Category: Discount Brokerage News

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – October 9, 2015

Source: Giphy

This was a big week for rivalries. Whether it was Vancouver versus Calgary or Montreal versus Toronto, there was an electric kick off to the 2015/16 hockey season. It was a fitting backdrop as fierce rivals from across the Canadian discount brokerage landscape also stepped up their game with new features, promotions and movement taking place into the turn of their fiscal year.

In this pre-Thanksgiving edition of the roundup, we cover discount brokerages dishing out plenty of gravy with deals and promotions. Next we move onto one very big brokerage who has their sights set on a little blue bird this Thanksgiving. Of course, what would Thanksgiving be without a little tension across the table? We look the latest moves in investor education that are making a couple of brokerages cast some steely stares across the gravy boat. Finally we round out with a healthy portion of discount brokerage tweets, investor education and the latest chatter from DIY investor forums. Make sure to save room for desert!

Tiers of Joy

This past week, the biggest Canadian discount brokerage decided to wade into the deals pool. Of course any move by a brokerage as big as TD Direct Investing is bound to make more than a few waves with investors and competitor brokerages alike.

Unlike most of the other brokerages on the list of regulars, TD Direct Investing is not a frequent presence on the deals/promotions page. So, when they jump in, there’s probably a good reason behind doing so.

TD Direct Investing’s latest promotional offer is a commission-free trading deal which consists of three tiers of assets and provides three tiers of commission-free trades. Investors depositing at least $25,000, $50,000 or $100,000+ in assets can qualify for 50, 100 or 200 commission-free trades respectively.

The multi-tiered deal seems to be the trend amongst the bank-owned brokerages with BMO InvestorLine, National Bank Direct Brokerage and Scotia iTrade each with promotional offers that are tiered to deposit sizes.

The fact that TD Direct Investing has put an offer out that is both short in duration and timed to this point in the calendar year highlights that it is prime time for brokerages to be generating incentives for DIY investors.

To that end, Virtual Brokers also launched (or revived) their 25 free trade offer this past week although this time with a much lower threshold to qualify ($5,000 vs the previous $15,000). This now puts the deal count for Virtual Brokers at a modest 2, however their deposit thresholds are squarely aimed at younger or newer investors – long the stronghold of their nearest rival Questrade.

With the addition of the TD Direct Investing and Virtual Brokers offers, the deal count now stands at 17 and the deals and promotions section is looking more stuffed than a Thanksgiving turkey. For DIY investors, this is great news, as these promotional offers are adding gravy on top of falling commission prices.

TD Direct Investing #JoinsTwitter

Even though turkeys are on the minds of a lot Canadians, a much smaller, more blueish bird was on the mind of Canada’s largest discount brokerage. This past week TD Direct Investing pushed go on their own Twitter account and wasted no time throwing it down with promos, news and going after potential clients.

The saga of TD Direct Investing on social media is a fascinating story in and of itself (that’s a story for another time). Suffice to say, other Canadian discount brokerages are now at real risk of developing a few more wrinkles now that TD Direct Investing has their own Twitter account.

For most individuals, getting going on Twitter is a relatively straight forward affair, however for a bank and brand that is as big and visible as TD, the resources that are required to be present on social media are mind-boggling. Not only is there the usual marketing and advertising, there’s also the customer service, legal compliance and the generally-not-looking-awkward-trying-to-be-cool-on-social-media to worry about.

The “history” of TD stepping into social media, while brief, shows that they leverage their biggest resource – their people – in a hurry.

When the TD Twitter account went live, it was simultaneously shocking and awe-inspiring to see how fast the team army of client service reps dedicated to Twitter were deployed. As a reality check, it is now possible for #millenials to actually get a job at a bank that requires them to be on Twitter all day.

When TD Direct Investing gave its team members individual Twitter accounts and asked them to start tweeting not too long ago, there were close to a dozen individuals out and about in the world tweeting about things inside and outside of the world of finance.

Now, as TD Direct Investing launches their new Twitter handle, @TD_DirectInvest, they are battle-hardened, social savvy and are wasting no time going after their competitors.

The following tweet basically sums up and foreshadows what other brokerages such as Scotia iTrade and Questrade are in for:

Source: Twitter

 

As the battle for attention and relevance spreads to smaller screens and more fragmented channels, TD Direct Investing has joined the fray on Twitter. Although they have a modest following out of the gate (71 at the time of writing) they are very quickly going to get on the radar of a lot of social media investors organically, by advertising and, unfortunately for other brokerages, by going directly after DIY investors.

Moves in Investor Education

It’s fitting that in a week of big rivalries that one of the biggest rivalries in the discount brokerage landscape space flare up. Qtrade Investor and Credential Direct are battling it out in Western Canada and it looks like that fight is about to spill over into the world of investor education.

On the heels of the launch of their new front-facing website, Qtrade Investor not only underwent a drastic cosmetic change, but they also took the bold move of committing more fully to investor education. In their case, it wasn’t the traditional webinar/seminar route but rather through written ‘guides’.

Not content with Qtrade’s content, it looks like Credential Direct is countering by offering up a webinar of its own. Specifically, Credential Direct is holding a webinar from Fidelity Investments entitled “Economic and Market Trends”. While this is by no means the first time Credential Direct has held a webinar and even a webinar from a non-platform/ETF provider, the timing and optics suggest that Credential Direct is keenly aware that they are going to have to get more creative, or at the very least, more active with investor education.

Further east, however, is news that the winds of change in investor education at TD Direct Investing (and probably for everyone else) are now blowing in from the south. What are all these airy allusions referring to?

Spotted this past week was an announcement on TD Direct Investing’s shiny new Twitter account that Tasty Trade will be holding an investor seminar in conjunction with TD Direct Investing in downtown Toronto near the end of October.

Source: Twitter

 

The primary reason that is this a big deal for investors and investor education providers is because Tastytrade offers up content for DIY investors and has a very big following in the US. To quote the Wall St. Journal on who Tastytrade’s founder is:

Tastytrade is the brainchild of Tom Sosnoff, who founded Thinkorswim Group, an online options-brokerage that was sold for some $750 million in 2009 to TD Ameritrade

For Tastytrade to move north and specifically to be teamed up with TD Direct Investing demonstrates that when it comes to investor education, TD will continue to lean on its resources south of the border (such as Investools and ThinkOrSwim) to offer something many other Canadian brokerages simply cannot.

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

As was already described above, this past week on Twitter marked a milestone in the discount brokerage social media space. With TD Direct Investing now stepping onto the ice and immediately dropping the gloves with Scotia iTrade, it looks like the brokerage battles are only going to get fiercer. Mentioned this week were Questrade, RBC Direct Investing, Scotia iTrade, TD Direct Investing and Virtual Brokers.

Event Horizon

Fall is in full swing, and it’s a busy week ahead for discount brokerage-sponsored investor education events. Here are some upcoming sessions that may be of interest to those who are new to investing, female investors, options enthusiasts, and those interested in technical analysis. Risk management strategies, ETFs, and a margin account primer round out this week’s selection.

October 13

NBDB – Introduction to Technical Analysis: Trends – [Fr]

Scotia iTRADE- Covered Call ETFs with Horizons ETFs

October 14

TD Direct Investing – Understanding Margin & Short Selling

TD Direct Investing – Understanding Margin & Short Selling

TD Direct Investing – Chart Smart – Bollinger Bands

October 15

NBDB – Introduction to Technical Analysis : Supports and Resistances – [Fr]

TD Direct Investing – Introduction to Technical Analysis

TD Direct Investing – Do-It-Yourself Investing for Women

Scotia iTRADE – Risk Management Strategies for Traders with AJ Monte

From the Forums

A platform for change

In this post from the RedFlagDeals investing thread, hints and whispers of a new TD Direct Investing trading platform WebBroker are circulating. We’ve heard about this being ‘in the works’ so it will be interesting to see what the reaction will be like when it goes live. Worth a read for some early sentiment on the proposed upgrade.

Is free worth it?

There’s no denying that commission-free ETFs get the attention of the ‘couch potato’ investing crowd. In this post from the reddit Personal Finance Canada subreddit, it is interesting to see how Scotia iTrade’s commission-free offering stacks up.

Into the Close

That does it for this Thanksgiving Weekend edition of the roundup. Have a safe and enjoyable long weekend and don’t forget to carve out some time for fun! Remember, Canadian markets are closed on Monday.

Source: Giphy

 

 

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – October 2, 2015

source: giphy

One of the great lessons that the stock market teaches investors again and again is that perception is reality. Within the Canadian discount brokerage marketplace, this lesson is equally true, as almost all online brokerages wrestle with just how exactly they can get DIY investors to listen to what they are saying.

In this week’s roundup we take a look at how one discount brokerage is trying win investor attention by launching a newer, more exciting website. Being a new month we’ll also take a look at the deals and promotions Canadian brokerages are using to get noticed. Of course, nothing gets people’s attention quite like a trading platform outage during trading hours as one major online brokerage found out the hard way in our discount brokerage tweets of the week. Finally we’ll take a look at the upcoming investor education events and close out with the chatter from the Canadian investing forums. But first, let me take a selfie.

In With New

Over the past two years, the Canadian discount brokerage industry has tried to use commission price to get the attention of investors, and to a large degree it has worked.

Almost all the major bank-owned online brokerages (except for Scotia iTrade) and all of the independent online brokerages have standard commissions under $10 per trade and almost every time a brokerage has initiated a price drop, there has been a splash.

Could prices fall further? Sure but investors seem content for the time being to stick to the about-$10-per-trade mark – at least most do and most discount brokerages are in no rush to drop their prices.

As most of Canada’s online brokerages are coming to realize, after price drops, there has to be something else. And this year, that something else appears to have been “changing the website”. As we mentioned in last week’s roundup, Qtrade Investor officially unveiled their new website this week, capping off for them, what has been a marathon of planning and design. And, even though they weren’t first out of the gate to change their old website or pricing, it seems like their new website was worth the wait. For returning visitors to the Qtrade Investor website, the difference will feel a bit like night and day.

Screenshots of old Qtrade Investor homepage vs new Qtrade Investor homepage.

Like several other Canadian discount brokerages who have sought to refresh their look and feel over the past year, Qtrade Investor opted for a much more contemporary layout and design scheme.

Among the many thoughtful changes, ease of navigation was a clear priority. Elements such as the menus and sub-menus have evolved to make going from section to section seem easier. There are also fewer menu options and far less text to have to scan through on the screen to find the ‘right’ information. To boot, their ‘About’ section is dynamic and engaging showcase of who they are and why anyone who’s thinking about them should care.

Aside from the striking new look to the website, and improved navigation, one of the biggest changes has been to the education section of the website. Qtrade Investor has taken a much more active approach to supplying website visitors with educational content about investing – a strategy that many other brokerages are exploring to varying degrees.

On Qtrade Investor’s new site, there is now a growing list of standard educational content for beginner investors in the form of featured articles or a series of guides on topics such as margin trading, TFSA’s and stock trading ideas. They have also embraced video tutorials on investing concepts as part of the investor education mix.

For more experienced investors, there is access to syndicated content from the Financial Times. With information overload being the new reality for many users of the internet, what defines an effective website from a user’s perspective has changed. While Qtrade will not be the last online brokerage to change their website this year, there are those who have yet to do so that now have to deal with one more brokerage that DIY investors will be shifting their attention to.

Deals Update

The deals and promotions section was far less volatile than the markets were as we rolled into October. With 15 active offers on the table, there’s lots of selection for individuals looking to get a little something for opening an online trading account.

Discount brokerages appear to be in somewhat of a holding pattern with the end of October being an important milestone date in the calendars of many of them as the fiscal year end. We think there are still some big offers waiting in the wings, especially as it becomes clearer as to which brokerages are actively trying to win new clients over.

October is also an important month in the deals calendar with six of the offers set to expire at the end of this month. Clearly this month is of strategic importance so it will be interesting to see which brokerage(s) push a little harder into their corporate year end.

#DIYInvesting Tweets of the Week

There must have been something in that blood moon that tilted the trading world on its axis. Perhaps that’s what client reps at TD Direct Investing wished they could have blamed an outage of their trading platform on this past Wednesday as investors took to Twitter to vent their frustration as they sat idle during market hours. Of course, while TD Direct Investing and Scotia iTrade were having some customer woes, Questrade was the broker who offered up their shoulder to trade on.

Event Horizon

On deck this October are quite a few investor education events and opportunities. The World Moneyshow rolls into Toronto on October 30-31st . There will be a few discount brokerages exhibiting at this year’s show including Desjardins Online Brokerage, Interactive Brokers and National Bank Direct Brokerage. Also spotted on the exhibitor list is roboadvisory firm, Wealthsimple.

Options Education Day Toronto also takes place this weekend (October 3rd) in downtown Toronto. The cost for this session is $45 and features speakers from the Options Industry Council and representatives from the Montreal Exchange. As an interesting aside, there are six Canadian discount brokerages sponsoring this event.

From the Forums

WebBroken Down

In this forum post from the RedFlagDeals investing section, users of TD Direct Investing’s WebBroker platform cover the storm that arose when the platform went down during market hours.

Friends with Regulatory Requirements

This was an interesting post for those interested in the curious consequences of cohabitating with individuals working in the securities industry. Regulatory requirements are something all brokerages take seriously and as one reddit user found out, they even sometimes apply to one’s significant other.

Into the Close

That’s a wrap on yet another eventful week in the markets and with the brokerages. For all the Jays fans celebrating a very exciting season, #MerryClinchmas! See you next week!

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – September 25, 2015

For some, this week started off about as bad as a post-Oktoberfest wurst nightmare scenario could be. The world awoke to major automaker Volkswagen admitting that there was something strange in the air with their emissions ratings. Of course while their stock was getting pummeled, traders also saw the opportunity to give Palladium, one of those important metals for those not so environmentally friendly diesel vehicles, one of its best rallies in a while. Competition can make companies do some crazy things.

Of course for Canadian discount brokerages, competition is nothing new. What is new, however, is just how nimble with technology they will have to become to effectively compete for the investors of tomorrow.

In this week’s roundup we take an exciting exclusive first look at one online brokerage’s new website and how they are building out their technology offering. Next we take a quick look at the interesting angles around the latest discount brokerage ranking results announced earlier in the week. After that we highlight yet another deal in the promotional race and cruise through the tweets from this week, investor education events and close out with some interesting dividend-themed forum chatter.

Sneak Peek at Qtrade Investor’s New Website

In a SparxTrading.com exclusive, we’ve managed to get our fans a first look at the new Qtrade Investor website, set to launch within the next few days.

As has been the trend for 2015, Canadian discount brokerages have spent a lot of time and effort in trying to refresh and modernize their websites. Without putting a number on how old their previous site was, Qtrade Investor’s latest website looks and feels like a modern experience.

Their new website front end experience is built for a multiscreen world and should accommodate smartphones, tablets, phablets, laptops and desktops. The layout is simple and contemporary as is the messaging. Their new design direction is also a subtle way to refresh the look and feel of Qtrade visually.

When asked what prompted the change on their part, Qtrade told us:

“Our conversations with self-directed investors and traders have led us to a better understanding of what’s important to them when choosing an online broker. The new public face of the Qtrade Investor website is clean, engaging and easy-to-use. We have also featured valuable educational articles, guides and videos for new and experienced investors.”

Qtrade Investor’s New Website (source: screenshot)

We’ll be sure to bring readers more details when Qtrade’s website fully launches however it looks like there are some very exciting features planned for their new site.

One of the big commitments that Qtrade Investor has recognized and followed through on is the improvement of user experience. Their mobile trading offering, in the span of two years, has gone from fairly standard to competitive.

Just this week Qtrade Investor joined the small list of Canadian online brokerages whose mobile apps are supported on Apple Watch.

What’s clear is that the pace of change in technology is accelerating and one of the new benchmarks DIY investors are going to demand be met is how technologically responsive their brokerage is. For Qtrade Investor, the new responsive website and roll-out of a leading edge online access point are two big strides that other brokerages are going to have to work much harder to catch up to.

Be sure to keep ‘watching’ @SparxTrading on Twitter for more details.

JD Power Discount Brokerage Rankings Crown National Bank Direct Brokerage

It’s like Déjà vu all over again. Almost 2 years after National Bank Direct Brokerage took top spot in the JD Power Investor Satisfaction Survey, NBDB managed to do it again handily beating out the rest of Canada’s most popular brokerages and displacing their cross-town rival Desjardins Online Brokerage. And what a difference 2 years can make.

Since NBDB’s win in 2013 the world of Canadian discount brokerages has been turned upside down by changes in standard commission pricing, powerful mobile devices as well as the proliferation of roboadvisors. If there’s one rule in the world of Canadian online brokerages, it appears to be step up or step back.

While we’ll save the deep dive on these rankings for an upcoming post, here’s a quick preview of some interesting observations about this year’s JD Power Discount Brokerage Investor study results.

First, this year, there are three more discount brokerages being ranked than there were last year. Specifically this year Questrade, Qtrade Investor and HSBC InvestDirect returned to the rankings after not being evaluated in 2014. Most interesting is that Questrade’s return to this list puts it high enough on the list to position itself as the highest ranked of the independent discount brokerages. For Qtrade Investor and HSBC InvestDirect, their return was not as stellar landing at 8th and 10th out of a field of 10.

Ratings on JD Power Discount Brokerage Survey from 2013 to 2015

Of course, coming in ‘last’ or ‘first’ in 2015 doesn’t exactly mean the same as it did in the past. Looking at the range between the top and bottom scores from 2013 to 2015, the gap has narrowed considerably. That’s not great news for the online brokerages at all who are now going to have to put their creativity into overdrive to do something that DIY investors are genuinely going to get excited about.

Range between highest and lowest scores on JD Power Canadian Discount Brokerage Rankings 2013 to 2015

Finally, and strangest of all, of the firms that have had the largest positive changes from 2013 to 2015 (Questrade, RBC Direct Investing and Scotia iTRADE), it is remarkable that Scotia iTRADE still continues to occupy the lower end of the ranking spectrum.

As of this September, they are now the only discount brokerage on this list to have standard commission pricing over $10. As CIBC Investor’s Edge may exemplify, just having low commission fees isn’t enough to get investors thinking about ‘satisfaction’. Not having competitive standard commission fees, however, is almost a sure fire way to make DIY investors harder to please.

Stay tuned for the full run down on this year’s JD Power Discount Brokerage results.

Virtual Brokers Launches Back-to-School Promotion

Once again it’s Friday and there’s more good news for DIY investors – at least the students. Virtual Brokers publicly launched their latest promotion today in a bid to step back into the deals ring. Their latest offer is a $50 cash back promotion for investors who are qualified students or recent (within two years) graduates with a deposit of at least $1,000. With the addition of Virtual Brokers’ latest deal, the count of live offers climbs to 15 promotions from discount brokerages as we head into the final few days of the month. Check out the deals and promotions section for more info.

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

This past week on Twitter, Questrade stood out once again as the discount brokerage generating and responding to the online buzz. While webinars are generally not newsworthy announcements, in Questrade’s case, their webinar featuring OTC Markets took place this week alongside (conveniently) the launch of a few more actively managed ETFs. Interestingly, there was a comment of a user who just couldn’t let the design bug go without saying something to Questrade – it seems s/he felt justified in saying something. Click below to read this weeks tweets.

 

Event Horizon

Fall is in full swing, and it’s an exciting week ahead for discount brokerage-sponsored investor education events. Here are some upcoming sessions that may be of interest to dividends enthusiasts, and those who want to learn about ETFs, put options and technical analysis. September 28th TD Direct Investing – Dividends | Important Dates and Details to Know September 29th TD Direct Investing – Asset Allocation and ETFs feat. Bruce Sellery and Pat Chiefalo September 30th Scotia iTRADE – The Power Of the Put Option with AJ Monte TD Direct Investing – Introduction to Technical Analysis

From the Forums

DRIP it like it’s hot

In this post from reddit’s PersonalFinanceCanada section, RBC Direct Investing and Questrade get pitted head to head when it comes to dividend investing – specifically for someone interested in having their money grow with dividends. An interesting perspective on price vs convenience.

The Divid-end of the Road

In another dividend investing-themed post, this time from RedFlagDeals, a few dividend investors appear to be brewing about the troubles of receiving US dividends without incurring currency exchange fees. It’s a lot to take in from the beginning but an interesting view on how to win or lose DIY investor clients.

Into the Close

That’s a wrap for this week’s roundup. Have a great weekend, rest up and have fun dreaming up the next big thing. In the meantime, here’s some more of that ‘boredElonMusk’ to get you thinking….

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – September 18, 2015

This past week, as all eyes were on movie stars in Toronto and on the US for direction on where the “Rate Race” will take interest rates. Of course DIY investors aren’t the only ones caught in the wheel of misfortune. The longer the uncertainty hangs over the market, the harder Canadian discount brokerages are going to have to work to encourage investors to step in.

In this week’s roundup we take a look at how one Canadian discount brokerage took the drastic step of lowering its standard commission fees and what it means for the other bank-owned brokerages who have or haven’t lowered theirs. Next we take a look at the strategies of a number of brokerages attempting to use promotions to get the attention of investors. In the discount brokerage tweets, we see some interesting flare ups from DIY investors over technology glitches. Finally we round off with investor education events and interesting chatter about cross border trading in the forums.

HSBC InvestDirect Lowers Standard Commission Fees

Earlier this week, HSBC InvestDirect officially joined the club of Canadian discount brokerages that have lowered their standard commission rates to the sub-$10 level. As of this month, HSBC InvestDirect clients can now look forward to standard commission rates of $9.88, a definite reprieve from the $28.88+ commissions which preceded the drop.

For regular observers of the Canadian brokerage marketplace, HSBC InvestDirect is not a name that often comes up for features, pricing or promotions. With this latest move, however, DIY investors as well as certain Canadian online brokerages are bound to take notice.

As a bank-owned online brokerage, HSBC InvestDirect enjoys the “safety factor” and somewhat of the “convenience” element that consumers look to as selling points when choosing an online broker. Even so, the reality of the Canadian discount brokerage landscape is that there are just too many other compelling lower-priced alternatives. To get attention, HSBC InvestDirect had to make a bold move.

CIBC Investor’s Edge clearly understood this when they almost literally turned the new $9 anchor price prefix introduced by RBC Direct Investing in January of 2014 upside down to $6. Even if CIBC’s commission pricing is $6.95, it’s that first number people tend to notice.

Ironically, it is the same strategy Scotia iTrade employs with their active trader pricing of $4.99. Unfortunately for Scotia iTrade, they are also the lone holdout for lowering their standard commission pricing from the $24.99+ level down to where the rest of the market is.

For HSBC InvestDirect, the options were somewhat limited in terms of a move that would competitively position them with their peers while simultaneously giving them visibility in strategic markets (such as Western Canada). Without flashy platforms or a strong educational/feature offering, a shift in pricing was a potent option. That said, the move to undercut the majority of other brokerages by charging $9.88 vs. the $9.95 gives HSBC InvestDirect additional visibility with price sensitive consumers.

The true coup, however, is for clients that have $50,000+ in assets. Clients at this asset tier can qualify for the HSBC InvestDirect Advanced commission pricing that takes the cost per North American equity trade down to $8.88 – substantially undercutting many other bank-owned brokerages.

Be sure to check out the in-depth breakdown on the latest commission pricing at Canadian bank-owned discount brokerages to see just where the largest players now sit with one another.

Deals Get into Gear

Although September got off to a slow start when it came to discount brokerage deals and promotions, this past week, the deals and promotions section has been hotter than the Toronto TIFF red carpets.

With BMO InvestorLine updating their special offers page, the extension once again of their popular youth-oriented deal was confirmed. It was, however, the fact that three other offers from three different brokerages that showed up throughout the week that really signaled that the promotional war may once again be heating up.

While National Bank Direct Brokerage, Questrade and Scotia iTrade all launched new offers, it was interesting to see National Bank Direct Brokerage step back into the deals and promotions ring after their absence.

Although it is just speculation, with the JD Power discount brokerage rankings right around the corner and the fact that National Bank Direct Brokerage has traditionally performed well in this particular ranking, the timing of NBDB’s set of commission-credit offers may be no coincidence.

Another interesting observation is how the value of Scotia iTrade’s latest cashback/commission-free trade offer is starting to creep up.

Specifically, Scotia iTrade just launched (or relaunched) their $500 cash back or 500 commission free trade promotion after just retiring the $1000 cash back or 1000 free trade promotion. In the case of their latest offer, the minimum deposit to qualify for the offer ($15,000) can net a new client a $75 cash back bonus. In the offer that just expired, however, the minimum tier of $15,000 would have only netted a $50 cash back bonus.

Clearly Scotia iTrade is looking to step up its efforts at attracting clients in by offering them more and the fact that iTrade has posted this deal through the end of the year means that they’re banking that it will be tough for other brokerages to come up with a better offer to beat it.

Tweets of the Week

This past week, technology glitches resurfaced as a reminder that trading online and now “on the go online”, is not without its potential mishaps. The brokerage at the centre of it all was Scotia iTrade, who experienced a server glitch that meant some users went offline temporarily (or in the users minds far too long). Other brokerages on the hot seat this week were BMO InvestorLine and Questrade. Virtual Brokers was spotted yet again on their campus tour, this time at U of T Scarborough.

Event Horizon

This week’s line-up of discount brokerage-sponsored investor education events include upcoming sessions that may be of interest to those intrigued by RRIFs, trading psychology, and options. Short selling and trading strategies round out this week’s selection.

September 19 – September 25

Scotia iTRADE – Trading Psychology Part 1 with Stefanie Kammerman

Scotia iTRADE – RRIF Accounts with Scotia iTRADE

TD Direct Investing – Options as an Income Strategy

Scotia iTRADE – Options as an Income Strategy Using Calls with Montreal Exchange

NBDB – Trading Plan and Investment Strategy for Mid and Short Term Traders – [Fr]

TD Direct Investing – Understanding Margin & Short Selling

 September 21st

Scotia iTRADE – Trading Psychology Part 1 with Stefanie Kammerman

September 22nd

Scotia iTRADE – RRIF Accounts with Scotia iTRADE

September 23rd

TD Direct Investing – Options as an Income Strategy

Scotia iTRADE – Options as an Income Strategy Using Calls with Montreal Exchange

NBDB – Trading Plan and Investment Strategy for Mid and Short Term Traders – [Fr]

September 24th

TD Direct Investing – Understanding Margin & Short Selling

Questrade – Energy Market Outlook

From the Forums

A Heated Exchange

One of the biggest thorns in the sides of Canadian investors is the exchange rate they typically have to pay when converting between Canadian and US dollars when trading US listed stocks. Clever investors have figured out creative ways to minimize those conversions however this post from RedFlagDeals shows that one user has stumbled on a conversion rate from CIBC Investor’s Edge that is bound to make more than a few other discount brokerages nervous.

Stuck at the Border

In this post, also from RedFlagDeals, a DIY investor client of Questrade looks to have run into some delays in getting access to dividend payments. Interestingly, the Questrade support engine did not (yet) jump in to address the issue. Either way, it’s worth a read for those interested in how sometimes dividend investing can get derailed.

Into the Close

That’s a wrap for this week’s roundup. However you are gearing up or gearing down, have a great final weekend-of-summer. For those celebrating Oktoberfest, have a safe and uber-fun weekend!

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – September 11, 2015

For such a short week, there was certainly a lot of activity to go around. Many students started school; Apple launched its latest set of toys, Tom Brady laced up for the official start of the new NFL season. Even volatility seemed to be, well, volatile. Yes, for better or worse change is the market’s only constant. To borrow from the launch of the latest iPhone: The only thing that’s changed is everything.

In this week’s roundup we take a look at the ‘back to school’ themed activities that permeated across the discount brokerage and DIY investor landscape. Next, we take a look at the current contests being run by Canadian brokerages as a slightly different approach to get the attention of investors. This week’s discount brokerage tweets also reveal an interesting mix of conversations. Finally we’ll showcase some of the upcoming investor education events and close out with the latest forum chatter from Canadian investors.

Kicking it Old School

This past week there were a number of very interesting moves made by several Canadian discount brokerages that all had a distinctive ‘back to school’ theme to them.

Starting first with Virtual Brokers who was literally going back to schools to do some promotional activity. As spotted on their Twitter account, Virtual Brokers visited the campuses of three universities this week: Ryerson, University of Toronto Mississauga and McMaster.

While post-secondary students typically don’t have lots of extra funds to invest, there are a number of strategic sub-groups within the university crowd that make sense for a discount brokerage to build awareness with.

Like several other brokerages, Virtual Brokers has younger, cost-conscious investors on their wish list. To that end, Virtual Brokers has developed student oriented products, such as the Kick Start Investment Program which are directly being pitched to students and recent graduates.

So, while it may be tough to command the attention of undergrads between pub crawls and frosh week nuttiness, Virtual Brokers looks like they’re putting a more personal approach into their online brokerage image.

Putting Energy into Education

Another non- bank-owned brokerage, Questrade, was also up to some creative education-themed marketing. Coming up later this month Questrade is holding an investor education webinar on a popular investment area for many Canadian investors: the energy sector.

The session, entitled the 2015 energy investing outlook webinar, is being presented by the OTC Markets Group in association with Canadian Oil Sands Limited, Canadian Energy Services and Technology Corp and McMillan LLP. The agenda for Questrade’s upcoming webinar is an interesting one.

Topics to be covered include an introduction to the energy sector, strategies energy company executives use to manage capital and preserve dividends, the impact of currency fluctuations on energy companies and how to read financial statements from energy companies.

Unlike other discount brokerages such as Scotia iTrade or TD Direct Investing who tend to hold frequent investor education events, Questrade appears to be leaning towards doing less frequent but bigger events. Earlier this year, Questrade also ran an event that featured key speakers from the Canadian financial media that looked at investing trends for 2015.

The session is scheduled to take 75 minutes with 60 minutes for the presentation and 15 minutes for the question/answer period. For more information on this webinar, click here.

Intuition to Win Tuition

Taking a different approach to the back-to-school season, BMO InvestorLine is banking on promotions and contests to win over younger investors. Specifically, BMO InvestorLine has decided to extend their commission-free trade youth promotion into the fall.

At the outset of September the InvestorLine website did not have the updated dates and offer, however the information eventually made its way up there.

As an extra incentive, BMO is also running a contest with a top prize of $10,000 towards tuition at a post-secondary institution as well as $500.00 towards books. Eligible individuals who open an InvestorLine ‘Young Investor Account’ can qualify for this prize draw.

For those who prefer to go the ‘no purchase necessary’ route or who have a light course load, there is an option to submit a (legibly) handwritten 500-800 word essay on “why students should plan their financial future.”

Un-Contested

With interest in investing and trading picking back up again as we head into the fall, Canadian discount brokerages are definitely looking to get the attention of DIY investors. In addition to the regular slate of cash-back or commission-free trade offers, some brokerages also use contests strategically to get the attention (and contact information) of investors.

As mentioned above, BMO InvestorLine in conjunction with their parent bank, BMO, are running the ‘win tuition’ contest. Like most things in the discount brokerage world, however, BMO InvestorLine is not alone in using contests. RBC Direct Investing and Questrade both have contests themed around education/learning.

In the case of RBC Direct Investing, their current contest offers three chances per month to win $1,000. The contest, which began in April and runs until December 27th, is open only to members of the RBC Direct Investing Community. One of the features of the RBC Direct Investing platform is that there is a robust practice account feature as well as a large community of investors to learn and benchmark personal performance against (anonymously).

Finally, Questrade has a contest currently underway geared towards the ‘back-to-school’ sentiment. The contest offers the chance for individuals to win $5,000 toward a professionally managed RESP using Portfolio IQ.

When it comes to contests, it is actually quite interesting to see the amount of resource (in dollar terms) that RBC Direct Investing is contributing towards their investor community feature relative to what other brokerages are spending on these type of efforts. The only other big bank-owned brokerage offering a major prize contest is BMO InvestorLine and even then, the contest is actually being run by the parent BMO and spread across many different business units to qualify.

Also, for comparison, the selfie contest that Scotia iTrade ran this past summer for the prize of a movie pass shows the magnitude of difference between what RBC is putting forward and how other brokerages are responding. At a time when competition is forcing discount brokerages to look for cost efficiency, RBC is once again raising the ante for the other bank-owned brokerages to come up with a compelling incentive.

Tweets of the Week

This week on Twitter was an interesting one. While there was a good diversity of participation and topics covered, it was particularly noteworthy to see Virtual Brokers’ social media efforts restart. Prior to this past week, their Twitter account was dormant through a good chunk of the summer. Mentioned this week were CIBC Investor’s Edge, Questrade, Scotia iTrade and Virtual Brokers.

 

Event Horizon

This week’s discount brokerage-sponsored investor education events include upcoming sessions that may be of interest to mutual funds enthusiasts, and those curious about options and ETFs. Introduction to investing, trading strategies, and fundamental analysis round out this week’s selection.

September 12 – September 18

TD Direct Investing – Introduction to Investing

TD Direct Investing – D-Series | Mutual Funds for the Self-Directed Investor

Scotia iTRADE – Getting Started with Stocks with Pro Market Advisors

TD Direct Investing – Options as an Income Strategy

NBDB – Option Trading Training Program 3rd Edition – [Fr]

Desjardins Online Brokerage (Disnat) – Trading ETFs with Desjardins Online Brokerage

TD Direct Investing – Options as an Income Strategy

Scotia iTRADE – Equity Strategies with iShares

TD Direct Investing – Introduction to Fundamental Analysis

Scotia iTRADE – The Call Option with AJ Monte

From the Forums

Mutually E-xclusive

In this post from reddit Personal Finance Canada, a beginner investor is looking to get started with some simple TD e-series mutual funds in a TFSA. It definitely generated a lot of interesting comments and instructive perspectives on how to get started with investing and is worth a read for beginners.

Optional Options

In this quick thread, on Canadian Money Forum a user is curious about how to go about trading options in their TD direct investing account. What’s also interesting is how some DIY investors can turn to fellow forum posters ahead of or in lieu of brokerages directly.

Scalp Message

In this post from another reddit forum on investing, the Canadian Investor, one user is looking for some perspective on which discount brokerage may be best penny stock trading. Though the forum isn’t as big as the other forums, it is an interesting perspective on a trading strategy.

Into the Close

That’s a wrap for this week’s roundup. There’s been a lot of chatter about two dirty four letter words in the news: rate hike. Not all hikes are bad though. If you’re the outdoorsy type, take the chance to enjoy a late summer hike; if you’re a football fan, then there’s also another type of hike you might enjoy. Of course, everyone is still waiting and worrying about that “other” hike, but until it comes, hopefully there are still some chances to take advantage of the fun kinds. Have a great weekend!

 

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – September 4, 2015

source: Giphy

Just a few more days until school begins but from the looks of things, investors are already enrolled in the school of hard knocks. Unlike Tom Brady, however, many DIY investors are not going to get away without a few bumps and bruises to their portfolio.

For Canada’s discount brokerages, the volatility is a double-edged sword. Trading tends to go up when markets whipsaw which, of course, is great for generating trading commissions. Unfortunately, crashing markets tend to keep the fearful away from opening up new accounts.

In this week’s discount brokerage roundup, we’ll take a look at volatility in the deals and promotions section for the new crop of offers. Next we preview the upcoming season Canadian brokerages love and loathe followed by a ‘big bank’ theory that showed up in this week’s discount brokerage tweets. Finally, we cap off the roundup with some upcoming investor education events and a couple of very interesting forum posts.

Fall Selection

Coming into September, the deals and promotions activity at Canada’s discount brokerages mirrored the markets by pulling back significantly. Seven deals expired at the end of August and only two showed up to replace them leaving a grand total of 11.

Fall is typically a busy season for online brokerages so there is likely a ramp up for deals and promotions on the near horizon. Of particular interest is the fact that several online brokerage rankings are just around the corner. In years past there have been some incentives or promotions that are timed around announcements from the ranking results.

Questrade still dominates the online brokerage promotions space when it comes to the number and diversity of promotional offers with 5 deals currently in play. And, although BMO InvestorLine and Scotia iTrade both technically have two offers each, it’s clear that there aren’t many concurrent offerings from the other online brokerages heading into the fall (at least not yet).

Another noteworthy observation from this month’s deals activity was that several firms (big bank and independent) did not take down the expired deals from their websites, even well into the new month. Given that expired offers can create confusion for site visitors or convey the impression that an online brokerage is not tending to its online image, it was interesting to see these offers continue to be visible. In such a competitive field, these seemingly minor elements can end up tipping the balance in favour of those brokerages that appear to be perceived as more responsive.

With market volatility making headlines, it is going to be a challenging time for Canadian brokerages to get noticed and to provide incentive for DIY investors to step into the market. Those who are up for the challenge, however, will have to be able to be a little bolder than what’s currently posted in order to make investors pay attention.

Best Online Brokerage Award Season

It’s almost that time of year again for the crown of ‘best Canadian online brokerage’ to be handed out, again and again and again and again.

Between September and December there are four different rankings of Canada’s online brokerages that typically get released: the J.D. Power Investor Satisfaction Survey, the Globe and Mail Discount Brokerage Rankings, Surviscor’s Discount Brokerage Rankings and the Morningstar Best Online Brokerage Awards.

The J.D. Power awards for Canadian online brokerages are expected later this month while Rob Carrick’s online brokerage rankings for the Globe and Mail usually land somewhere in mid to late November. Surviscor’s awards are slated to arrive sometime in October or November and the Morningstar Canada Award winners are announced at an evening gala event which takes place this year in Toronto on November 25th.

As a lead up to the upcoming online brokerage awards season, this past week, Morningstar Canada tweeted the nomination form for the best online brokerage award – which is a submission based award.

What this means is that brokerages can, for a $1,000 entrance fee (the fee goes to the charitable partner for this event MusiCounts), submit their firm for consideration for the best online brokerage award. The submission form covers three main areas: online presence, customer service and costs. A panel of several jurors, typically made up of professionals within the online brokerage industry assess the submissions and then select the firm they think provided the best submission. What all of these different awards point out, however, is that there are many different ways to define who the ‘best online brokerage’ in Canada is. For DIY investors and online brokerages alike, this is an unfortunate reality. Since so many firms use the term “best” its meaning has now lost the weight it once carried. Ironically, what having these different measurements points out is that no one system is best when it comes to evaluating which Canadian online brokerage is the best.

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

This week’s volatility in trading markets provided an interesting backdrop to what DIY investors were commenting about on Twitter. Specifically it wasn’t what they were saying so much as who they were saying it to and when the conversations were happening. In this week’s discount brokerage tweets, the big bank owned brokerages were getting quite a bit of attention. Another interesting observation: Scotia iTRADE’s twitter account was getting coverage on the weekend. Over the past several weeks we’ve seen tweets that show up late Friday or across the weekend get answered on the Monday. This past week, however, it was noteworthy to see Scotia iTRADE provide extended coverage. For the other bank-owned brokerages and independent brokerages, simply providing the scheduled tweets on the weekend looks like it isn’t going to cut it anymore.

Event Horizon

It’s back-to-school with this week’s discount brokerage-sponsored investor education events. Here are some upcoming educational sessions that may be of interest to technical and fundamental analysis enthusiasts. Trading strategies, ETFs, and options round out this week’s selection.

September 8th

Scotia iTRADE – Cash Management Using ETFs with Horizons ETFs

TD Direct Investing – Chart Smart | The Relative Strength Index (aka “The RSI”)

September 9th

Scotia iTRADE – Long-term Liabilities are the Real Benchmark to Beat with Purpose Investments

TD Direct Investing – Options as an Income Strategy

September 10th

TD Direct Investing – Introduction to Fundamental Analysis

NBDB – Trading Plan and Investment Strategy for Mid and Short Term Traders – [Fr]

From the Forums

In keeping with the theme noticed on Twitter, there were a couple of interesting posts about bank-owned online brokerages that surfaced in the Canadian investor forums.

Taking off the Trading Wheels

In this first post from the Personal Finance Canada community on reddit, one mid 30’s user had some questions about getting started with their new RBC Direct Investing account, including setting up order types and ETF purchase strategies.

A Convenient Coincidence

Meanwhile, in a separate thread on RedFlagDeals’ investing forum, a similar scenario emerged for a user considering either BMO InvestorLine or Questrade for a TFSA. Interestingly, the convenience factor is a definite pull for some DIY investors. This post was also really interesting because Questrade’s reps did not hesitate to jump on the chance to explain the value of their offer. Well played Team Questrade. Well played.

Into the Close

That does it for this edition of the roundup. Enjoy the long weekend and remember that markets in the US and Canada are closed Monday for the Labour (or Labor) Day holiday. For those longing for volatility anyway, from the PNE to the CNE to Canada’s Wonderland to La Ronde, there are at least a few ways to get your roller-coaster fix. In the meanwhile, here are 10 roller coaster rides that might or might accurately capture the sentiment for the last few trading days.

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – August 28, 2015

Source: Giphy

This past week saw such a crazy mix of sell-off and rally it could have easily been characterized as a McWhopper of a trading week. For Canadian discount brokerages, however, volatility is more than just food for thought; it looks like it may just be the main course.

In this week’s discount brokerage roundup, we start with an in-depth look at the back-to-school battle brewing between brokerages in the RESP space. Next we check out the deals that are on the chopping block heading into September and then take a look at how the volatile markets rattled online brokerages in the tweets of the week. On the final approach we look at upcoming investor education events and close out with some interesting brokerage chatter from the forums.

Back to School Battles

With back-to-school on the minds of many parents, it looks like several online brokerages are taking the opportunity to promote their RESP account offerings. While the RESP doesn’t typically get a lot of attention, it was interesting to take a deeper dive into the different approaches taken to pricing this account by Canadian brokerages.

The Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) is staple registered account type and as such is offered by almost all Canadian online brokerages. These past few weeks, however, two big bank-owned brokerages, CIBC Investor’s Edge and TD Direct Investing, have posted messaging on their homepages referencing these account types, and another non-bank owned brokerage, Questrade, has been talking about upcoming changes to its RESP pricing.

While the messaging from CIBC Investor’s Edge and TD Direct Investing was fairly standard, it was the move that Questrade was making that caught our attention.

In a note to its DIY investor clients this past week, Questrade announced that starting November 1st, its fees for RESPs are going up for certain clients. Specifically, clients with less than $15,000 in assets (across all Questrade accounts or less than $15,000 in combined assets with a myFamily program), will be subject to a $50 annual charge for their RESP account.

Given the fierce competition between brokerages, especially on commission pricing, it is interesting to see Questrade once again start to raise its non-commission fees, especially since they have historically competed on ‘low cost’.

So just how does Questrade’s new $50 annual charge for an RESP stack up?

Within the Canadian discount brokerage space, RESP account fees typically range between $0 and $100 per year depending on the brokerage. As the charts below show, however, account fees only tell part of the story – the other part has to do with the size of assets required to qualify to have those fees waived.

When it comes to RESP account fees, CIBC Investor’s Edge has the lowest fee ($0) regardless of balance size or activity level. It is interesting to note that they are the only Canadian discount brokerage for whom that is true.

Also interesting to note is that the size of the brokerage doesn’t necessarily translate into what an RESP costs. That is to say, of the five brokerages that charge administration charges of $100 per year (currently the highest administration charge), two of them are non-bank owned (Credential Direct and Qtrade) brokerages.

Fig. 1 Annual RESP account fees at Canadian discount brokerages
Fig. 2 Minimum assets or account balance required to waive RESP fees at Canadian discount brokerages

Conversely, two of the brokerages that typically compete on commission cost, Questrade and Virtual Brokers, don’t have the cheapest fees for RESPs.

For Questrade, the newly announced fee of $50 per year requires at least $15,000 in order to be waived. For Virtual Brokers, on the other hand, their pricing page states that the annual fee for their Canadian dollar RESP is $25 per year, regardless of balance.

With regards to the big bank-owned brokerages, both BMO InvestorLine and TD Direct Investing require the highest asset minimums to have fees waived at $25,000. RBC Direct Investing and Scotia iTRADE, on the other hand, have lower thresholds at $15,000 but have higher fees than BMO InvestorLine and TD Direct Investing for not meeting those minimums.

Thus, for individuals hunting for a low-cost provider for online brokerage services, the lesson is to understand what your total needs are as an investor.

Brokerages that might offer a break on commission-fees may not offer the same low-cost when it comes to administration fees or thresholds to have those fees waived.

In the case of Canadian online brokerages offering RESPs, for those with less than $15,000 in assets, the least expensive provider is CIBC Investor’s Edge followed by Virtual Brokers. Those with $25,000 or more in assets don’t really need to worry about fees unless they’re with either HSBC InvestDirect or Virtual Brokers. Given that Virtual Brokers appears in both types of categories indicates that there are certain balance conditions in which it may be advantageous relative to most other brokerages and others where it less competitive.

On the other hand, the fact that CIBC Investor’s Edge can offer the bank-owned convenience factor as well as low trading commission cost poses a genuine challenge to other providers of this account type.

With Questrade now raising fees and other providers not yet moving in this space, CIBC Investor’s Edge looks like they’re sitting at the head of the RESP class.

Deals on a Roll

As the markets have shown heading into September, summer is not about to go quietly. And, it appears, neither are the advertised discount brokerage deals and promotions.

Although there are 16 advertised offers currently in play, 7 of those are scheduled to expire at the end of August. Online brokerages including BMO InvestorLine, HSBC InvestDirect, National Bank Direct Brokerage, Questrade and Virtual Brokers all have offers set to end signaling a lot more volatility in the promotions space about to take place.

Of particular interest is the group of offers for individuals depositing at least $50,000 or $100,000 as this prized segment has attracted some very competitive offers from BMO InvestorLine, National Bank Direct Brokerage, Questrade and Scotia iTRADE.

While it is difficult to predict which offers, if any, will be renewed or extended, the odds are good that BMO InvestorLine, Questrade and Virtual Brokers will have promotions in play beyond the end of August deadline.

Historically the fall season is when DIY investors perk up and start paying attention to markets. This year the recent market volatility has certainly caught the attention of many and perhaps kick-started the comparison shoppers.

Online brokerages have almost certainly noticed more interest from DIY investors kicking the tires on new accounts. For savvy DIY investors, however, the forecast for deals and promotions heading their way looks favourable.

Be sure to check out the deals and promotions section next week and throughout September as many of the major financial institutions will be sprinting towards their fiscal year end (end of October) and hopefully tossing in a few extra deals to finish on a high note with.

Tweets of the Week

Markets weren’t the only ones seeing red this week. With the sharp uptick in volatility taking equity prices across the globe for a joyride, there were many investors that either tried to get into or out of (or both) positions via their online trading accounts. Unfortunately for many of them, more than a few brokers saw trading platforms and feeds choke on the volume. But the pain didn’t stop there.

When platforms or data feeds go down, most DIY investors know that the only lifeline for an order is to make a phone call. As this week showed, however, even the biggest bank-owned brokerage call centres couldn’t handle the swell, with phone lines flashing busy as traders rushed to try and place their orders.

This week’s tweets offer a great example of how discount brokerages big and small can get overwhelmed when markets move quickly, especially to the downside. And, just in case readers think this was a Canadian brokerage issue – it most certainly wasn’t. Major US brokerages such as TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab also saw trading interruptions as a result of technology being overwhelmed.

Event Horizon

Options trading, short selling and technical analysis are just a few of the topics being covered by different online brokerage investor education teams next week. Click the links below for more details.

September 1st

Scotia iTRADE – Getting Started with Options with Pro Market Advisors

September 2nd

NBDB – Short Selling – [Fr]

September 3rd

Scotia iTRADE – How to Balance Risk and Reward Trading Options with Sarah Potter

September 4th

Scotia iTrade – Combining Technical and Fundamental Analysis with AJ Monte

From the Forums

With the markets moving around so much this week, there was also an uptick in the level of conversation about what the markets were doing and whether the sudden and sharp sell-off was the beginning of the end or the buying opportunity of the year.  In the talk of market tops and bottoms, here are a couple of interesting finds related directly to discount brokerages.

Byte the Hand that Feeds

In this brief exchange on RedFlagDeals.com’s investing forum, one new user to Interactive Brokers is looking for a little more information on which data feeds to consider when using IB’s trading platform.

A Better Option?

Options trading continues to grow in popularity with DIY investors. While many trading platforms have yet to really keep pace with the user experience of options trading, ThinkOrSwim typically stands out as one platform options traders like. In this post from RedFlagDeals.com’s investing forum, the cost of Interactive Brokers is pitted against the user performance of ThinkOrSwim. Find out what folks had to say about each.

Into the Close

With the wild ride of this past week, many investors are glad to be heading into a weekend of relaxation. For die hards like this Japanese trader that apparently raked in $34 million this past week, there’s a reminder that while most folks are out relaxing, there are some that keep on grinding away looking for opportunity. However you end up charting out your weekend activities, have a great final weekend of August!

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – August 21, 2015

Source: Giphy

It seems that nowhere was safe from the bears this week. Not stock markets or commodities or even swimming pools. While the bears are out having a pool party, Canadian online brokerages are racing to see who’ll be the ‘last one into the pool’ when it comes to upgrading their website.

In this week’s roundup, technology dominates as we take a look at the latest brokerage to release a new trading. Next we take a look at new platform features being launched by an independent brokerage. Finally we take a look at the commentary about brokerages on Twitter, check out the upcoming investor education events and finally close out with some interesting forum threads for some leisurely reading.

Credential Direct Launches New Trading Website

This past week Credential Direct joined the growing number of Canadian online brokerages undertaking website refreshes and redesigns. Specifically Credential Direct has overhauled their website back end – the area where users would log in to make trades, manage their account and conduct research.

As with many newer websites, Credential Direct has redesigned the back end to be more responsive and adjust to different screen sizes. While the majority of ‘trading’ users will be on a desktop, those who are occasional investors will increasingly find themselves checking in to their accounts on either a mobile phone or a tablet.

Credential Direct already has a dedicated mobile-friendly site so it was interesting to see them style their primary site back end as if it were a mobile-friendly site. While the ‘responsive’ functionality looked promising, when tested on an iPhone 4s safari browser their newest design was substantially less mobile-friendly than their dedicated mobile site which does render well on mobile.

Nonetheless the design refresh has resulted in a less cluttered appearance and new left-of-screen navigation menu. Information within the site appears easier to find and view, especially on a larger monitor. Below is a promotional video by Credential Direct on their new website back end.

The design choice to keep things simple means that users get a functional experience. That said there are some features that indicate the website is still a work in progress, especially from a user experience point of view.

Items in the Plan sub-menu, for example, contain various handy calculators however when clicking on the links users get taken out of the website to a third-party set of tools. Similarly, clicking on the education section takes users back to the front end of the website.

While it’s not a make-or-break feature, from a user experience perspective it is a bit jarring to move from one set of design layouts and navigation to another.

For DIY investors, getting used to different technologies, websites and trading interfaces comes with the territory. More and more, however, the transition between devices using online software is being made to feel ‘seamless’ (amiright Netflix?) so brokerages undergoing redesigns now have the added challenge to get this right.

As online trading platform user comments from across social media this past week have suggested, however, there’s a fine line between form and function that discount brokerages need to pay attention to. Trading online comes down to performance and good looking websites that can’t do what DIY investors need or want are sure to earn ire instead of inspiring awe.

Overall, it is interesting to see how Credential Direct has tackled the multi-screen world that DIY investors now expect to function in. Specifically, the fact that their latest redesign does not offer a truly multi-device responsiveness means that users are exposed to different ways of navigating depending on the device they choose to access.

Fortunately, smaller screens may be on their way out and for now Credential Direct has a mobile site that works well for those screens. That said, the look, feel and organization of the new full site and the mobile site are just different enough to make navigating between devices feel fragmented.

With a busy fall season filled with new brokerage website releases, we’ll certainly be glued to all of our screens to see what the other discount brokerages come up with next.

Questrade Livin’ on the Edge

In keeping with the platform and technology upgrades theme, Questrade also officially announced a number of interesting upgrades to their online trading platform IQ Edge.

Designed for power users and those that want the equities ‘trader’ feel, IQ Edge is the most feature-rich of the entire suite of Questrade’s platform family which consists of four platforms: IQ Essential, IQ Web, IQ Edge and IQ Mobile.

With the latest features, however, Questrade’s platform offering has gotten even more powerful and will start to make other discount brokerages scramble to deploy some upgraded bells and whistles.

Here’s a quick overview of some of the new features:

  1. Integration with StockTwits
  2. Order management directly from charts
  3. New categories and filters in the market movers window (great for active traders)
  4. Cross zero orders
  5. Options rollovers (apparently coming soon)

For the xylophone loving crowd, Questrade has put together a video that shows some of the new features being integrated into their IQ trading platform. For more details on the release, Questrade’s blog post explains it further.

The integration of social media streams into the trading platform and the category filters are certainly getting some folks excited. That said, with any technology change or upgrade there are bound to be hiccups (we saw a few Twitter users chime in on this in our tweets of the week below).

Overall, Questrade appears to be firing on all cylinders when it comes to technology upgrades. Just a few weeks ago they also announced a soon-to-be released revamp of their trading platforms into a new ‘trading experience.’

Questrade has clearly recognized that one of their biggest user bases, younger investors, are on different screens all the time and creating a seamless experience in a trading platform is a priority. Whether or not Questrade succeeds will be seen over time, however the early reveal shows that they’re up for the challenge.

Clearly technology upgrades and user experience upgrades are high on the list of what Canadian discount brokerages are concerned about – and with good reason. Websites, screens, devices and technology that four or even two years ago were passable are now deemed to be antiquated.

With technology moving as fast as it is, one of the metrics DIY investors will certainly be factoring in is not only how responsive websites are but how responsive to change their online brokerage is or isn’t.

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

This week on Twitter it was interesting to observe what happened when both Questrade and Credential Direct released some shiny new bells and whistles.

In the case of Questrade, the reaction from their user base was generally positive, unprompted and noticeable. They also let people know that the changes were there which might have helped things along.

For Credential Direct, on the other hand, the reaction was more subdued. Perhaps the most interesting part, however, was that they elected not to broadcast the new release via their social media account – at least not yet.

Mentions this week were at a minimum however tweets from and about Credential Direct, Questrade and Scotia iTRADE still make for some colourful reading.

Event Horizon

Heading into the end of August there’s still more than a few interesting investor education events to check out. Topics include options, ETFs as well as fundamental and technical analysis. Click below for more info.

August 25th

NBDB – Introduction to Call Options – [Fr]

TD Direct Investing – Introduction to Investing in Options

TD Direct Investing – ETFs 101 – Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About ETFs

August 26th

Scotia iTRADE – Options as a Hedging Strategy with Montreal Exchange

TD Direct Investing – Introduction to Fundamental Analysis

August 27th

TD Direct Investing – Introduction to Technical Analysis

From the Forums

Ask and Ye Shall Re-See

As any IT or tech support operator knows, sometimes folks ask for help only to find out the answer themselves. In this post from the reddit Personal Finance Canada thread, it was interesting to see one user ask about transferring funds from one institution into their online brokerage account only to find an answer on their own. The lesson, however, is one in modern human behaviour: having access to forums and a community to ask is a preferred way for some people to navigate the world.

Give them a Toe

As they don’t often get much conversation time or coverage, it is interesting to see what folks have to say about Qtrade. In this post from RedFlagDeals, one user was curious about getting started with ETFs via Qtrade. Naturally those that can buy ETFs for free wondered aloud what was worth more than the commissions.

Into the Close

That does it for this week’s roundup. Heading into one the last weekends of the summer, there are folks that are looking for pools filled with water and pools filled with NFL football talent. Yes, in addition to da Bears, there will also be Giants, Packers, Seahawks and more on the minds of some. In the meantime, here’s some fun footage of actual bears enjoying the summer.


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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – August 14, 2015

This week provided yet another reminder to traders big and small of the value that data plays in the market place. From the news of the arrest of hackers taking advantage of press releases, to frustrations of receiving delayed (or worse) data to the growing chatter among DIY investors about algorithmic trading, the message is simple, better data gives marketplace participants an edge. Interestingly, this message also rang true for Canadian discount brokerages trying to navigate their own competitive landscape by getting better information as well as having to figure out how to ensure they’re providing ‘good’ data.

In this edition of the roundup, we’ll take a deep dive into a recent study by one bank-owned online brokerage into the state of Canadian investor psychology. Following that we’ll look at an interesting article from the US on an emerging trend among the new breed of DIY investors. Next on the list will be a fascinating look at the action on Twitter, a quick scan of the upcoming investor education events and finally the chatter from the Canadian investor forums.

Fear Factor

Some interesting results of a survey sponsored by BMO InvestorLine were released earlier this week that pulled back the curtain on Canadian investor psychology. What the survey found was equal parts fascinating and concerning all at once.

Despite a common perception of Canadian investors being largely the same from one region to the next, the data tells a very different story. One point of interest was how vastly different attitudes towards market volatility vary depending on where an investor resides.

For example, when looking at the percentage of individuals who reported being anxious about how market volatility would impact their portfolio performance, the difference in absolute terms ranged from a low of 21% (in Quebec) to a high of 46% (in Alberta) with a national average of 33%.

Fascinatingly, provinces west of on Ontario seemed to be much more sensitive to market volatility than the provinces east of it. In relative terms, however, these numbers suggest Western Canadian investors are nearly twice as sensitive to volatility as those east of Ontario.

The most interesting finding, however, is that despite the finding that investors are unanimously anxious (97% on average) and confused (90% on average) about investing, all of the individuals polled invested anyway.

While all surveys should be treated with some degree of caution, the picture these results paint are particularly puzzling and also a bit troubling.

Specifically, the question raised by these results is why would so many individuals invest despite being so anxious or as confused as they are?

Are they feeling compelled to invest out of fear, persuasion, social pressures or some other reason? Or, is it greed – a fear of a different kind – that perhaps they’re missing out? Perhaps experiencing “investment anxiety” or being “generally confused about investing” aren’t as bad as they sound?

Whatever the case, if (and it is a big if) the surveyed individuals are representative of the investing public, then this survey is bound to provoke some uncomfortable conversations.

In particular, these results force the investment industry as a whole to dig further into the issues uncovered. They may need to ask whether enough has been done to explain and educate the general public on what investing entails and what individual investors are getting themselves into.

Given the extent of the findings, it will be interesting to see how or if other investment industry observers respond. If the results of this survey don’t prompt further action, then that ought to be a cause for anxiety or, at the very least, confusion.

Pros & Quants

It seems that every day that goes by stories about advances with robots are becoming part of the normal news stream. In the world of online investing and trading, robots have made a big splash in recent years as high-frequency traders and now as advisors. While the latter has certainly made waves with the retail/DIY investor, algorithmic trading has largely been the focus of a small subset of DIY investor – the tech enthusiast – which may be changing.

An interesting piece from the Wall Street Journal this past week shed light on another facet in which robo-trading could start to make its way more and more into the ‘retail investor’ crowd. Specifically, the article explored the way in which individual investors (or small groups of retail investors) are setting up their own trading algorithms and trading bots via online brokerage firms to go up against the professional market wizards who are the subject of Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys.

For Canadian DIY investors, there are only a handful of brokerages that are really equipped (so far) to offer the kind of setup that enables this algorithmic (algo) trading. Among them are Interactive Brokers, Jitneytrade and, most recently, Questrade.

Although the evidence is scattered, the interest in the practice of DIY algo trading is growing and can be seen in this week’s ‘From the Forums’ section as well as in a nascent conversation threads on how to solve programming challenges for different brokerage APIs.

While Canadian DIY investors have largely been limited to the Interactive Brokers platform (which has had automated trading capabilities for quite some time) early ‘tinkerers’ are getting on board with Questrade’s new API.

Since most Canadian discount brokerages are still wrestling with the Robo-advisor question or working to update and modernize their websites or backend, don’t expect there to be a flood of traditional online brokerages offering up DIY robo-trading any time soon.

Innovation, it seems, may come from younger firms that are less beholden to legacy technology platforms.

For example, the rise of the robo-advisor firms in Canada has been possible because they can build new, streamlined IT systems from the ground up. Online brokerage Robinhood has gone from concept to international company in just a few years, and, could seemingly be capable of enabling technology to help supplement human trading. Even Interactive Brokers, one of the leaders in the DIY algorithmic trading space, could (and appears likely to) grow their business in this area by offering some interesting off-the-shelf scripts and algorithms.

While only time will tell, the emerging picture shows that those firms that have a head start in the DIY robo-trading space are likely to capture this very lucrative group of traders. It also seems to show that humans are going to have to adapt to a very different trading landscape to be able to trade around the growing number of machines on the playing field.

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

Markets weren’t the only reason investors were seeing red this week. A couple of discount brokerages, Scotia iTrade in particular, found themselves having to put out some very public fires regarding technical issues. The interaction between Scotia iTrade and one options trading client of theirs was especially fascinating and instructive on a number of levels. For instance, the new service dynamic between clients and providers that exists on Twitter showcases in somewhat real-time and full view how exciting and/or deflating (there’s a Tom Brady plug in there) the client resolution experience can be. This is not only a sign of the times, but also a huge shift in the way that financial services firms have to run and manage client service.

Event Horizon

August 17

Scotia iTRADE – Bonds Investment Strategies

August 18

Scotia iTRADE – Day Trading with Pro Market Advisors

NBDB – Take Advantage of Margin Accounts – [Fr]

TD Direct Investing – Introduction to Fixed Income

August 19

Desjardins Online Brokerage (Disnat) – Trading ETFs

TD Direct Investing – Top 10 Retirement Mistakes

Scotia iTRADE – Taking Your Portfolio Around The World with iShares

August 20

TD Direct Investing – Building a Fixed Income Strategy

Scotia iTRADE – Combining Technical and Fundamental Analysis with AJ Monte

From the Forums

Refreshing Problem

In a world with high-frequency trading bots working to take advantage of every nanosecond, this post from RedFlagDeals.com’s investing forum about trading data speed almost seems quaint. While human traders can still navigate the markets, speed and accuracy of data are crucial to making the crucial decision to buy, sell or hold. It’s an interesting read for those considering the Interactive Brokers Trader Work Station (TWS) platform.

Importer Exporter

In another data-themed post, this time from the Financial Wisdom Forum, one user asked an interesting question about exporting of trading data from online brokerages. For those curious about how to get information out of their brokerage and which brokerages offer some data export capabilities, it’s a good read.

Into the Close

That’s a wrap for this week’s roundup. With this time in August roughly coinciding with the Perseids meteor shower, if you happen to be outside keep an eye out for any shooting stars. Of course, if you happen to be in Toronto, you may just be seeing a ball or two being knocked skyward. Go Jays Go!

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – August 7, 2015

What a week in and around the equity markets. While investors are starting to see more red than green show up, Canadians are also starting to see more action from the red, blue and now orange of the various political parties jockeying for supremacy in the upcoming election. Politicians aren’t the only ones thinking about gathering support and looking eagerly towards October – discount brokerages are also in the same boat as the road to supremacy in the fall begins with lots of campaigning (not so much baby kissing…yet).

In this edition of the roundup we take a look at a deal that one online brokerage has relaunched to keep things interesting through the final stretch of summer. Next, we’ll take a peek at some more data from a US discount brokerage that paints a promising performance picture for DIY investors. From there we’ll take a look at the latest cheers and chirps on Twitter, provide a highlight of the upcoming investor education events and close out with some very interesting forum thread discussions.

Stacking the Deck

As we had mentioned last week, August is slated to be a busy month for deals and promotions. This past week, Questrade added yet another offer into the crowded deals arena by re-introducing their prepaid Visa card promotion.

The promotion offers up a $50 prepaid Visa for individuals depositing at least $5,000. Of course with all offers, it’s important to read the fine print as sometimes the larger print paints a different picture. In this case the landing page for the offer has the following pitch:

Source: Questrade.com

While Questrade states that there four steps to obtaining the $50 prepaid visa, there are few things that it conveniently left out when comparing these four steps to the full description on the terms and conditions.

Specifically, that individuals need to make at least one commission-generating trade in order to qualify for the prepaid Visa card.

Source: Questrade.com

Another step not mentioned is the wait time between the deposit and when the card will arrive.

Questrade now has 14 concurrently advertised offers on their promotions page, which is substantially higher than any other discount brokerage. Digging a bit deeper, the offers reflect a diversity of attempts by Questrade to appeal to different potential clients. From ebooks to contests to gadgets to the more traditional free trades and cash back offers, Questrade is certainly casting a wide net when it comes to promotional activity.

Other discount brokerages, especially the independent brokerages and less-popular bank-owned brokerages, have their work cut out for them in the promotional mix. Trying to compete against Questrade’s promotional machinery will certainly be a challenge given their experience in this area. At the other end of the spectrum, competing against the well-established brands of the larger bank-owned brokerages who not only have deeper pockets but also much greater followings, won’t come cheap.

With a busy September on the horizon for many brokerages, it would not be at all surprising to see other brokerages starting to launch multiple concurrent offers as they ante up alongside Questrade for getting DIY investors’ attention.

Trading the Trend

Many seasoned traders know the phrase ‘the trend is your friend until it ends’. For Interactive Brokers, it looks like they’re still pretty chummy with the trend pushing their business value up and to the right.

Once again Interactive Brokers published its performance figures for the month that just passed (July) and once again there was a solid year-over-year increase in trading metrics.

Aside from the fact that they saw a year over year increase in daily average revenue trades (DARTs) of 23% to 652 thousand, what really stood out was that they grew their account base to 314 thousand, up 18% year-over-year and 1% higher than the previous month. In other words, Interactive Brokers continues to crush it when it comes to growing their client base, especially amongst the active trader segment.

Here is a screenshot of their average commissions and order sizes for those willing to indulge in a little bit of commission-price envy:

Source: InteractiveBrokers.com

For Canadian DIY investors considering Interactive Brokers, it’s often a challenge to find coverage of them in many of the different rankings and ratings. Until somewhat recently, Interactive Brokers Canada did not offer registered accounts nor was the user base sufficiently high for many of the major rankings/surveys of Canadian discount brokerages. Going forward, however, there might be more coverage as a result of the new account offerings.

That said, there are indirect data points such as Interactive Brokers’ financial and performance metrics show that quarter after quarter, traders keep coming to Interactive Brokers at a rate faster than they’re leaving. That is a trend traders looking for an online brokerage may want to pay attention to.

Event Horizon

It looks to be somewhat of a quiet week ahead for discount brokerage-sponsored investor education events. Here are a couple of upcoming sessions that may be of interest to dividend enthusiasts, as well as those interested in technical analysis and trading strategies.

August 11

Scotia iTRADE – Dividends Are The Cake, Not The Icing with Horizons ETFs

NBDB – Introduction to Technical Analysis – Moving Averages – [Fr]

August 13

NBDB – Trading Plan and Investment Strategy for Mid and Short Term Traders – [Fr]

Scotia iTRADE – Using Volatility To Trade Options with Sarah Potter

NBDB – Introduction to Technical Analysis: Oscillators – [Fr]

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

In this week’s discount brokerage tweets scan, it appeared that brokerages were offered a bit of a break from the usual barrage of technical and account issues. While there were still a few technical issues that got folks tweeting, the conversations seemed relatively tame and there were definitely fewer threats of people “going to take their business elsewhere”. Of interest, there was a posting from a recent winner of the Scotia iTrade selfie contest that offered a lucky break to the contestant. The original contest terms and conditions stated that there was only one movie pass to be awarded per person and it looks like they got two.

From the Forums

While Twitter may have been quiet there were more than a handful of very interesting posts from the Canadian investing forums. It was tough to cut any of the shortlist out so here is the “director’s cut” version of interesting reads.

Cookie Monster

If only the adorable Sesame Street monster were behind the scenes with browser cookies, the world would certainly seem like a less creepy place. Alas, in today’s online landscape nearly every digital touchpoint has some kind of tracking cookie or technology enabled. In this forum post from RedFlagDeals.com, Questrade is singled out as having a number of interesting tracking and measurement features that are keeping tabs on user behaviour.

Money in Motion

Qtrade Investor is not a name that a lot of forum users typically talk about, so it was interesting to spot this post from the reddit personal finance Canada section. What started out as a question about moving a large sum of money into the account turned into some intriguing insights as to why some investors look to Qtrade Investor as an online brokerage of choice.

Voicing a Concern

While we typically stay away from the drama filled commentary of disgruntled clients, sometimes it can be instructive to those looking around for an online brokerage to be able to separate the fact from the opinion with user reviews. Despite a relatively negative experience being shared about Questrade, it was interesting to see this post from RedFlagDeals’ investing thread in which the comments from other users of this online brokerage volunteer their satisfaction with this brokerage.

Into the Close

That’s a wrap for this week’s roundup. Timing in comedy and markets is everything. This past week was also the final show for one very great comedian and pundit Jon Stewart. As we head into yet another maelstrom of election nuttiness, his voice and vigilance for picking up on the nonsense will be missed. Here’s hoping we’ve all been good students to avoid learning some painful lessons.