing USD EFT in about 1 month…..does that includes for RRSP accounts? That is, we are able to have both a CAD and USD cash accounts in our RRSPs?
you should consider etrade canada. trades at 9.99 and you get 4.75% on cash that sits
ceda: I believe Jan is talking about transferring USD cash easily between your chequing account and your Questrade investment account. I haven’t heard anything about Questrade offering USD RRSP accounts but there is a rumour that RBC Direct is planning to.
noizyboy: For me, wash trades are very valuable as I sell my US stocks over time and put them into ETFs. E*Trade doesn’t offer wash trades and in any case, their cash optimizer account isn’t available for RRSP accounts.
USD EFT = USD Electronic Funds Transfer, it’s just a way to transfer money from your account to questrade’s account
[...] Adieu to Questrade Canadian Capitalist moved his account from Questrade to TD Waterhouse. [...]
[...] Adieu to Questrade in which Canadian Capitalist talks about how he moved his account from Questrade to TD Waterhouse. [...]
I am in the process myself of switching my RSP from E*Trade to TD. Both offer swaps, which I like, but I want the ability to do wash trades, too.
There’s no real difference in commissions, so paying the fee to transfer the RSP stings a little, but it will pay for itself with the wash trades. Listen up, discount brokers: your clients want USD denominated RSP accounts!
[...] it doesn’t pay to procrastinate. I wrote about how I was in the process of moving our investment accounts out of Questrade and though I had filled out the transfer forms, I’ve been neglecting to mail the forms to TD [...]
way off topic but…
Be careful with E*Trade. The parent corp was heavily involved in the subprime mess down south and were just bailed out of bankruptcy at the end of last year.
The high yield optimiser and free trade promotions are a despirate move to keep investor cash. I don’t hink the issue will go away any time soon. I am moving all my capital out of E*Trade to something more stable and secure.
I just had a horrible experience with Questrade. I had RRSP in so called USD account, which was suppose to save me on exchange rate, it was a very bad idea for me. Questrade charged me $20 per month for data feed and made several conversions from CAD/USD when I bought and sold stocks in USD. Since their interface and account view is so terrible, you can’t really see these hidden charges right away. They show your USD account in Canadian dollars probably just to confuse you more and hide their extra fees and commissions.
Anyway, stay away from this broker. THIS IS THE WORST BROKER YOU CAN FIND.
I was totally upset with Questrade.com. Their service was absolutely horrible.
First, I submitted a request to transfer my asset from ING Sharebuilder to Questrade.com. I had been contacting Questrade all the time, and I waited for more than one month, and the Rep told me Ing Sharebuilder only allow to transfer in Cash. I DID NOT BELIEVE THAT CRAP. So I called ex-broker, and they replied in a official way that Questrade NEVER contacted them for the transfer. So I called Questrade again, and only to find out that REP THOUGHT ING does not allow transfer in kind but only in cash. What a stupid and ignorant employee of Questrade.
Second, I planned to sell my shares at the end of 2009 and book the loss. I called Questrade and they told me as long as I trade before end of the year, the loss will be booked in 2009. However, when the trade summary for 2009 came, it did not include any trade after Dec 23rd. And I was very upset and I called questrade. Another Rep told me it is by settlement date. So I asked for recorded message, he told me because of the phone system update, they did not keep any previous recorded message.
Another thing about Qeustrade ranked #1 by Globe and Mail, apparently there is another company called Qtrade.com claiming to be ranked # 1 by Globe and Mail for four straight years. It looks like Questrade can not provide the service, but they are capable of lying. Here is the link to the ranking:
https://www.qtrade.ca/_pdfs/en/news/news_091103_GM_ranking.pdf
Now I will definitely move to another broker. Since I have 50k in my account, I can still get low commission deal from IB or Scotia iTrade.
Questrade was ranked one of the the worst online brokers in Canada.
https://www.qtrade.ca/_pdfs/en/news/news_091103_GM_ranking.pdf
I agree – the helpdesk is not very helpful and you might be forced to hang up and call again until you trip over a knowledgeable one. The interface sometimes has issues, they still haven’t centralized everything under the same umbrella…. But there are very good things with Questrade vs iTrade, Waterhouse etc. If you have less than 25K the later ones charge you 100$/year to manage the account. Also, if one invests in US funds, those get converted back and forth and 1% fee is lost every time. Let’s say one has only CAD in their account and purchases 5000$-worth of US equities, in USD. They will be charged with Questrade 0.5% fee for changing the money to USD BUT, it will stay in USD until you request or force the system (those are the only funds available) to change it back. With the others: 1% to convert CAD to USD, you sell the US equities, the money gets converted automatically into CAD – another 1% and so on and so forth… Depending on your investing mobility this could add up to big bucks.
Not a big supporter of Questrade but not a big fan of big-banks either (worked for a US one and I witnessed first hand the waste that makes them charge commisions so high).
TD is a load of crap. Their commissions on stocks below $2 are criminal. Plus they automatically convert your US share sales from US$ back to Cdn$ at their crappy exchange rate. It’s absurd.
IMO…
Interactive Brokers is the best for active trading accounts. (they don’t offer rsp or tfsa)
Questrade is the best for TFSA and RSP accounts. Also for mutual funds (they rebate the trailer fee to you!!)
Transferring money to either takes about 4 or 5 business days. Not a big deal.
But if you’re an idiot or a baby who needs help staff to hold your hand as you trade, neither is a great option for you. IB’s customer service is very poor while Questrade’s mediocre.
questrade did me alright for about a year. Then I decided to transfer my stocks and cash over from another brokerage. What a nightmare! I have been trying to do this since Feb. and still have not completed the full transfer. They transferred my canadian stock and cash but no US. Then they transferred the US cash and no stock. Then one US stock and left the rest! It is hard to explain or image this going on for so long and someone not taking care of it. I have contacted them over 20 times and they are all useless. Loads of hidden fees to which they hide from you in another secret area that you have to go into to see these hidden fees.
Is there any good trade brokers who do right by their clients?
I am certainly staying away from TD… I want start making some money, not just make them money.
Questrade seems like the best bang for the buck…
anybody have problems liquifying funds from a QT account for personal use?