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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – Sept. 28/12

Discount Brokerage Weekly roundup:

This week, we learned of a couple of major developments in the Canadian discount brokerage marketplace that  are likely to reshape the competitive landscape.  First, the major news that optionsXpress Canada is putting a hold on opening new Canadian accounts.  We found out from optionsXpress that out that for now this is a temporary measure while Schwab, the parent company of optionsXpress Canada, evaluates its overall business units.  While one discount brokerage was pausing, another one was readying to launch a long awaited product  back into the marketplace.  TD Waterhouse discount brokerage is readying itself for the relaunch of thinkorswim Canada. The ultrapopular stock and options trading platform has been on hold for some time now, but according to thinkorswim Canada reps, they will potentially be accepting new clients again starting in October 2012.

Canadian Discount Brokerage Tweet of the week:

This week saw a lot of great tweets put forward by several discount brokerages.  The winner this week (by a slim margin) goes to @questrade for the article on investing in ETFs [Do you trade mutual funds or ETFs? Give this a read:http://bit.ly/NAv7y5#TheExchange …]

Honorable mention goes to @jitneytrade for finding a  great article on the evolving capacity of global exchanges (http://bit.ly/OuyCI1)

Event Horizon:

Options Education Day is taking place in Toronto this Saturday (event details can be found here).  If the food there was as good as it was at the Vancouver session, the Toronto folks will be well rewarded for going to school on a Saturday.

The people have spoken:

The recent launch and migration of Questrade clients over to the IQ platform has been met with mixed reviews.  Change isn’t always an easy thing for clients to navigate – and this thread in the Red Flag Deals personal finance forum shows the “support” and “resistance” to the switchover.

 

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