That said, the following is list of the common types of educational opportunities currently being provided by Canadian discount brokerages.
Types of educational events
Live Seminars
Only a handful of discount brokerages are currently offering either regular seminars or special event seminars. TD Waterhouse is by far the most active in this area offering hundreds of events every month across the country, ranging from their popular lunch time seminars to special investor education summits. Scotia iTrade, Disnat Direct, National Bank Direct Brokerage and BMO Investorline also hold live events, albeit less frequently.
Attending these events is a great way to get access to trading ideas and information. In person seminars offer the chance to sit through structured presentations where you get to meet the instructor face to face as well as interact with fellow investors. Depending on who’s hosting the event, these in-person seminars can be elaborate full day sessions, complete with catered food and materials, to very simple lunch hour seminars. Many of the events we’ve seen held are done free of charge or with minimal cost.
One of the big drawbacks of live seminars, however, is timing – being able to attend a specific location has to work within your schedule in order to benefit. A good thing to try and get beforehand is an overview or outline of what the topic covered will be and who will be providing it, in order to determine if it is the right event for you.
Webinars
While you don’t get the experience of being face to face with a presenter or instructor, webinars offer a great alternative. Webinars allow a convenient way learn and interact with material from the comfort of your home or office. Often times webinars are recorded so that you are able to pause/replay material you want to pay extra attention to. Some individuals download the presentations to their phones or mp3 players to watch on the go.
Most Canadian online discount brokerages use a webinar technology called WebEx (and to a lesser degree GoToMeeting) which is fairly straight forward to use. If you’ve never used WebEx before, allow for extra time before the presentation to install and setup the software (it’s free). The setup process is generally straight forward and usually requires a few extra minutes to complete.
Website Resources
Many discount brokerages partner with other resource providers such as Morningstar or Recognia to provide additional tools and resources that can help do-it-yourself investors learn some of the basics of fundamental or technical analysis. In addition, there are features offered such as educational institution partners and forums that provide added resources to support individual investors. For example, Disnat Direct offers a special partnership with Stockscores.com through which clients can access the Stockscores.com Pro features such as videos and a self-study course. Questrade offers a special community section where one can ask questions to other investors and traders about a variety of investing related topics.