Interactive Brokers – Page 20

Posted on November 6, 2015 by Ken Yeung — Leave a comment

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – November 6, 2015

Some people don’t even refer to this month as November anymore. “Movember” – the trendy moustache-growing period of the year, has now overtaken the second last month of the year all with the aim at raising men’s health awareness, of course, and having a little fun. As many traders and online brokerage providers know, however, the trend is your friend until it ends.

In this week’s roundup we take a look at the evolving trends in the deals and promotions circuit, with some interesting changes to the deals mix that took place at the start of the month. Next, even though many razors will be on hiatus for November, there is one that seems to apply to Canada’s largest brokerage in their bid to pull ahead of their brokerage peers. In keeping with the roundup tradition, we’ll close out with a look at the tweets from the past week as well as investor education events and some interesting chatter from the Canadian investor forums.

Let’s Make a Deal

It’s a new month and with it comes updates on the status of promotional deals being offered by Canadian discount brokerages, as well as a look at monthly trading activity stats from Interactive Brokers in the US.

Starting first with the deals, Questrade once again leads the online brokerage pack with almost half of the 15 current promotions or deals coming from the alone. Leading the news on the promotional front, Questrade is once again offering an iPad mini 2 for anyone opening an online account by Dec. 31 and funding it with a minimum of $100,000.

Questrade is also still offering contest entrants a chance to win $5,000 towards a professionally-managed RESP, offer ending Jan. 31, 2016, as well as a $50 Amazon.ca gift card for opening a new online account, with at least $5,000 in funding, between Nov. 9 and Dec. 31. Another new Questrade contest involves a chance to win a $5,000 portfolio with Portfolio IQ. This contest opened Oct. 31 and ends on Jan. 31.

BMO InvestorLine is looking to ring in the New Year resolutely with a promotional offer. Anyone opening an account by Jan. 6, with a minimum of $100,000 in assets, is eligible to receive $200 cash back, and 20 trades that are good for use for up to a year. This offer started on Nov. 2. Unfortunately, their youth-oriented offer didn’t fare as well. It expired at then end of October after a very long run through 2015.

Desjardins Online Brokerage is also busy on the promotional side of things with a unique offering of its own. Current and new clients are getting a combined $1,646 discount to enroll in the Power of Options Educational Course from Trade Global. The $995 course is available for $99 under the promotion, and enrollees also get three months access to optionsource.net, a stocks and options advisory service normally priced at $750 for the three months.

On the trade activity front, U.S.-based Interactive Brokers has released its monthly report for electronic brokerage activity. Of note, there were 655,000 daily average revenue trades (DARTs) in October, which is a one-percent drop from September, and a 4-percent drop from last October. Average commission per cleared client order was at $3.70 for the month, which includes exchange, clearing and regulatory fees.

On the Razor’s Edge

Everyone’s heard the expression: simplicity is a virtue, but not everyone’s heard of Occam’s razor, which is a philosophical principle dating back to the 12th century that selects alternatives based on simplicity. So, if you take Occam’s razor to a set of competing options, the simplest one wins.

Translating this principle into practice for online brokerages, however, has not been so simple. Trading platforms for DIY investors have been notoriously challenging to use – either with too many features, which makes them challenging to learn or too few, which inevitably limit the usability for many types of investors. This year, however, there has been a clear focus on improving usability and simplifying the interface investors use to manage their investments and trade online.

TD Direct Investing is the latest brokerage to upgrade their platform with their new TD WebBroker investor platform. The discount brokerage is touting the greater simplicity of the new online design. A primary feature of this new simplified layout is the navigation menu at the top left of the screen. It contains three links that are always readily available — Accounts, Research, and Trading — all with extensive sub-menus viewable with a click, as well as an easy-access Quick Links toolbar menu to the right.

The new WebBroker homepage layout can be personalized, and includes a summary of a client’s accounts, market and real-data updates — available before, during and after trading hours. If you’ve become accustomed to Microsoft Windows’ tile layout, WebBroker provides a similar nifty feature by placing a client’s accounts in tiles that can be scrolled horizontally and selected with a simple click.

In fact, if there’s one thing that stands out with the new homepage layout, it’s just how many features are available on the same page. Scroll down, and a big “Go to Balances” button takes a user to a detailed view of real-time balances for all accounts. Scroll down even further, and an impressive Top Movers section provides an easy-to-see layout of holdings that are experiencing the greatest market value change for the day.

So, if there are a couple of things that stand out with this new layout, it’s that it’s visually more appealing and accessible than the old format, with more features readily available in one location. The new WebBroker also appears to be simpler: streamline navigation, easier access and customizable features.

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

This week’s discount brokerage tweets showcase customers using Twitter to look for answers from brokerages and receive relatively prompt responses. Making the roundup this week are BMO Investorline, Scotia iTrade, Questrade, and TD Direct Investing.

Event Horizon

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, intrigued by technical analysis, and options enthusiasts. An ETF portfolio primer rounds out this week’s selection.

November 9

Scotia iTRADE – Active Investing Strategies with Independent Investor Institute

November 10

TD Direct Investing – Options Fundamentals

Scotia iTRADE – ETF Model Portfolios with Horizons ETF

November 12

TD Direct Investing – Introduction to Investing

Scotia iTRADE – Price Volume Divergence with AJ Monte

From the Forums

Make the switch

There are a growing number of reasons for individuals to move their money from one institution to another. It’s easier than ever to switch your discount brokerage due to the number of promotions for opening accounts and paying transfer fees, you can check them out here. In this post from the Canadian Money Forum, a user is looking to see what benefits or promotions they can get when they move their portfolio to RBC Direct Investing. Another individual asks for an exit strategy for their Tangerine TFSA invested funds in this thread from the RedFlagDeals investing forum.

ETFs coming to TD

For those of you interested in trading ETFs, TD Direct Investing has joined the party. In this post from the RedFlagDeals investing thread, a user informs the community about TD’s plans to offer ETFs in 2016. It’s going to be a great new year for ETF investors!

Into the Close

The theme of the week appears to be change with a new brokerage platform as well as new deals and promotions to accompany a news cycle that included a surprising change in Blue Jays management, a new World Series champion Kansas City Royals, and fresh faces in a federal cabinet yet to be tested with its new duties. It looks like 2015 may have a few more surprises after all.

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Ken Yeung — Leave a comment

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – October 23, 2015

Landslide elections, time machines, and Drake’s infamous victory dances (we think) – this has been a marathon week for peering into the future. While they may not have legendary locks of hair, a hoverboard or some rather original dance moves, Canadian discount brokerages are constantly thinking about and trying to keep up with the future of DIY investing.

In this edition of the roundup we take a look at the interesting moves by one online brokerage South of the border that tip their hand at what’s around the corner for the active traders/investors. Next, a short lesson in volatility that all DIY investors who trade on margin should keep in mind. On the topic of lessons we 1000 tweets deep into personal finance tips from this past weekend from some of Canada’s leading voices on personal finance to see what emerged from the ether. We cap off the roundup with some exciting upcoming investor education events, insightful tweets of the week, forum posts and some dance moves you probably won’t be able to unsee but might be able to relate to after this week.

Earnings Hotline Bling

Earnings season is back once again and this go around there was an interesting reveal made by the US-based Interactive Brokers on their Q3 2015 earnings conference call. As we mentioned in last week’s roundup, Interactive Brokers published a communique highlighting their investor marketplace’s progress but also the launch of their newest practice account feature.

This past week, the founder and CEO of Interactive Brokers, Thomas Peterffy, provided more context around this feature and what it means for his company. There were several interesting tidbits of information within that call.

First, the practice accounts. Peterffy revealed that “about 35% of new account applicants actually completed their applications and funded their accounts” however now that applicants will get immediate access to all of Interactive Brokers’ trading tools, Peterffy believes that a greater percentage of individuals will actually want to follow through on signing up. What was particularly interesting is that users can sign up for a practice account with full access to all the trading tools that they can keep using with delayed data indefinitely.

Second, their target clients are. Interactive Brokers’ platform, marketing and product experience are not geared towards every kind of investor. By their own admission they are more interested in and cater to the active traders – individuals who trade on average “about 500 times a year”. In contrast, the larger bank-owned brokerages who are typically the choice of less active investors often struggle to provide a robust platform and competitive pricing for active traders. In short, IB is a product being built for and marketed to active traders. This was particularly important in the context of platform stability in which Interactive Brokers was able to weather the storm of market outages that hit other bigger platforms, such as Ameritrade and Schwab in August. The reason, according to Peterffy was a lack of bandwidth.

Finally, it’s hard to make money, even as a market maker. This was particularly fascinating as an investor to see that major exchanges reserve the right to cancel trades. For market makers, a business arm of IB, having no visibility or certainty in times of heightened volatility means that they and others like them are not eager to jump into a position because of the risk a trade they take may get cancelled.

There were more interesting nuggets in the call especially for those interested in learning about how Interactive Brokers’ business model and approach.

A Short Lesson

One of the biggest news stories for investors and traders alike this week has been the volatility hitting Valeant Pharmaceuticals.

While volatility is a double edged sword in terms of risk and reward, for those looking to chase the storm for some short term gain, there was a very instructive lesson dealt by Questrade in terms of margin requirements being raised.

Covering their own assets by changing margin requirements is not unique to Questrade. In fact, in the conference call with Interactive Brokers referenced above, one question appeared to focus on an investor who noticed margin requirements were suddenly raised across the board – much to the surprise of the company CEO. This past week, however, clients of Questrade took notice of the drastic change from 30% to 50% margin requirement.

For individuals who run afoul of margin requirements, brokerages typically reserve the right to ‘derisk’ the position either by liquidating the offside position or requiring the account holder to bring the margin requirement up to the minimum acceptable threshold.

Interestingly, by raising margin requirements, it makes it more likely that individuals will have to sell/liquidate in order to satisfy their lenders risk comfort level. As a result, more traders are selling into the falling price and create a lower price forcing more investors to either shore up margin or liquidate. And so the death spiral goes until the buyers step in or the short sellers start to cover (of course if an exchange can cancel trades, market makers are not going to want to step in and start buying).

Another interesting consequence of ending up in a margin call is that certain deals and promotions, especially the cash-back promotions, may get invalidated. In the fine print of many of these offers, accounts must be kept in “good standing” which can mean that an account not be subject to a margin call during the promotional qualification period.

Storm chasing always attracts those with a penchant for danger, however there are risks that can creep up all through the transaction pathway that DIY traders should be aware of.

1000 Tweets on Canadian Personal Finance

The 2015 edition of the Canadian Personal Finance Conference or #CPFC15 was held last weekend in Toronto. Organized by CPFC co-founder Krystal Yee and RateHub.ca’s Kerri-Lynn McAllister, this two day event featured lots of great personal finance tips and gems passed along by many of Canada’s most influential and passionate personal finance writers.

One of the great side benefits of having so many social media savvy writers in one room is the sheer volume of information they can collectively generate. While yours truly did not attend in person, there were a large number of like-minded Twitter stalkers watchers also in attendance.

Naturally the question arose as to what could be gleaned from a room full of personal finance writers and speakers by reading their Twitter posts.

The answer is: lots.

After sorting through and removing the spammy messages that appeared because the hashtag #CPFC15 managed to get itself trending across Canada (apparently thanks in large part to Jonathan Chevreau and Capital One Financial), what remained was an interesting cross section of personal finance topics covered from borrowing to investing.

Below are 1000 tweets collected from this year’s #CPFC15 (minus the spam) that show a bit of the ramp up, the conference itself as well as some of the reactions post conference.

While it is nearly impossible to sum up that many tweets and topics into a “Top 10” list, here are 3 interesting observations related to the DIY investing and discount brokerage space:

First, Questrade was the only Canadian discount brokerage who was actively tweeting from that conference. Keep in mind that this event brought together some of the most influential voices in the Canadian social media and personal finance blogger/writer community – including those who comment on investing. Questrade also took that opportunity to promote their affiliate program (full disclosure SparxTrading is also a participant of that program) to the community of personal finance writers which also raised a few eyebrows in the room, most notably from Jonathan Chevreau.

Second, Robo-advisors are gaining in popularity and resonate with younger investors. The real nugget was that apparently BMO is finally moving into this space after many months of trying to understand the landscape and opportunity.

More broadly, the impact of financial technology or fintech is starting to become a real challenge to the traditional model of banking and wealth management. Now there are robot money managers, branchless banks and peer to peer lending platforms encroaching on the traditional financial services sectors. That’s not news per se but the storm is real and it’s coming.

Finally, DIY investing isn’t so easy according the Canadian Couch Potato Dan Bortolotti. While the ‘discount’ in discount brokerage is appealing, there is a lot that investors take on by trying to sort through the news and noise of the markets, let alone the emotional ups and downs that accompany investing.

Overall, it was great to see the cross section of professional journalists and personal finance bloggers sharing ideas and inspiration on how best to bring the message of better financial literacy and practice to a wider audience. Happy reading!

Event Horizon

Time to bundle up and hunker down, it’s a busy week ahead for discount brokerage-sponsored investor education events. Below are some upcoming sessions that may be of interest to those who are new to investing, options enthusiasts, and those interested in technical analysis. Risk management, trading strategies, a networking opportunity, and a national investment conference round out this week’s selection. Also on the docket, the Tastytrade special event in Toronto this Monday. Here is a recap of the co-founders on a previous edition of Money Talk on BNN.

October 24

TD Direct Investing – Introduction to Investing in Options

October 26

TD Direct Investing – Stock Talk

October 27

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

Scotia iTRADE – Concepts in Technical Analysis with Recognia

NBDB – Portfolio Management Using Momentum Strategies – [Fr]

October 28

Credential Direct – Understanding Economic and Market Trends with Fidelity

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

October 29

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

TD Direct Investing – Introduction to Investing in Options

October 30

Desjardins Online Brokerage (Disnat) – The World Money Show

Tweets of the Week

There was lots of interest in Questrade this week as they were the only online brokerage at this year’s CPFC. It was a surprisingly quiet week for certain brokerages. TD Direct Investing continue to make waves on social media. Also surfacing this week was Credential Direct in the promo for their upcoming webinar.

From the Forums

DIY another day?

Investors are becoming more informed about how to invest their money but does this knowledge justify going it alone? In this post from the RedFlagDeals investing thread, a user asks the question about whether to manage investment funds themselves or to use a financial adviser and pay higher fees. The debate continues.

Saving commissions on ETFs

The ability to save on commission fees while purchasing ETFs is influencing some DIY investors to switch from their current discount brokerage to others. For users who want to make frequent purchases of ETFs, paying a commission each time they buy isn’t cutting it. In this post from the reddit Personal Finance Canada subreddit, one user pitches the idea of switching from TD to Questrade to avoid paying commissions on purchasing ETFs. Also check out another thread from Reddit’s personal finance Canada section where an individual with $20,000 recently opened a Questrade account and is asking for advice on how to invest in ETFs.

Into the Close

Congratulations on making it through a marathon edition of the roundup. Whether you’re celebrating or commiserating the marathon season for the Blue Jays, or portfolio hits and misses from the week, here are some fun, but headscratching, dance moves to inspire DIY investors in those squirmy market moments. Have a great weekend!

Posted on October 16, 2015 by user — Leave a comment

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – October 16, 2015

It’s rally time. Midway through October, baseball, bats and Blue Jays are top of mind in this post-Thanksgiving trading week. While there’s lots more than baseball that the personal finance enthusiasts are talking about this week, we’ll pitch the idea of a baseball themed roundup, tossed bats and all.

In this edition of the roundup, we’ll recap the field of dreams approach that several discount brokerages are hoping will give them an edge in the race to be crowned best online brokerage. Next we provide a virtual highlight reel of personal finance and investing education conversations happening this weekend and throughout the month. Also on deck will be our discount brokerage tweets of the week, upcoming investor education events and batting cleanup will be the forum chatter from the Canadian investor forums.

‘if you build it they will come’

This past week Interactive Brokers provided an update via their latest ‘Communique’ that revealed just how much interest there has been with their ‘investor marketplace’ initiative as well as revealing more details about their practice trading platforms.

Earlier this year, Interactive Brokers launched an interesting initiative to bring together a community of providers of investing related products and services under the umbrella of their investor ‘marketplace’.

Since the launch in June, they have attracted:

386 investment service providers
155 research providers
308 technology providers
89 administrative service providers and
15 business development providers

This initiative was a bold one to undertake but so far it looks to be paying off and interest appears to be growing.

The strategy to offer up value added services without actually taking on the overhead of hiring staff means that Interactive Brokers has found an interesting way to compete against the armies of staff that larger (and typically bank-owned) brokerages offer but at a fraction of the cost.

It’s not quite a grand slam, but it does give Interactive Brokers a chance to score big points with lots of their key stakeholders.

Interactive Brokers isn’t the only brokerage looking to build new features to attract interest from investors. Questrade, TD Direct Investing and Desjardins Online Brokerage are all working on new platforms to be rolled out in the near future and another popular brokerage (who shall remain unnamed) is gearing up to launch a new website in the upcoming weeks.

Clearly there is a big push to improving the product or platform experience in 2015 and brokerages that can’t keep up will, very visibly, be distanced from those firms that can.

Avoiding the Doubletalk

Talking about finance is not something most people typically choose to do with their weekend. Not so for many of Canada’s most popular personal finance writers and enthusiasts.

This weekend, the Canadian Personal Finance Conference is taking place in Toronto and it promises to bring together dozens of voices from across the personal finance landscape to talk about all kinds of acronyms from RRSPs, TFSAs, DRIPs, PiPs and more. To find out what’s getting the personal finance community buzzing, follow along at the hashtag #CPFC15 or better yet, reach out on Twitter as they will have a live feed at the conference.

Tom Drake of the Canadian Finance Blog also put together a great compilation of personal finance tips from some of the experts in attendance. Keynote speakers at the event include popular names such as David Chilton, Dan Bortolotti, Rob Carrick and Ellen Roseman.

Also interesting is the demonstration of some of the newer frontiers of personal finance from robo-advisors to peer-to-peer lending. Questrade will also be on hand for a demo as part of the fintech portion of the conference. Follow along here on Twitter: #CPFC15

Getting more people to open up and engage in discussions about investing is also on the minds of many of the Canadian financial regulatory agencies. As part of their efforts to increase awareness of important topics for investors, they’ve been offering up all kinds of great resources and content relevant to DIY investors for Investor Education Month.

As many regular readers know, we regularly feature the investor education events offered up by Canadian discount brokerages as well as some of their educational partners. Check out the upcoming events for October below or on our investor education calendar of events.

To follow the conversation on investor education, check out the hashtag: #IEM2015

Event Horizon

It’s an interesting 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. Fixed income and ETFs round out this week’s selection.

October 19

Scotia iTRADE – Simple Options Strategies for Part Time Trading with Sarah Potter

October 20

Scotia iTRADE – Trading Commodity ETFs with Pro Market Advisors

TD Direct Investing – Chart Smart – Reading Candlestick Charts – [Fr]

October 21

TD Direct Investing – Introduction to Fixed Income

Scotia iTRADE – Smart Indexing-Benefiting from Min. Volatility & Fund. Index ETFs with iShares

October 22

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

NBDB – Tools and Technical Analysis with Michel Carignan – [Fr]

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

With a shortened trading week and lots of better things to watch on TV, it looks like Canadian DIY investors were busy tweeting about and watching other things. Nonetheless there were a handful of interesting exchanges with the brokerages mentioned this week. Stepping up to the plate were Questrade, Scotia iTrade, TD Direct Investing and Virtual Brokers.

From the Forums

Striking Out Costs

TD’s E-Series funds are a popular choice among self-directed investors looking to invest in low cost index funds. In this post from Reddit’s personal finance Canada section, a user discusses BMO Series D Funds as a possible alternative. For added insight, another thread discusses the differences between BMO InvestorLine and TD Direct Investing as a brokerage here.

ETFs Continue to Rally

The increased availability of commission free ETFs at discount brokerages has piqued the interest of DIY investors. In this thread from the Canadian Money Forum, a user is looking for places to find information about these ETFs.

Into the Close

That’s a wrap on the short week that was. Of course, there’s really nothing better than showing this off again – so here is the highlight reel of that epic home run. Have a great weekend and #GoJaysGo!

Posted on October 2, 2015 by user — Leave a comment

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – October 2, 2015

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.

View the story “Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week – 10/2/15” on Storify

Event Horizon

On deck this October are quite a few investor education events and opportunities. The World Moneyshow rolls into Toronto on October 30-31^st . 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 3^rd) 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!

Posted on August 28, 2015 by user — Leave a comment

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – August 28, 2015

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 1^st, 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.

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.

View the story “Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week – 8/28/15” on Storify

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 1^st

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!

Posted on August 14, 2015 by user — Leave a comment

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.

View the story “Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week – 8/14/15” on Storify

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!

Posted on August 7, 2015 by user — Leave a comment

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:

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.

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:

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.

View the story “Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – 8/7/15” on Storify

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.

Posted on July 24, 2015 by user — Leave a comment

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – July 24, 2015

From spiking share prices of tech giants such as Google and Amazon to gold losing its luster with investors, this week showed that expectations about the future are what drive the rapid moves up and down in share pricing. Arguably, reputation is its own kind of currency and this week we saw examples of how Canadian discount brokerages are having to learn to navigate expectations of online investors via social media.

In this edition of the roundup, we continue with the lighter summer format by taking a look at some sneak peeks at what a couple of discount brokerages are up to over the summer. Next we look at who is facing the heat and why in the discount brokerage tweets of the week. From there we’ll take a look at the upcoming investor education opportunities on the horizon and cap the roundup off with some interesting forum chatter from the past week.

Trading Places

This past week, spent some time with several Canadian online brokerages in Toronto discussing what’s coming around the corner for this fall. Here’s a hint: there’s going to be more than a few big announcements that will get the attention of DIY investors.

Some of what can be shared comes a result of doing a walkthrough of the offices of two close competitors in the low-commission cost segment: Questrade and Virtual Brokers.

What was interesting about being able to go behind the scenes was the level of activity at each of the brokerages and the fact that they are both growing and planning for continued growth. Offices of both brokerages continue to expand and improve which is a testament to the interest these two firms have been receiving from commission-sensitive DIY investors.

As any good summer teaser would do, stay tuned in the upcoming weeks for more interesting content related to these latest adventures.

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

The summer heat was definitely bearing down on social media this week as a couple of discount brokerages found themselves having to cool the nerves of some frustrated investors. In particular it was the bank-owned brokerages that seemed to end up in detailed back-and-forth conversations for issues such as delayed account openings and platform glitches.

This week’s tweets offer a unique and instructive read for anyone interested in what challenges online trading can present and how online brokerages (including the big bank-owned brokerages) respond on Twitter.

Mentioned in this week’s tweets were Questrade, RBC Direct Investing, Scotia iTrade and TD Direct Investing.

View the story “Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week – 7/24/15” on Storify

Event Horizon

Despite it being near the end of July, there is a lot of activity for those interested in learning about investing. Check out some of the interesting sessions below:

July 27

TD Direct Investing – Planning Your Retirement | Tips for Winding Down Your RSP

July 29

TD Direct Investing – Introduction to Investing in Options

TD Direct Investing – Advanced Options

TD Direct Investing – Options as an Income Strategy

Scotia iTRADE – Concepts in Technical Analysis with Recognia

July 30

NBDB – Learn About Investment Basics – [Fr]

From the Forums

Wading Poll

Discount brokerages were on the minds of a few DIY investors this past week in the RedFlagDeals.com investing forum. An informal poll of users of the site asking them which discount brokerage they used provided the following results (based on 78 respondents). Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, TD Direct Investing was the dominant online brokerage that voters mentioned (29.49% or 23 of 78 visitors) followed by Questrade (17.95% or 14 out of 78 visitors) and then BMO InvestorLine in third place (12.82% or 10 out of 78).

With small numbers of respondents, there are obvious limits to the kinds of conclusions that can be drawn. It was, however, noteworthy that Questrade was the second most popular answer and that other fairly well-known brokerages, such as Interactive Brokers, were not mentioned. User comments below the survey results also pointed out some of the gaps and interesting observations.

Upside vs Downside

The decision to become an independent or self-directed investor is definitely an important one. Aside from the usual conversations regarding how much effort is involved, or even which online brokerage is best, the following post from the Financial Wisdom Forum on the downsides of using discount brokerages was a really interesting look at some perspectives of DIY investors on the downsides of the discount brokerages.

Into the Close

That does it for this edition of the roundup. Have a great weekend wherever you happen to be and congrats to the Canadian athletes for the strong Canadian showing at this year’s Pan Am games.

Posted on July 17, 2015 by user — Leave a comment

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – July 17, 2015

Whether it was tech giant Amazon cutting prices for prime day or the Bank of Canada cutting prime rates, this past week it seems that consumers’ economic engines are in need of a little priming to get them into gear. As Canadian discount brokerages know all too well, cutting prices or rates can only go so far in terms of stimulating interest. At some point, the path to growth requires getting creative.

In this edition of the roundup, we take a Pan American look at how brokerages here and south of the border are creatively approaching staying competitive despite some challenging market conditions. First we’ll take a look at the story of what seems to be powering one the largest online brokerages on the planet even higher. Next, we’ll scan through the social media banter from Canadian brokerages and then look at upcoming education events and what DIY investors were talking about in the forums. Of course, it wouldn’t be a true Pan American edition of the roundup without a questionable choice for a musical close out.

That’s Trillion, with a T (and a rillion)

One of the largest online brokerages on the planet got a little bit bigger this past quarter even against the backdrop of decreased trading activity and stagnant interest rates.

US online brokerage Charles Schwab reported their quarterly earnings this past week and the results are more than a little mind-boggling. In the quarter they managed to attract 280,000 new brokerage accounts (an increase of 16% y/y) and grow their total assets by 6% to $2.54 trillion (USD). By comparison, another popular brokerage in the US, Interactive Brokers, had a total of just over 300,000 total accounts (as of the end of April).

While most observers understand the sheer scale of the brokerage gives them quite a bit of clout in the online brokerage space, it was the recent entry of Schwab into the robo-advisor space that has gotten a lot of attention. After being launched in Q1, their robo-advisory has 39,000 accounts and $3 billion (USD) in assets.

Of course, as with most releases, a little bit of extra digging tends to turn something interesting – such as the following quote from CEO Walt Bettinger stating “we remain committed to expanding existing platforms in areas of strong client demand. We have broadened Schwab ETF OneSource^™ to include over 200 commission-free ETFs as of month-end June. Investors can access a wide range of funds from 13 providers and 66 Morningstar categories with zero online commissions.”

What the latest results from Schwab show is that brokerages can get ‘creative’ with products that the investing public is clearly asking for. In this case, commission free ETFs and robo-advisor style management are what seem to be turning heads.

Within the Canadian space, there are already internal committees and groups within the larger bank-owned brokerages actively discussing a strategic opportunity to participate. These results are likely to add more fuel to the fire for the larger brokerage players and that is great news for DIY investors.

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

In this week’s discount brokerage tweets of the week, technology looks to be the Achilles heel for a number of DIY investors and online brokerages. The technology minions don’t seem to care whether it’s a bank-owned brokerage or not, somehow, someway they find the chance to create a bit of mayhem. Mentioned this week were BMO InvestorLine, Questrade, RBC Direct Investing and Scotia iTrade.

View the story “Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week – 7/17/2015” on Storify

Also, we’ve got updated coverage of the Scotia iTrade selfie contest that’s still running. Below is an update which includes this week’s selfie action, most notably from a marketer/promoter looking to drum up more exposure for the contest.

Event Horizon

Even though its summer and school is out, students of the market can always find time to learn. This week there are a number of interesting investor education events on margin trading, options, stock picking and more.

July 21

TD Direct Investing – Understanding Margin & Short Selling

Scotia iTRADE – How To Pick A Stock with Pro Market Advisors

TD Direct Investing – Options as an Income Strategy

July 22

TD Direct Investing – Understanding Margin & Short Selling

July 23

NBDB – Stop Orders: A Winning Solution Worth Knowing – [Fr]

TD Direct Investing – Introduction to Technical Analysis

From the Forums

#Whoops

Now that summer is here, there are lots of DIY investors who want to take advantage of the break or the weather to enjoy some time away from the markets. As this post from RedFlagDeals.com’s investing forum shows, however, don’t forget to close out the open orders or bad things can happen.

After Hours

No, it’s not the wild costume and crazy glow stick crowd (although trading outside of normal market hours can be equally as crazy) but after hours trading refers to trades made outside of the normal market hours. In this post also from RedFlagDeals.com’s investing forum, one member wonders aloud about the afterhours and there are a few polite acknowledgements and some strange looks given in return.

Into the Close

That does it for this edition of the roundup. As promised, here is but one of 21 creative earworms that still feel less questionable to indulge in than either Amazon prime day, yet another interest rate cut or Kanye West closing out the Pan Am games. Good luck to the Canadian athletes at the Pan Am games, and good luck keeping these tunes out of your head over the weekend.

Posted on July 3, 2015 by user — Leave a comment

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – July 3, 2015

With both Canada Day and Independence Day arriving at the beginning of July is the kind of month that should literally come in with a bang. Once the fireworks die down, however, it’s also the time when you can hear the crickets chirping. Oddly enough, this characterizes the Canadian discount brokerages heading into July where, at least on the surface, it seems things have quieted down some.

We continue with the summer edition of the roundup with a quick look at the new deals/promotions lineup for July as well as some interesting news from discount brokerages in the US in terms of trading activity and interesting initiatives for older clients. From there we take a look at upcoming investor education events as well as the week for Canadian discount brokerages on Twitter. Finally, we close out with investor chatter on the forums and an interesting video in honour of the leap second that made July that much later this year.

Deals on Tumbleweed

This past week, the latest selection of discount brokerage deals were posted and things are looking a little, um, spacious.

The downward trend in the number of deals continues heading into July with 14 offers distributed over seven different brokerages. Interestingly a significant chunk of those promotions (six) are from just one brokerage – Questrade.

While summer is typically less busy than earlier portions of the year (such as the lead up to the RSP contribution deadline), the forum chatter continues to show that money doesn’t sleep nor does it take a vacation for the summer. There are still plenty of people out there curious about brokerages and their offerings.

It’s an interesting strategy to pull back going into the summer, especially considering the competitive landscape.

One of the challenges many of the bank-owned brokerages have is how DIY investors will differentiate between these brokerages. In a forum thread on Canadian Money Forum earlier this week, a user by the name of CalgaryPotato nailed it by saying:

“Most of the big banks are pretty similar with their do it yourself investing accounts”

While the discount brokerage rankings might argue otherwise, there’s clearly a growing perception that a bank-owned online brokerage is a bank-owned online brokerage.

With that in mind, it was interesting to see brokerages such as BMO InvestorLine back away from the $100,000+ deposit segment for the moment by retiring a deal geared towards that group and replace that deal link on their homepage with one that describes all of the recent discount brokerage ranking awards they’ve won. That leaves Scotia iTrade as the sole bank-owned brokerage that has a (non-referral) promotion for that segment.

Compared to the past few months, there’s a definite dip in discount brokerage promotion activity at the outset of this month (and it is still early in this month). The fact, however, that a dozen or so brokerages have to find ways to get investors not only to know that they’re out there but also to get excited suggests (and perhaps necessitates) bigger, bolder moves on the promotion horizon.

Interactive Brokers on Data-Driven Roll

With the rollover into a new month, Interactive Brokers has once again published their trading stats for the previous month (June). While Interactive Brokers has historically provided a great deal of information about its trading activity, recently there have been additional disclosures that provide a very interesting window into the world of online trading in the US as well as the inner workings of a discount brokerage.

Although most of their metrics of interest are slightly off last month’s pace, one of the most interesting ones that is up is new accounts. Interactive Brokers gained 18% on a year over year basis and 1% on a month over month basis to come in at 310,000 accounts. While that might pale in comparison to the number of accounts at some of their bigger competitors, those accounts placed an average of 447 (annualized) trades per account which works out to about 37 trades per month. Also interesting to note is their average commission for stock trades is $2.66 with an average order size of 2795 shares. Clearly these aren’t the typical buy and hold types.

On a year over year basis, however, the figures are still fairly impressive: 21% higher trades cleared, 22% higher client equity and 23% higher margin loan balances.

While it is unfortunate for Canadian DIY investors that this kind of transparency and granularity doesn’t exist with discount brokerages here, what these numbers paint a picture of is an online brokerage that continues to grow and win new clients who are active traders.

Rankings and ratings may help the cause of getting attention, but these kinds of figures reflect individual traders voting with their dollars and they have been for some time now.

Protecting Seniors

An interesting article on the potential for fraud or mishandling of seniors’ funds via brokerage accounts highlights the current landscape facing older adult DIY investors in the US are facing.

The groundswell of an aging population combined with the proliferation of technology that makes financial transactions so effortless means that brokerages may find themselves in the position of having to police their client’s trading habits.

The demographic shift has not been lost on the discount brokerage (and wealth management more generally) industry.

About a year ago, BMO InvestorLine published results of a study they commissioned on the rise in wealth transfer that could accompany an aging population. More recently, BMO Wealth Management also published a series of papers on caring for aged parents as further recognition of the impact that aging individuals will have on the financial services requirements of older adults and those who care for them. Also, Canadian Securities Administrators have placed a special emphasis on educating and empowering individuals and especially seniors about recognizing fraudulent investment opportunities.

As more investors start aging, however, the questions being debated now in the US will inevitably come up regarding Canadian investors. Given the extent to which policies in the U.S. tend to shape decisions here in Canada, this will be an interesting issue to follow in the months to come.

Event Horizon

This upcoming week there are a flurry of investor education opportunities. If you’re looking to learn about options, the technical indicator MACD or some basics on options or short selling, check out one of the sessions below.

July 7

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

Scotia iTRADE – Trading Options in 3-D with Pro Market Advisors

TD Direct Investing – Chart Smart – Using the MACD

July 8

TD Direct Investing – Introduction to Investing in Options

July 9

TD Direct Investing – Understanding Margin & Short Selling

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

This week on social media there were a number of interesting glitches on data feeds that got the attention of a few DIY investors. Mentioned this week are BMO InvestorLine, Questrade, Scotia iTrade, TD Direct Investing and Virtual Brokers.

View the story “Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week 7/3/15” on Storify

From the forums

Dress Rehearsal

Diving into the world of investing head first is something most beginner DIY investors should probably rethink. On the other hand, wouldn’t it be nice to be a total expert before putting real money on the line? Of course folks have to take the plunge at some time, however it is always better to learn the ropes with a safety net in place. In this post from the reddit Personal Finance Canada section, there are a number of interesting suggestions put forward to one reddit user who wanted to get the hang of investing before playing for keeps.

Coming up Short

When it comes to trading online, there’s probably one law that every DIY investor (and perhaps discount brokerage too) should keep in mind: Murphy’s Law. Yes, a healthy dose of paranoia is always in order when considering just how many moving parts there are to executing a trade and just what can go wrong in the process. With that scary prelude out of the way, this post from the RedFlagDeals investing forum highlights what went wrong for one investor trying to go short.

Into the close

That’s a wrap for this week’s discount brokerage roundup. In case you missed it, June was extended by an extra second (the ‘leap second’) and if that doesn’t seem like much, here is something interesting to watch that showcases some spectacular leaps that can happen in much less than a second. Hope you find lots of great reasons to jump for joy this weekend!