As we kick off a new month, the activity in the online brokerage deals and promotions section appears to be mixed.
On the positive side for DIY investors, there was an important extension of a popular promotion from National Bank Direct Brokerage that will undoubtedly continue to attract attention and serve as a catalyst for other online brokers to serve up something equally compelling to new clients.
Wealthsimple Trade also appears to have made some important updates to its promotional mix, pushing more definitively into the “free stock” deal for new account sign ups and for referral offers.
Finally, there was a small commission-free trade offer from Scotia iTRADE linked to DIY investor’s taking a stock market education training series which reflects the ability of incentives to be used alongside key value drivers (in this case investor education).
Less positive is the fact that some deals have expired heading into July. Specifically, HSBC InvestDirect’s commission-free trade offer ran its course and concluded into the start of July.
Now that we’ve crossed into the second half of the calendar year, we fully expect deals and promotions activity to start picking up, even more so as we approach September.
This year there’s definitely something unusual in terms of online brokerage activity. Given the large number of new features being released by online brokerages this summer, it’s a safe bet things won’t be as quiet as they usually are when it comes to promotions, and we’re anticipating seeing some more creative offers surface over the next few months.
As always, if there are promotions that we’ve missed that would benefit other DIY investors, let us know and we’ll update our coverage.
Expired Deals
HSBC InvestDirect’s commission-free trades offer formally wrapped up at the end of June.
Extended Deals
National Bank Direct Brokerage extended its popular 100 commission-free trade offer. The new expiry date for this promotion is September 30th.
New Deals
The newest offer to cross our radar was from Scotia iTRADE, who is offering up to 10 commission-free trades (five for using the promo code during account sign up, and five for attending their educational ‘bootcamp’ on investing). This was an interesting offer insofar as it was offering up commission-free trades as a reward for attending a series of educational webinars on investing.
Be sure to check out our discount brokerage deals filter for more information on current promotions.