Canadian Capitalist

With the sharp fall in the stock market, Rob Carrick points out that investors with a discount brokerage account should watch out for higher fees.

Administration fees: The discount broker arms of the big banks typically charge an administration fee on self-directed registered accounts if the value is less than a certain threshold. TD Waterhouse, for [...]

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Qtrade is once again (for the third straight year) the winner in the Globe and Mail ranking of the online discount brokers. BMO InvestorLine, E*Trade, TD Waterhouse and Credential Direct round out the top five, though RBC Direct Investing missed a spot by a mere whisker. Qtrade’s top ranking (reviews, comments and customer opinion on [...]

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As regular readers know, we have our brokerage accounts with TD Waterhouse. I transferred our accounts over from RBC Direct Investing to take advantage of TD Waterhouse’s wash trade capability in adopting a passive investing strategy. Now, RBC is making a tempting offer: earn 1% cash back when you transfer $25,000 or more from a [...]

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E*Trade Financial (ETFC), which finds itself caught in the credit crisis, has decided to raise cash by selling its Canadian unit to Scotiabank. It would be interesting to see what happens when the deal closes in the the fall of this year. E*Trade currently has significantly better pricing than ScotiaMcLeod Direct: $9.99 for accounts valued [...]

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Many thanks to Charles for the note Credential Direct (read review here) is now washing rates when U.S. Dollar denominated securities are bought and sold in RRSP accounts on the same day. Charles quotes from their April 2008 newsletter:

FX FLAT TRADES (Washing Rates)
Pay less for US trades. Now when you execute a US$ buy/sell transaction [...]

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GK sent me an e-mail noting that E*Trade has joined TD Waterhouse and Qtrade in offering some form of “wash trade” capability when buying and selling US dollar stocks in a RRSP. A slightly edited version of GK’s note is posted below with permission:
I followed your post about Questrade allowing customers to hold US Dollar [...]

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Readers know that I’ve been critical of Questrade’s customer service but Questrade’s move to allow investors to hold US dollars in their RRSPs should be applauded as a bold move with RRSP season just around the corner. Rob Carrick writes in The Globe and Mail today that Questrade will allow investors to deposit US [...]

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Often, 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 Waterhouse. Sure enough, at the end of the year, some of my ETF holdings [...]

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Qtrade is a bit of a mystery despite being ranked the #1 discount broker in the Globe and Mail survey for two years running. I personally don’t have an account with Qtrade, so I asked Evan, who has been a customer for about one year, if he would be willing to share his experience with [...]

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E*Trade (ETFC) dropped more than 50% today when it announced that it will take a “significant writedown” for asset-backed securities that had dropped in value over the past month. Though the company says it remains “well-capitalized” and could absorb an immediate write-down of as much as $1 billion, at least one analyst is saying the [...]

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