- Comments (19)
- Text Size: Down Up
moneysense.ca, 20/08/07
Credential Direct Review
I asked reader Dan if he would be willing to share his thoughts on Credential Direct, a brokerage with which he is familiar and I am not. Dan wrote back with the following review (Thanks Dan!). You can also check out the reviews of other discount brokers: Qtrade, Questrade, RBC Direct, TD Waterhouse, BMO InvestorLine and Scotia Direct.
Last fall I started to look around for an online broker for my RRSP account. I was tired of paying $125 for the yearly administration fee, along with the $80 plus sales commission fee. I had an RESP account with TD Waterhouse at the time, so I used it as my benchmark.
Credential Direct was founded in 2000 by Canada’s credit union system. You do not need to be a member of a credit union to open an account. It is a division of Credential Securities, which is a CIPF member.
I was very impressed with Credential Direct for a number of reasons:
Account fees
The first thing that caught my eye was the annual RRSP fee is only $50. This fee is waved with $15,000 or more in the account. There is no inactivity fee. When I opened my RRSP account a Canadian dollar and a U.S. dollar cash account was opened at the same time.
Trading fees
The fee for trading stocks is $19 for 1000 shares or less or a trade value of $2,000 or less.
If you trade 1001 shares or more and stocks priced $1 or less the fee is 1% of the trade value. For trades with 1001 shares or more and stocks priced $1.01 or more, the fee is 2 cents/share. Options are $19 plus $1.25 per contract. The maximum fee is $250. Also if you spend over $2,500 in one month on commissions, you get a 10% rebate. These fees are web based only, add $14 for telephone orders. If you are an active trader online, which is 25 trades per quarter or more, the fees are a flat $9.95. Options would be $9.95 flat plus $1.25 per contract.
Here is a link to an excellent comparison chart with other major online brokers.
Mutual Funds
Credential Direct seems to have access to all of the different mutual funds that you will find elsewhere. CD does not charge any fees to purchase or redeem funds, but the mutual fund could still charge you. The transaction amount must be $1,000 or more or the fund company minimum, whichever is greater. Money Market fund purchases are a $2,500 minimum purchase.
Fixed Income
Credential Direct also seems to offer a wide selection of federal, provincial, municipal, corporate, coupon and money market issues. I am not very well versed in bond sales, yields, etc, thus I can not give much insight into this.
Research
Credential Direct, has a Tools tab which has a portfolio section, technical events section, a technical screener, financial screener, options screener, options valuation section and a mutual fund screener. The technical event section uses the Recognia Technical Analysis service, as does TD Waterhouse.
moneysense.ca, 20/08/07
A wee bit off topic – I just noticed on my browser tab that you have a new symbol for your site – pretty cool, I’ll have to try that.
Good review Dan.
Mike
Here’s another +1 for CD’s phone support: Everytime I called, their reps were very friendly and professional. One rep even followed up on an issue via email several days after my intial call. I couldn’t say the same thing about certain other discount online brokerages in Canada.
I’ve used C.Direct for a couple years now. I’ve consistently received good service, plus there’s a bit of a ‘feel good’ factor in giving business to a brokerage that’s essentially a credit union.
This is not a review. It’s just a list of features. A review would talk about your opinion of or your experiences with Credential Direct, not just list what they offer.
I have used both Credential Direct and BMO Investorline. The fills on Credential Direct are slow. I do not recommend Credential for active traders. I highly recommend BMO, the fills are instant as soon as you hit submit. Credential is only good for placing longer term trades.
[...] 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 [...]
I decided to go with Credential Direct as my online brokerage as well, based on what people were saying about it versus others. Having lived in the US for the first ten years of my career, I’m disappointed I require such a thing at all, as I’m used to dealing with mutual funds directly, and therefore keeping more of my own money. Anyway, Credential Direct makes a big show of being very secure, and they also offer email as one of their ways to communicate back and forth. But a big security hole is the email. They don’t offer any kind of secure email, despite the ready availability of cheap and even free email certificates from companies such as Thawte, that could be used to encrypt email communications and keep them safe from interceptors. When I raised this issue to them, they told me that they can’t bend to every client’s unique safety issues. This, after they sent both my account password and my trading password in plaintext via email. Fortunately I was able to change the passwords almost immediately, because I was at my PC when it received those emails, but this is a rather major security lapse, not something unique to me, and must be fixed.
Is there a real review of Credential Direct on this site? This is just a list of features that can already be found on the Credential Direct site.
Thanks Randy. Great point, I’ll look elsewhere. Who do you recommend?
Can someone with some recent experience with Credential post here? I’m curious to know how responsive their trading platform and customer service is. Would you recommend them?
I am a client of Credential as of last April. I cannot do a comparison of services as I have not used another service. My initial application was to RBC Direct but when they mailed back all of my personal information thru regular mail in an open envelope (unglued) I became unglued and changed my credit cards, client card etc.etc. to thwart any breach of my banking accounts with RBC. Try to get your client card number changed at RBC. Instead of being understanding of the of the potential theft of identity i had a long drawn out war to protect myself. Needless to say I didn’t go with RBC Direct. However my glossy brochure and fee structure from RBC did arrive the next week in a tightly wrapped express post package. How kind of them!
Further to Credential Direct, recently I’ve noticed that my holdings page has been down intermittently and is supposed to be updated every 15 minutes. Again this weekend although the last update was after market close Friday, my Holdings page is far off the closing prices on about half of my equity holdings. This is becoming more frequent in the last month. Secondly Credential Direct does not allow all or nothing trades in Canadian Equities and I have been caught out on a couple of occasions with the sale of only 100 shares of a larger block and still being charged $19 for the trade which is not good when trading on the Venture Exchange.
Still waiting to try it out. Despite mailing in the required check for account authorization they do not start the trading authorization process until they set up the account. So you get your account but cannot trade for 5 days, as an option to speeding this up they suggest you have your financial institution fax in authorization. I did this and three days later I still to not have access even though I called them each day to ensure they received the bank access and to check it was in motion. I sounded like it had not even been passed onto the right person for authorization. Quite frustrating to waste my time going to the bank to request the authorization fax and not have this speed the process up. Hopefully once access is available it is as good as it looks. The benefit that has come out if this is that during all of this waiting and hassle, the market has took a quick dive early today and is still on it’s way down. If I had bought stock earlier in the week I would have lost money.
[...] Direct Investing (review), BMO InvestorLine (review), TD Waterhouse (review) and Credential Direct (review) round out the top [...]
I was an extremely longterm user of the RBC trading system which was reasonably satisfactory however for someone who doesnt trade much CD is much better. Once RBC took away the option to settle trades from a bank account I started shopping around because hey, if I have to go through the hassle of depositing money before I trade where’s the value added?
Benefits I’ve noticed:
1) Free Level 2 quotes – RBC requires 100k in the account or active trader status
2) Less expensive fees across the board
I have be trading with Credential Direct since 2006, it use to be good for Level 2 snap shots which included Time and Sales data which is critical for thinly trade Venture Exchange and Capital Pool companies. Credential Direct has turned to complete crap since leaving Stock Group I have personally emailed the VP Credential Direct Lothar Fabin and separably to Credential Securities CEO Doce Tomic. The VP stated he was fixing the N/A of fundamental data for venture exchange. the CEO is unresponsive.
http://www.credential.com/about_us/executive_management_team.aspx
They have lower the frequent trader to 10 trades per quarter @ $9.95, but crap is crap, Any person needs the following fixed or the are trading blind – for those who never used a complete data showing splits time and sales and complete Level 2, NOT 1-3/4 for which I am referring to will realize that you need this to make a informed decision.
Advice setup watchlists and portfolio with stockhouse directly it is free with 15min delay and you have to pay extra for level 2 data, for 13 bucks a month you can make your watchlists live. After you do that find the cheapest broker for you per trade, I am a infrequent trader but like the data to pick exit and entry point for venture mining stock.
Anyone that needs help with their Free Stockhouse setup email josh.thurston1@gmail.com I have used it when with credential direct for years and have NO financial gain in any of the aforementioned or what is listed below. PS Googe stock group to see what credential direct gave up
Problems with Credential Direct with out Stock Group data
1.The the charting function showing splits does not work
Letter to CEO extract;
Remember Scoita Direct was crap and still is crap then they before Scotia Bank bought E*Trade Canada and became Scotia iTrade but thier basic service is still crappy compared to Credential Direct when you were with stock group. Now Credential Direct is the same with unjustifiable higher fees, and it is not just the stuff I listed below as with stock group one could make up how the wanted to view the data in a watch list and the info a person wanted. go on the stock group web page and look in-case you have forgotten. http://www.stockgroup.com/jumppages/sgsolutions/stockstream_tour.asp
1. It started with all the Portfolios that normal people use as watchlists to speculated on stocks or mutual funds they want to buy what ever that maybe. All stocks that did not have at least 1 share was wiped out – Yes this was fixed after complaining;
2. There is no outstanding shares or market cap for Venture stock – supports answer was to create a watch-list with Stockhouse – Very Lame solution;
3. When entering multiple positions for the same stock example CEM on the Venture exchange. One can not review the entries to make sure they are correct. – Lame;
4. When entering the amounts as to share price as example with CEM on Venture it doe not allow for half pennies – I would imagine that Mutual Funds with fractions of a cent are having the same problem;
5. There is no Time & Sales data for any Level 2 a critical component for illiquid stock. If I had to improve upon that I would all so want to see a Cancel Orders data for market sensitivity also know as Total View, this is important if Credential want the frequent trader market;
6. The web site has slowed down despite having a new 2 core desk top with 2 gig of Ram and having nothing on the hard drive except Linux Ubuntu 10.40 and Open Office with the latest version of Firefox and the very fast Opera browsers.
7. Now this weekend I cannot enter Watchlist data even if I wanted to. Does not the most rudimentary concept of beta testing mean anything? WHICH means tested by people that use it the information source for a period of time for a smoothness transition. The only bug in the system is the VP of Credential Direct or You for not buying Stockhouse Publishing if need be to obtain there A-1 software and it teck staff , that is better than anything else out there and well worth the money.
8. Credential Direct that was once the best on-line Discount Broker that did not charge extra data fees in exchange for higher trading costs. Credential is Quickly becoming the worst as what is the point if the data and accurate watch list keeping data is not available.
PS As a President and CEO Do “YOU” get it, or does one have to beat you with a idiot stick? This is just to name a few problems for which I am not going to make a career of pointing out to you!!!!! The Question YOU have to ask your self How Much Money does Credential Direct bring in? And what is the growth prospects of it/
As the song from the original Movie Heavy Metal sound track says – How long must this go on ……..
Yours Very Sincerely
As a new user at Credential Direct I have been quite happy. Trades have gone quickly and without a hitch. The research and analyticals are adequate. The initial sign up was a bit slow and complicated – took over a week – but now that it is set up the transfer for funds works well. I recommend it. Now if only I could make some money.
Beware of Credential Direct if you day-trade; their order process is very, very slow… Execution is fine, but it will take literally minutes before a buy is processes and is available to sell — 5 minutes!! A lot can go wrong in 5 minutes. I eventually gave up after many complaints. Stay away. Horribly unsophisticated. Go to Interactive Brokers.
I agree with Brock. Equity order and option order fills are extremely slow. DO NOT try to day trade with Credential Direct.
I am seeking some advice.First time trader ,I was going to go with Questrade as my platform to start with but from what I have read I think its best I look elsewhere. Any suggestions for a beginner?