National Bank Direct Brokerage – Page 5

Posted on March 22, 2021December 31, 2021 by user

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – March 22, 2021

Spring has officially arrived. And while the arrival of the new season didn’t fall on a quadruple witching day, in the online brokerage world it nonetheless lived up to its reputation of bringing change, volatility, and the promise of sunnier days ahead.

In this edition of the Roundup, we look at the latest trading commission price drop from a bank-owned online brokerage and the potential consequences it will have for DIY investors and fellow online brokerage competitors. Next, we jump into some interesting deal activity that’s taken place this month, including the launch of a new offer that might trigger even more promotions to start sprouting this spring. As always, we’ve got chatter from DIY investors courtesy of Twitter and the investor forums.

National Bank Direct Brokerage: Commission Price Drop

The days of the $9.95 standard commission pricing for trades at Canadian online brokerages are numbered. How much lower they go from here and how quickly these changes take effect will depend on who among the larger or more popular players decides to act. A recent commission pricing drop by National Bank Direct Brokerage, however, is likely to add significant cause for other Canadian online brokerages, big and small, to revisit their own commission pricing structures.

This month, we noted that the standard equity commission pricing at National Bank Direct Brokerage (NBDB) dropped about 30%, from $9.95 down to $6.95 for all clients. Previously, NBDB charged $9.95 per trade to all clients, but for those clients who were also a client of National Bank – the parent brand to NBDB – a discounted price of $6.95 was available. That restriction is no longer in place, and the $6.95 price is available to all.

Why NBDB chose to lower their commission rate to the $6.95 level and why they decided to do so now are a good indication of how the industry as a whole has approached lowering their commission prices, even in the face of a growing competitive presence in Canada of zero-commission trading and increasing expectations (thanks to Robinhood and other US online brokerages) that trading online should be commission-free. Online brokerages in Canada, for the most part, are taking a measured and stepwise approach to lowering commission pricing, taking cues from competitors as a way to estimate the prices for commission rates that can be supported.

One important driver for National Bank Direct Brokerage is likely competition from its longtime local competitor, Desjardins Online Brokerage.

The drop in standard pricing brings National Bank Direct Brokerage in line with Desjardins Online Brokerage, which lowered the standard commission pricing for the “everyday investor” product, Disnat Classic, to $6.95 in early 2020. While there are still pricing gaps between these two Quebec-focused online brokerages at the very active trader pricing segment, the interesting consequence to National Bank Direct Brokerage enabling all clients to have access to the $6.95 pricing is that National Bank is pursuing an expansion strategy across Canada, implying that NBDB would now also set their sights on other markets outside of Quebec.

The takeaway for the online investing space in Canada is that a much more robust bank-owned online brokerage offering is now available to Canadian DIY investors. Unlike the lower-cost non-bank-owned online brokerages, National Bank Direct Brokerage brings with it many of the features and the convenience of a big five bank-owned online broker. This means that someone looking for the lower cost pricing typically available at an independent online broker but the convenience and perceived security of a larger institution will now have a serious look at NBDB as an online broker. And, once they start looking, there will be some interesting things for investors of all activity levels to find.

For young investors, for example, National Bank Direct Brokerage offers 10 commission-free trades per year and an even lower commission pricing of $4.95 per trade, simply for being 30 years old or younger. No other Canadian bank-owned online brokerage (yet) has this double feature set. Also, the threshold of 30 years old is higher than at several competitors, where the definition of “young” typically ends at age 25 or 26.

Very active traders at National Bank Direct Brokerage also have access to deeply competitive pricing, at $0.95 per trade, and an advanced trading platform, Market-Q. While Desjardins Online Brokerage’s active trader brand, Disnat Direct, does have cheaper pricing, at $0.75 per trade, the reality is that at the sub-dollar-per-trade range, the other factors of banking convenience might come into play.

Lowering commission pricing is something that Canadian online brokerages have seen as inevitable. That said, how quickly the commission pricing drops has shown itself to be highly dependent on who is the one setting the pace.

Despite the existence of a zero-commission provider, for example, there haven’t been any other Canadian online brokerages that have felt compelled to drop their standard commission prices to that level. Instead, we have observed that certain products, such as ETFs, have become the entry point into zero-commission trading, with firms such as Qtrade Investor, Questrade, Scotia iTRADE, and most recently with TD Direct Investing’s Goal Assist. In the category of commission-free ETFs, National Bank Direct Brokerage has also been somewhat of a leader among the bank-owned segment of online brokerages. In 2017, they launched completely commission-free ETF trading – both buying and selling, albeit with minimum purchase requirements.

For NBDB to capitalize on this latest pricing shift, the challenge, it seems, will be to overcome the marketing and advertising hurdle created by the likes of Interactive Brokers, Questrade, TD Direct Investing, and Wealthsimple Trade in markets outside of Quebec. Another online brokerage that has significant market awareness with large markets across Canada is Qtrade Investor, courtesy of their multiple wins and strong finishes in the online brokerage rankings of influential financial research sources. Each of these brokerages commands significant awareness, and, as a result, NBDB has their work cut out for them to start becoming part of the mainstream conversation of online brokerages.

That said, with 14 Canadian online brokerages for National Bank Direct Brokerage to compete against, their pricing immediately makes them worthy of a top-five or -six consideration. When competing against bank-owned online brokerages, however, they could potentially move into the top three.

Undoubtedly, TD Direct Investing would be high on the list of bank-owned competitors, followed, potentially, by BMO InvestorLine in terms of active marketing and advertising. Clearly, by lowering their standard commission rates to $6.95 per trade, National Bank Direct Brokerage has just earned themselves a major advantage relative to their peers. The online broker with the biggest risk of being displaced is CIBC Investor’s Edge, which, up until now, had retained the position of offering the lowest standard commission among the big bank-owned online brokerages.

When we first reported the pricing drop by CIBC Investor’s Edge to $6.95 per trade in 2014, the impact among DIY investors was immediate. Our data showed that DIY investors soon came to see CIBC Investor’s Edge as a value-based option for trade execution. Even so, the pricing structure reflected some of the limitations for active trader experience at Investor’s Edge.

In this case, National Bank Direct Brokerage has pricing for the “passive investor” but also has platforms and pricing for very active investors and young investors. This makes them unique among the “banking” peer group.

Given the propensity of Canadian online brokerages to make smaller moves – especially among the bank-owned online brokerages – we expect that standard commissions might not be the starting point to match the new pricing at National Bank Direct Brokerage. Other places that online brokerages might be able to target to retain clients would be in their definition of “young” investors, which NBDB defines as 30 and under, or with commission-free ETF trading.

National Bank Direct Brokerage’s latest commission pricing move has made them an option that many DIY investors will be hard-pressed to ignore going forward. As a result, it may not be too much longer before the bank-owned online brokerages cannot ignore them either, and yet another wave of commission pricing drops ensues.

So long as the commission-pricing at NBDB stays quiet, the online brokerage industry in Canada won’t have to move quickly. That said, in a day and age of Reddit threads and social media reach, all it might take is one post for that to change.

Deals & Promotions Updates

March is synonymous with spring and with the changes that accompany a new season. While the beginning of the month saw a significant reduction in the number of Canadian online brokerage offers from larger players, we predicted that it would likely not be too much longer before new offers sprouted up again. And, it turns out, we didn’t have to wait that long after all.

This month, we’ve already seen BMO InvestorLine replace an outgoing deal with a new cash-back promotion, and, excitingly, this past week we noted that National Bank Direct Brokerage also launched a new 100-commission-free-transactions offer. More on that in just a moment.

Starting with the BMO InvestorLine cash-back promotion, the new promotion, like its predecessor, is a tiered cash-back offer. The starting deposit tier for the latest offer is higher, however, starting at $25,000, compared to the previous $15,000. Cash-back amounts have also been scaled back significantly at most deposit tiers. Starting tier deposits qualify for a $50 cash-back (compared to $150 the last time), and the highest deposit tier, $1 million and over, still qualifies for a bonus of $2,000.

For National Bank Direct Brokerage, this has been a big month, with newer pricing (see above) and the revival of a 100-commission-free-transactions offer. The new offer provides 100 commission-free trades, which are good for use for up to one year after the account is opened. This new promotion runs until the end of June and is open to new and existing clients so long as the account type is new. Interestingly, the offer applies to trades of stocks and options (and ETFs), which are sometimes not available during certain commission-free trade promotions.

The (re)launch of a commission-free trade offer from National Bank Direct Brokerage, along with their new pricing offer, might prompt other online brokerages to consider coming to market with an offer this spring as well. Interest in investing and trading remains elevated among DIY investors. However, if the thesis that the catalyst for the surge of interest was individuals working from home or putting stimulus money into investing products, then the reopening of the economy (and sports and travel) could lead to decreased interest or availability of individuals to continue actively trading.

Most Canadian online brokerages elect to take a “wait and see” approach to emerging trends rather than risking taking the position as a leader in innovation. With that in mind, deals and promotions offer a proven method to continuously stay on the radar of investors – especially those who might be lured to leave because of dissatisfaction with pricing or service.

What deals and promotions cannot do is solve for technology or service gaps (even though we have seen compensation in the form of trading commissions help smooth out some service shortcomings). So, it is likely – perhaps even sound business strategy – for those online brokerages who are confident in their ability to deliver strong service and technology to lean into promotional offers at a time when other firms are struggling or lagging. As such, a promotional offer could be seen as a sign of confidence and strength in the service delivery model, and an absence of one – at least in the near term – might have DIY investors asking why certain brokerages are choosing to stay out of the spotlight.

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

Discount Brokerage Tweets – Curated tweets by SparxTrading

From the Forums

My Definition Is This

In this post, an investor who is unsure and nervous about how the Canada Revenue Agency defines day trading asks if it’s okay to sell stocks from a TFSA after owning the stocks for just a few days. The CRA doesn’t provide a clear definition, so Redditors weigh in with their opinions.

New Tuber in Town

A new investor asks in this Reddit post if the Canadian Couch Potato method of investing is still relevant in 2021. An in-depth discussion ensues, touching on ETFs, meme stocks, and more.

Into the Close

That’s a wrap on another week. While markets and investing are the focal point of the Roundup, there’s also a human side to this, and this past week was a dark chapter for the AAPI community. Sadly – and, frankly, unacceptably – the level of hate crimes against women and Asians in particular has increased during the pandemic. It is up to all of us to speak up against racist behaviour wherever possible. Here are some steps from Stop AAPI Hate that anyone can take to assist a person experiencing a racist attack or hate crime:

Take action: Approach the targeted person, introduce yourself, and offer support.
Actively listen: Ask before taking any actions, and respect the other person’s wishes. Monitor the situation if needed.
Ignore the attacker: Using your discretion, attempt to calm the situation by using your voice, body language, or distractions.
Accompany: If the situation escalates, invite the targeted person to join you in leaving the area.
Offer emotional support: Help the other person by asking how they’re feeling, and assist them in figuring out what they want to do next.

Posted on March 1, 2021March 23, 2021 by user

Discount Brokerage Deals & Promotions – March 2021

*Updated March 23* It seems that time flies when you’re hurtling towards the RRSP contribution deadline. At least, that’s the sentiment among many-an-online brokerage as the start of March heralds a new month as well as the end of the busiest stretch in the year for most online brokerages.

And, speaking of busy, the end of RRSP season also means that many online brokerage deals and promotions have expired or will be expiring soon. Specifically, offers from most of Canada’s largest bank-owned online brokerages are set to expire in the first week of March, drastically reducing the number of cash back offers for DIY investors hoping to open an online trading account.

Interestingly, the news isn’t all bad. Wealthsimple Trade actually launched a new promotion at the tail end of February that is part referral bonus, part contest, and offers clients who refer in new customers a shot at winning one of six prizes of $10,000. The timing and nature of this offer, are like most things Wealthsimple Trade, a challenge to other incumbents in the space.

“Normally” promotions filter out at this point with only a select number of online brokerages launching new offers which generally extend through the spring. Wealthsimple Trade’s new offer, described below, is relatively short in duration, large in terms of prize money and lands exactly at the point in the calendar where activity is busiest.

Also new to kick off March, the deals and promotions experience at SparxTrading.com. Readers can still get a quick overview of the latest deals and promotions offered by Canadian online brokerages in this post, but we’ve now added interactive tools to search for and filter deals information based on different parameters like the kind of offer, or account type or even the minimum required deposit.

The good news for DIY investors is that despite the big pull back in offers from some of the bank-owned online brokerages, smaller brokerages might use this opportunity to launch some new offers without having to fight for a crowded field. There is a higher-than-historically-normal amount of interest in trading and investing which means there are still online investors interested in opening up new accounts. While it is not at the excessive levels seen last March, it is actually a bullish signal for online brokerages to continue to compete by providing some kind of incentive offer.

We’ll continue to monitor the turnover in the deals space and if you have any offers or promotions that would be of interest to other online investors, let us know so we can highlight them here.

Expired Deals

At the time of publication there are no deals that have expired however here are the list of deals scheduled to expire on the first day of March:

March 1:

Qtrade Investor Cash Back
Scotia iTRADE Cash Back
TD Direct Investing Cash Back

Extended Deals

No extended deals to report at this time.

New Deals

*Updated March 23: National Bank Direct Brokerage (NBDB) has just (re)launched a commission-free trade offer. They are offering up to 100 commission-free trades, which are good for one year, to individuals who sign up for a new account. This promotion is open to new and existing clients and expires at the end of June. See the deals and promotions section for more details.*

Wealthsimple Trade has launched a new contest combined with their referral program that offers existing clients who refer in new clients the opportunity to enter a draw for one of six prizes of $10,000.

This new promotion, which runs until March 15th, enables existing clients to refer in a new client and if that new client trades at least $100, then the referrer gets $25 plus one entry into the contest and the referee gets $10. Draws for winners will take place on March 2nd, 9th and 16th and in order to enter or receive the prize, an individual must hold or open a Wealthsimple Trade account. Be sure to read the terms and conditions for more information.

Looking for the deals & promotions data? Head over to the new online brokerage deals index to browse through active promotions.

Posted on February 16, 2021December 31, 2021 by user

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – February 16, 2021

It’s fitting that after so much discussion about “shorts” in the news, we also now have a short(er) trading week upon us. With one fewer trading day, it also means the deadline for RRSP contributions is ticking closer, adding to the pressure that is evidently already building at Canadian online brokerages this month.

In this edition of the Weekly Roundup, we take yet another look at the customer service angle at Canadian online brokerages, this time zeroing in on another recent set of rankings that measure digital interactions. From there, we dive into some exciting new features being launched by Canadian brokerages that will help take some of the guesswork out of investing before and during retirement. As always, we’ll serve up a generous helping of investor commentary from Twitter and the investor forums.

Canadian Online Brokerages Struggle at Delivering Service Online

The drumbeat for better customers service among DIY investors in Canada is getting louder by the day.

Increased coverage among high-profile financial writers in Canada, as well as a number of studies by financial research firms, validates what we have been seeing for many months on social media: Most Canadian online brokerages are falling short on providing timely customer service experiences.

Columnist @rcarrick said he’s received complaints about several bank-owned firms, but @TD_DirectInvest was named most often. As the largest player in the brokerage business, TD has had issues keeping up with client demand to speak to its live reps. https://t.co/J7SXJWBNWx
— Ellen Roseman (@ellenroseman) January 25, 2021

While data has been emerging this year that puts the issues faced by online brokerages in the spotlight, it is somewhat confusing for online investors since different studies measure different aspects of the “service” experience.

Both the actual wait times experienced by Canadian DIY investors and the unpredictability of what users can expect when reaching out as either a customer or an interested consumer have potentially far-reaching consequences to the industry as a whole. And, as the data shows, if these issues are not addressed, the recent online brokerage challenges taking place in the US could spill over to providers here in Canada.

The Story in Numbers

At the end of January, a couple of important Canadian online brokerage rankings were published. We covered The Globe and Mail’s online brokerage rankings in detail earlier this month, with a significant amount of time spent diving into the wait times that were measured at Canadian online brokerages in January (2021).

Online Brokerage	Wait Times (min)
BMO InvestorLine	87
CIBC Investor’s Edge	101
Desjardins Online Brokerage	170
HSBC InvestDirect	125
Interactive Brokers	66
National Bank Direct Brokerage	69
Qtrade Investor	28
Questrade	128
RBC Direct Investing	90
Scotia iTrade	179
TD Direct Investing	58
Virtual Brokers	7

For a quick refresh, the table above contains the average wait time data reported as part of the online brokerage rankings among the 12 firms that were reviewed. Interestingly, in a post by DALBAR on LinkedIn, additional information about the wait times was provided that illustrates the range of wait times at each firm. Readers of the Weekly Roundup post in which these numbers were thoroughly examined can appreciate why average values, on their own, might not convey the full picture. The study data cited by The Globe and Mail rankings reported the average wait times, but the graphic below adds additional context around those average values.

Aside from the 25x difference between the average of the lowest wait times (Virtual Brokers) compared to the highest average wait times (Scotia iTrade), one of the most striking trends to jump out is variation in wait times that occurred as online brokerages took longer to respond. At the far right of the chart shown above, five firms in particular stand out with highly variable wait time ranges:

Of these firms, it was most evident that Questrade had the highest range of wait times, which stretched from about 50 minutes to just under 300 minutes, with an average of 128 minutes. By comparison, HSBC InvestDirect had an average of 125 minutes but a much narrower range of wait times, stretching from just over 60 minutes to about 210 minutes. When ranges this wide are part of the service experience, it is essentially a gamble for DIY investors as to exactly how long they are going to have to wait before connecting with a service agent.

Another striking feature of the data on the chart is where Qtrade Investor landed in terms of wait times. Their “worst” wait time (of about 50 minutes) was approximately the best wait time that any firm behind them could achieve.

These data points are also important because of how they compare against another set of online brokerage rankings that focused specifically on service levels. Financial services research firm Surviscor also released online brokerage service rankings at the end of January and concluded that there were clear and persistent shortcomings in the response times of most Canadian online brokerages.

Unlike the DALBAR study, which took a snapshot of one week’s worth of telephone data in January 2021, Surviscor conducted 163 service inquiries per online brokerage between January and December of 2020 on contact forms, emails, and social media channels.

Firm	Response Time (hours)
Questrade	2.90
Qtrade Investor	4.02
Canaccord Genuity Direct	11.15
National Bank Direct Brokerage	29.38
RBC Direct Investing	39.17
TD Direct Investing	39.27
Interactive Brokers	52.28
Laurentian Bank Discount Brokerage	62.30
BMO InvestorLine	76.10
HSBC InvestDirect	77.55
Desjardins Online Brokerage	89.75
Virtual Brokers	91.68
Scotia iTrade	94.20
CIBC Investor’s Edge	104.17

The average industry response time in 2020 ended up being 55 hours, which was actually an improvement over 2019, in which response times across the industry averaged out to 62 hours. One of the most compelling points observed in the Surviscor analysis of service response times, however, was that service has been trending in the wrong direction for many years now, and although COVID-19 can certainly be considered a contributing factor, the data shows that even before the pandemic, meeting customer response times online was a challenge.

Change the Channel or Channel the Change

When comparing the data from the Surviscor and DALBAR studies, it’s clear that the kind of service experience a consumer can encounter with a Canadian online brokerage depends on the channel used, which is a big problem on a number of levels.

First, and perhaps most ironic, is that when it comes to online capabilities for service touchpoints at Canadian online brokerages, in spite of the hairpulling wait times, it is still faster (in most cases) to wait on the phone than it is to send electronic correspondence.

In fact, when comparing the magnitude of the difference between the phone and online channels, the range went from 1x (Questrade) to 786x (Virtual Brokers). Excluding the outliers, the average factor difference was 39x between phone and online interactions. One clear standout in both the digital and telephone categories was Qtrade Investor, which had the shortest wait time on the phone and the second-fastest response time online.

To Surviscor’s point, the digital interactions may have been deprioritized compared to phone channels because customers would be more likely to use the phone channels; however, as far as making a first impression count, most Canadian online brokerages would not get a flattering response.

A second important consideration is that for the financial services industry as a whole, trust is an integral part of consumer confidence.

Granted, DIY investors are flocking to the markets in droves because of perceived generational opportunities to build wealth, but when those same investors are hitting roadblocks to getting issues addressed or questions answered, confidence takes a hit. If you add issues of platform stability to that, then individual investors lose faith that financial services firms are up to the task of safely and reliably providing the opportunities for wealth creation that much of the marketing suggests is possible.

With just a few weeks to go until the RSP contribution deadline for 2020, this is prime time for DIY investors looking to online brokerages for RSP options. It is against this backdrop that the wait times experienced by Canadian investors stand out as something that could ultimately become a much more important component to online brokerage selection than has been the case in the past. Deeper than that, however, the notion of lag time is anathema in the age of online investing.

The recent Robinhood debacle that resulted in trading in certain securities being restricted has been blamed on wait times for trade settlement – a stunning vulnerability in the year 2021. For DIY investors in Canada, the clear and present risk to consider is an online brokerage’s capacity to meet a respectable service delivery standard, especially during times of market volatility or heightened interest (which is arguably when those systems are needed the most).

For Robinhood, not only did they suffer a blow in the court of public opinion, but they are also going to have to answer tough questions from lawmakers and face the wrath of an increasing number of lawsuits. Other than the growing chorus of complaints from Canadian consumers and financial media, there isn’t anyone holding online brokerages accountable for their service standards.

Ironically (again), the longer Canadian online brokerages take to address these service gaps, the more likely it is that the industry will find themselves taking centre stage in a mass media story or, worse, the focal point of a Reddit wave. Make no mistake, the clock on this story is most certainly ticking.

New Features From Online Brokerages Chip Away at Guesswork

After talking at length about where Canadian online brokerages are struggling, it’s a nice change of pace to shift the focus to areas in which they’re looking to innovate and deliver additional value to clients as well as to DIY investors more broadly.

Readers of SparxTrading.com know that we regularly engage with Canadian online brokerages on a number of new features and developments (case in point: our Look Back / Look Ahead series). Two interesting features that were brought to our attention from Canadian online brokerages are worth highlighting to readers.

BMO InvestorLine Launches a Checkup for Portfolios

With a tsunami of new investors joining the stock market, one of the biggest challenges many of them face is understanding how to answer a very basic question: “Am I on the right track?”

Fortunately for DIY investors, BMO InvestorLine recently announced a new online tool that helps investors analyze their current portfolios against a set of investor profiles, to see whether or not their portfolios are in line with their desired investment objectives.

The adviceDirect Portfolio Health Check tool is interesting for a number of reasons, but chief among them is that it is freely available to the general public to use, and it is both simple and fast to complete.

Individuals can enter details about their financial picture (no personally identifiable information is captured) and assess it on four key parameters: asset allocation, diversification, security ratings, and risk. In about three steps, users can quickly see where they measure up to their “personality” type and also see what they may want to consider changing in order to bring their portfolio in line with their respective investing personality type.

In terms of who might be interested, this tool appears to be built around investors (rather than traders) who are interested in taking a portfolio approach to building wealth. This means that the tool is likely to have mass appeal, and it serves as a great starting point to the conversation about whether or not the composition of a portfolio is on target.

From a business development standpoint, this is also an interesting and savvy move by BMO InvestorLine to be part of the conversation about wealth management. Analogous to mortgage calculators helping potential homeowners understand some of the mechanics around house purchases and borrowing, the adviceDirect Portfolio Health Check tool is a timely resource for anyone wanting to get a digital “second opinion” on how their investments stack up. This is entirely in line with their adviceDirect offering, which enables investors to consult with a licensed investment professional about recommendations but leaves the actual work up to the investors themselves to implement.

In a crowded landscape of online brokerages that would normally be focusing on commission pricing, this public-facing tool will enable BMO InvestorLine to be visible to the right kinds of investors at the right moment and, because it is free, for the right price.

Looking in the RRIF-View Mirror

Against the backdrop of service enhancements at Canadian online brokerages, one important feature launched at the end of 2020 will help clients of RBC Direct Investing who are thinking about income when retiring.

Starting in December 2020, RBC Direct Investing enabled clients with Registered Retirement Income Fund accounts (such as RRIFs, LIFs, LRIFs, RLIFs, PRIFs) to be able to view payment details online, without needing to call or wait for a letter. In light of the wait times on the phone channel, this is a timely development.

To help navigate the most important details of a RRIF, the “RRIF View” provides a snapshot of a client’s plan, with information on the required minimum annual withdrawal amount and scheduled payment dates.

While this is a small development, it is an interesting example of a feature that is important to users who have this kind of account – it got a quick highlight as part of the Navigators series that publishes updates at RBC Direct Investing.

At this time of year, there is a lot of discussion about contributing to RRSPs, but there isn’t nearly as much information available on the next steps of funding retirement, in particular the variety of options available to individuals with an RRSP.

Fortunately, RBC Direct Investing also has a fairly good guide explaining RRIFs, which is helpful for individuals needing to navigate this new account type. With this new feature, RBC Direct Investing might also have the opportunity to spark a conversation about online brokerage platforms and the ease with which RRIF account holders can stay on top of key information.

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

Discount Brokerage Tweets – Curated tweets by SparxTrading

From the Forums

Timing the Market

A potential investor asks in this post whether they should wait until after the stock market crash – or at least massive correction – that many experts predict is imminent, in order to buy stocks at rock-bottom prices. Fellow Redditors share their strong opinions about the value of time in the market versus trying to time the market.

Up, Up & Away

From boredom to FOMO to a record bull market, there are many reasons that retail investing is surging in Canada right now. In this post, hundreds of Redditors discuss meme stocks, cryptocurrency, market bubbles, crashes, index funds, interest rates, and a whole lot more.

Into the Close

With the combination of Lunar New Year, Valentine’s Day, and Family Day, there have been many reasons to celebrate this past week, and Friday being that much closer certainly adds one more item to the list. There’s a lot of gripping drama playing out in the US this week, with the GameStonks trade under the microscope. With snow and cold showing up just about everywhere, including Texas, this is going to be a weird one. Hang in there.

Posted on February 1, 2021March 8, 2021 by user

Discount Brokerage Deals & Promotions – February 2021

Just because the month is short, doesn’t mean we can’t be long on fun! From Lunar New Year to Valentine’s Day to Family Day, there is much cause for celebration – with safe social distancing in mind, of course. Another reason for DIY investors to rejoice: there’s still time to meet the RRSP contribution deadline for 2020!

Amidst the recent stock market volatility, there is one constant to look forward to at this time of year: a steady stream of promotions from online brokerages ahead of the RRSP contribution deadline. With over 30 kinds of promotional offers in the mix, there’s bound to be something available from most Canadian brokerages.

For all those looking for sweet deals during this rosy month, be sure to keep reading for all the latest promotions from Canadian online brokerages for February. We forward to a month filled with new surprises, and we will continue to monitor and provide updates on new online brokerage deals throughout the month.

In the spirit of Lunar New Year, we wish everyone an upcoming year filled with good luck and great prosperity – we’re hoping it will start with finding your perfect online brokerage deal here!

Expired Deals

No expired deals to report at this time.

Extended Deals

No extended deals to report at this time.

New Deals

No new deals to report at this time.

Discount Brokerage Deals

Cash Back/Free Trade/Product Offer Promotions
Referral Promotions
Transfer Fee Promotions
Contests & Other Offers
Digital Advice + Roboadvisor Promotions
Offers for Young Investors

Cash Back/Free Trade/Product Offer Promotions

Company	Brief Description	Minimum Deposit Amount	Commission/Cash Offer/Promotion Type	Time Limit to Use Commission/Cash Offer	Details Link	Deadline
	Open a new RBC Direct Investing account by March 31, 2021 and fund it with at least A) $5,000; B) $25,000; C) $50,000; D) $100,000; E) $250,000; F) $500,000 or G) $1M+ by May 31, 2021 and you may receive a cash back of A) $50; B) $100; C) $200; D) $300; E) $500; F) $1,000 or G) $2,000; plus 10 free trades to be used by August 31, 2021. The fund must be from a non-RBC investment account. Use promo code WCMP2 during account opening and be sure to review the full Terms and Conditions.	A) $5,000 B) $25,000 C) $50,000 D) $100,000 E) $250,000 F) $500,000 G) $1M+	Cash Back: A) $50 B) $100 C) $200 D) $300 E) $500 F) $1,000 G) $2,000 Plus 10 free trades	Free trades must be used by August 31, 2021.	Cash Rebate and Free Trades	March 31, 2021
	Scotia iTRADE is offering two choices for new investors who open accounts before March 1, 2021 and fund it with at least A) $5,000; B) $10,000; C) $25,000; D) $50,000; E) $100,000; F) $250,000; G) $500,000 or H) $1M+: Option 1: you can use promo code C21 to receive cash reward of A) $25; B) $50; C) $100; D) $200; E) $400; F) $750; G) $1,000 or H) $1,500; plus a discounted commission of $6.99 per trade until June 30, 2021. Option 2: Use promo code FT21 and you may be eligible for A) 10; B) 20; C) 50; D) 100; E) 200; F) 300; G) 400 or H) 500 free trades to use for 90 days after the account is funded. See terms and conditions for full details.	A) $5,000 B) $10,000 C) $25,000 D) $50,000 E) $100,000 F) $250,000 G) $500,000 H) $1M+	Cash Back: A) $25 B) $50 C) $100 D) $200 E) $400 F) $750 G) $1,000 H) $1,500 or Free Trades: A) 10 B) 20 C) 50 D) 100 E) 200 F) 300 G) 400 H) 500	Free Trades: 90 days	Scotia iTRADE’s Cash Back or Free Trade Offer	March 1, 2021
	Fund your new or existing CIBC Investor’s Edge account before March 2, 2021 with at least A) $10,000; B) 25,000; C) $50,000; D) $100,000; E) $500,000 or F) $1M+ and you may be eligible to receive a cash back reward of up to A) $50; B) $100; C) $200; D) $500; E) $1,000 or F) $2,000. To qualify, the fund must be from outside CIBC. No promo code required. See terms and conditions for full details.	A) $10,000 B) 25,000 C) $50,000 D) $100,000 E) $500,000 F) $1M+	Cash Back: A) $50 B) $100 C) $200 D) $500 E) $1,000 F) $2,000		Program Page	March 2, 2021
	Open a new qualifying account at BMO InvestorLine with new assets worth at least A) $15,000; B) $50,000; C) $100,000; D) $250,000; E) $500,000 or F)$1M+, and you may be eligible to receive a cash back reward of up to A) $150; B) $250; C) $500; D) $800; E) $1,000 or F) $2,000. Use promo code SPARXCASH when registering to qualify. Be sure to read full terms and conditions.	A) $15,000 B) $50,000 C) $100,000 D) $250,000 E) $500,000 F) $1M+	Cash Back: A) $150 B) $250 C) $500 D) $800 E) $1,000 F) $2,000		Winter 2021 Cashback Campaign	March 3, 2021
	Open a new TD Direct Investing account by March 1, 2021 with promo code INVESTNOW and fund it with new assets worth at least A) $15,000; B) $25,000; C) $100,000; D) $250,000 or E) $500,000, and you may be eligible to receive a cash back reward of up to A) $100; B) $200; C) $300; D) $500 or E) $1,000. The fund must be deposited to the account by April 30, 2021 and at least one trade is placed by June 30, 2021. In addition, you may also be eligible for another $100 cash reward by setting up a Monthly Contribution Plan (min. $100 per month) with the first contribution occur before April 30, 2021. The maximum reward one could receive is $1,100. See terms and conditions for full details.	A) $15,000 B) $25,000 C) $100,000 D) $250,000 E) $500,000	Cash Back: A) $100 B) $200 C) $300 D) $500 E) $1,000		TD Direct Investing Cash Back Promotion	March 1, 2021
	New clients who open and fund a new Qtrade Investor account before March 01, 2021 with at least A) $25,000; B) 50,000; C) $100,000; D) $500,000; E) $1M or F) $2M+ may be eligible to receive a pre-paid Visa gift card of up to A) $50; B) $100; C) $250; D) $800; E) $1,500 or F) $2,000. Only the first 500 customers are eligible. Please use promo code VISA2K. See terms and conditions for full details.	A) $25,000 B) $50,000 C) $100,000 D) $500,000 E) $1M F) $2M+	Cash Reward: A) $50 B) $100 C) $250 D) $800 E) $1,500 F) $2,000		Up to $2,000 Visa Gift Card Offer	March 1, 2021
	New accounts opened between Jun 22 and Dec 31, 2020 will be awarded 100 free online trades in one year. This promotion applies to new and existing NBDB clients who use the code “FREE2020” to open new accounts. There’s no minimum funding requirement, however some other restrictions may apply.	$0	100 Free Trades	1 year	Please refer to the full details of the deal.	December 31, 2020
	Open and fund a new account (TFSA, Margin or RRSP) with at least $1,000 and you may be eligible to receive $88 in commission credits (up to 17 commission-free trades). Use promo code SPARX88 when signing up. Be sure to read terms and conditions carefully.	$1,000	$88 commission credit	60 days	Access this offer by clicking here: $88 commission-credit offer. For full terms and conditions, click here.	none
	Open and fund a new account (TFSA, Margin or RRSP) with at least $1,000 and you may be eligible to receive 5 commission-free trades. Use promo code 5FREETRADES when signing up. Be sure to read terms and conditions carefully.	$1,000	5 commission-free trades	60 days	5 commission-free trade offer	December 31, 2021
	Open a new RBC Direct Investing account by December 31, 2020 and fund it with at least $5,000 by March 5, 2021 and you will receive commission rebates for 25 trades that occur within 1 year of account opening. Be sure to use promo code NTBW2 during account opening. You will be charged regular commissions on the trading date, and the rebate will be deposited back into your account after 3-5 business days. If you are an existing customer to RBC DI, the type of the new account being opened must be different from the account types that you current have.	$5,000	25 commission-free trades for a year	1 year	25 commission-free trades	December 31, 2020
	Open and fund a new qualifying account with at least $25,000 and you may qualify for one month of unlimited commission-free trades and up to one month free of an advanced data package. Use promo code ADVANTAGE14 when opening a new account. Be sure to read terms and conditions for full details.	$25,000	commission-free trades for 1 month + 1 month of advanced data.	1 month	Active Trader Program	December 31, 2021
Expired Offers
Last Updated: Feb. 1, 2021 16:00PT

Referral Promotions

Company	Brief Description	Minimum Deposit Amount	Incentive Structure	Time Limit to Use Commission/Cash Offer Deposit	Details Link	Deadline
	Refer a friend to Questrade and when they open an account you receive $25 cash back and they receive either A) $25; B) $50; C) $75; D) $100; or E) $250 depending on the amount deposited amount. Enter code: 476104302388759 during account sign up to qualify. Be sure to read the terms and conditions for eligibility and additional bonus payment structure and minimum balance requirements.	A) $1,000 B) $10,000 C) $25,000 D) $50,000 E) $100,000+	$25 cash back (for referrer per referral; $50 bonus cash back for every 3rd referral) For referred individuals: A) $25 cash back B) $50 cash back C) $75 cash back D) $100 cash back E) $250 cash back	Cash deposited into Questrade billing account within 7 days after funding period ends (90 days)	Refer a friend terms and conditions Code Number: 476104302388759	none
	If you refer a friend/family member who is not already a Scotia iTRADE account holder to them, both you and your friend get a bonus of either cash or free trades. You have to use the referral form to pass along your info as well as your friend/family members’ contact info in order to qualify. There are lots of details/conditions to this deal so be sure to read the details link.	A) $10,000 B) $50,000+	A) You(referrer): $50 or 10 free trades; Your “Friend”: $50 or 10 free trades (max total value:$99.90) B) You(referrer): $100 cash or 50 free trades; Your “Friend”: $100 cash or 50 free trades (max total value: $499.50)	60 days	Refer A Friend to Scotia iTrade	tbd
	You may receive $10 cash incentive for each new client that you refer to Wealthsimple Trade. They must use your unique referral link during account opening and make a trade value of at least $100. The referred friend will also get $10.	$100	You and the referred friend will each get $10.	n/a	Referring a Friend to Wealthsimple Trade	none
	If you (an existing Qtrade Investor client) refer a new client to Qtrade Investor and they open an account with at least $1,000 the referrer and the referee may both be eligible to receive $25 cash. See terms and conditions for full details.	$1,000	$25 cash back (for both referrer and referee)	Cash deposited at the end of the month in which referee’s account funded	Refer A Friend to Qtrade Investor	none
	If you (an existing BMO InvestorLine client) refer a new client to BMO InvestorLine and they open an account with at least $5,000 the referrer and the referee may both be eligible to receive $50 cash. To qualify the referee must use the email of the referrer that is linked to their BMO InvestorLine account. See terms and conditions for full details.	$5,000	You(referrer): $50; Your Friend(referee): $50	Payout occurs 45 days after minimum 90 day holding period (subject to conditions).	BMO InvestorLine Refer-a-Friend	January 6, 2022
Expired Offers
Last Updated: Feb. 1, 2021 16:00PT

Transfer Fee Promotions

Company	Brief Description	Maximum Transfer Fee Coverage Amount	Minimum Deposit Amount for Transfer Fee Eligibility	Details Link	Deadline
	Move your brokerage account to Questrade and they’ll cover the transfer-out fee up to $150.	$150	n/a	Transfer Fee Promo	none
	Transfer $15,000 or more to RBC Direct Investing and they will pay up to $200 in transfer fees.	$200	$15,000	Transfer Fee Rebate Details	none
	Transfer $15,000 or more into a new HSBC InvestDirect account and you may be eligible to have up to $152.55 in transfer fees covered.	$152.55	$15,000	Confirmed via email contact with HSBC InvestDirect Rep. Contact client service for more information.	none
	Transfer $15,000 or more to Qtrade Investor from another brokerage and Qtrade Investor may cover up to $150 in transfer fees. See terms and conditions for more details.	$150	$15,000	Transfer Fee Rebate	none
	Transfer $20,000 or more to a National Bank Direct Brokerage account and they will pay up to $135 plus taxes in transfer fees.	$135	$20,000	Transfer Fee Rebate	none
	Transfer at least $25,000 or more in new assets to TD Direct Investing when opening a new account and you may qualify to have transfer fees reimbursed up to $150. Be sure to contact TD Direct Investing for further details.	$150	$25,000	Transfer Fee Promo Contact client service for more information (1-800-465-5463).	none
	Transfer $25,000 or more into a CIBC Investor’s Edge account and they will reimburse up to $135 in brokerage transfer fees. Clients must call customer service to request rebate after transfer made.	$135	$25,000	Confirmed with reps. Contact client service for more information (1-800-567-3343).	none
	Open a new qualifying account with BMO InvestorLine or fund a qualifying existing account and you may be eligible to have transfer fees covered up to $200. Contact client service for more details.	$200	Contact client service for more information	Contact client service for more information (1-888-776-6886)	none
Expired Offers
	Desjardins Online Brokerage is offering up to $150 to cover the cost of transfer fees from another institution. To be eligible, new/existing clients need to deposit $10,000 into a Desjardins Online Brokerage account. You’ll have to call 1-866-873-7103 and mention promo code DisnatTransfer. See details link for more info.	$150	$10,000	Disnat 1% Commission Credit Promo	January 8, 2020
Last Updated: Feb. 1, 2021 16:00PT

Other Promotions

Company	Brief Description	Minimum Deposit Amount Required	Details Link	Deadline
	The minimum commission per equity trade ($1.99) is waived for new accounts from account opening till December 31, 2020. As a result, your commission is just 1¢/share (max $7.99). However, this offer does not apply to Odd Lot orders (i.e. orders with quantity less than 100 shares if price >= $1 or price < $0.10; or less than 500 shares if price in the $0.10 – $0.99 range). Please be reminded that at Virtual Brokers ETFs are always free to buy.	$0	No Minimum 2020 – Terms & Conditions	December 31, 2020
	Submit your information via the Hardbacon website to be referred to National Bank Direct Brokerage. Open and fund a qualifying account and you may receive up to 200 commission-free trades and discounted trading commissions. Be sure to read full terms and conditions.	n/a	Hardbacon Free Trade Promo	none
	Open a new Non-Registered trading account and fund it with at least $100 by December 18, 2020 and you may receive a random cash bonus ranging from $1 to $4,500. The cash bonus amount will be equivalent to the value of one of the fifteen stocks that have been selected by Wealthsimple Trade for this program. Please refer to the Terms and Conditions for more details.	$100	Wealthsimple Trade Free Stock Promotion	December 18, 2020
	Desjardins Online Brokerage is offering 5 commission-free trades for new 18-30 years-old Disnat Classic clients depositing at least $1,000. See terms and conditions for full details.	$1,000	Broker@ge 18-30 Promotion	none
	Scotiabank StartRight customers can receive 10 commission-free trades when investing $1,000 or more in a new Scotia iTrade account. Trades are good for use for up to 1 year from the date the account is funded. Use promo code SRPE15 when applying (in English) or SRPF15 when applying in French. Be sure to read full terms and conditions for full details.	$1,000	StartRight Free Trade offer	none
	Be one of the first 100 clients to open and fund an account with a minimum of $10,000 at Qtrade Investor using the promo code TRADE695 and you may be eligible for 100 trades at a preferred commission rate of $6.95 for 6 months. See terms and conditions for more details.	$10,000	100 Discounted Commission Trades	March 1, 2020
Expired Offers
Last Updated: Feb. 1, 2021 16:00PT

Digital Advice + Roboadvisor Promotions

Robo-advisor / Digital advisor	Offer Type	Offer Description	Min. Deposit	Reward / Promotion	Promo Code	Expiry Date	Link
	Discounted Management	Open and fund a new Questrade Portfolio IQ account with a deposit of at least $1,000 and the first month of management will be free. For more information on Portfolio IQ, click the product link.	$1,000	1st month no management fees	KDKFNBBC	None	Questrade Portfolio IQ Promo Offer
	Cash Back	Open a new SmartFolio account and fund it with at least $1,000 and you could receive 0.5% cash back up to $1,000. Use promo code SFJAN1000 when opening a new account. See terms and conditions for full details. This offer is limited to new SmartFolio clients only, and can be combined with the refer-a-friend promotion.	$1,000	0.5% cash back to a maximum of $1,000.	SFJAN1000	March 2, 2021	SmartFolio Cash Back Promo
	Discounted Management	Open a new account with BMO SmartFolio and receive one year of management of up to $15,000 free. See offer terms and conditions for more details.	$1,000	1 year no management fees	STSF	April 30, 2019	SmartFolio New Account Promotion
	Cash Back – Referral	BMO SmartFolio clients will receive $50 cash back for every friend or family member who opens and funds a new SmartFolio account. Friends and family referred to SmartFolio will receive $50 cash back for opening and funding an account, plus automatic enrollment into SmartFolio’s mass offer in market at the time. See offer terms and conditions for more details.	$1,000	$50 cash back (referrer) $50 cash back (referee)	Unique link generated from SmartFolio required.	None	SmartFolio Website
	Transfer Fee Coverage	Transfer at least $25,000 into Virtual Wealth when opening a new account and you may be eligible to have up to $150 in transfer fees covered by Virtual Wealth.	$25,000	up to $150 in transfer fees covered	None	None	Contact customer service directly for more information.
Last Updated: Feb. 1, 2021 16:00PT

Offers for Young Investors

Brokerage	Offer Type	Eligible Age Range / Client Segment	Offer Description	Min. Deposit	Expiry Date	Link
	Student pricing	Clients with CIBC Smart™ Account for students	$5.95 per trade and zero annual account fees	not required	None	CIBC Student Pricing
	Broker@ge 18-30	18-30 years old	Benefits: * 5 free transactions (Minimum deposit of $1,000 required) * No inactivity fees * No asset minimum to maintain for free registered accounts * Exclusive events * Disnat Mobile App	$1,000	None	Broker@ge 18-30
	Offers for professionals & students	Students in selected fields of study	Professionals and students in the below fields can benefit from a reduced pricing structure: * Engineering students * Legal, accounting and business students * Healthcare students * Health sciences students * Nursing students Benefits: * $5.95 commission on equities * $0 commission on ETFs * $0 annual administration fee	not required	None	NBDB Student Pricing
	Young investors offer	18-30 years old	Accounts holders who are 30 years old or younger are offered 10 free trades each year. After the free transactions, a commission rate of $4.95 per transaction will be applied (which is just half of the regular price).	not required	None	Young Investor Offer
	Young investor pricing	18-30 years old	Benefits: * $7.75 commissions for stock and ETF trades * No account minimums * No quarterly admin fees	min. $50 a month through pre-authorized contributions.	None	Young Investor Pricing
	Waiver of account maintenance fee	Clients who have RBC Student account, currently or in the past 5 years.	The Maintenance Fee ($25 per quarter) is waived, regardless of the account balance.	not required	None	Zero Account Management Fee
	Young investors offer	Clients 26 years old and under	Low activity account administration fee and the RSP account administration fee are waived.	not required	None	Young Investors Offer
	Waiver of account administration fee	Clients younger than 26 years old	The account administration fee ($24.95 per quarter) is waived.	not required	None	$0 Account Administration Fee
Last Updated: Feb. 1, 2021 16:00PT

Posted on February 1, 2021January 10, 2022 by user

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – February 01, 2021

So. Much. To. Unpack. Unlike most pundits this week, we’re not going to talk about GameStonks, at least not in the kind of depth we normally would. No, for the moment we’ll save the commentary for the forum chatter and DIY investor feedback from Twitter.

There’s plenty on the menu for this edition of the Roundup. In fact, there’s so much to say about the latest online brokerage rankings from Rob Carrick at The Globe and Mail that we’ve decided to focus this edition on the wealth of data and insights the latest edition has delivered. To keep things on point with the conversations happening online, we’ve also included highlights from the forums and on Twitter. Get comfy – this is going to be a long (but fun) ride.

The Unsettled Elephant in the Room

We can safely say this up front: This current market is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.

Specifically, the mobilization of massive waves of investors pouring into stocks that are heavily shorted and being able to generate shockwaves through the capital markets. Never before, or at least not in recent memory, have so many people learned so much about shorting, squeezing, margin, clearing, and settlement as they have in this past week.

Moreover, the lesson in what matters most to online investors – content and community – came courtesy of Reddit, a website that eschews modern aesthetics.

An almost incalculable number of lessons are to be learned from the time we’re living through (especially as DIY investors), so we won’t be covering these in this edition of the Roundup because there’s simply not enough time and space this week for all of it. In fact, in compiling the reactions online to the Canadian discount brokerages via Twitter, the software we use crumbled under the sheer volume of the conversation, taking with it hours of work sifting through visceral and convulsive reactions by online investors (traders) to the trading of GameStop, AMC, Blackberry, and others.

For now, it’s sufficient to leave this video as a tongue-in-cheek summation of events.

a normal person explains what’s happening on the stock market: pic.twitter.com/zKKvULCirX
— Avalon Penrose (@avalonpenrose) January 27, 2021

Rest assured, as the dust settles (probably faster than trades from Robinhood – had to do it), the spotlight will move to the seismic shift in trading behaviour we’re witnessing right now.

ICYMI: Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev spoke out yesterday after the company decided to restrict trading in GameStop and other stocks. “In order to protect the firm and protect our customers we had to limit buying in these stocks,” he told @andrewrsorkin. https://t.co/LsJ5iNjJAB pic.twitter.com/XutnOQn9YN
— CNBC (@CNBC) January 29, 2021

2021 Canadian Online Brokerage Rankings: Spotlight on Service

Now in its 22^nd edition, The Globe and Mail online brokerage rankings, authored by Rob Carrick, are one of the most popular rankings available for Canadians who are shopping around for a new online brokerage or are simply interested in making sense of trends in the DIY investing space.

This past week, the latest edition of the rankings was published, and this one is by far one of the most interesting editions yet.

Fair warning, this post is going to be a long one, in part given the historic nature of current market conditions but also because of additional data added to this year’s review that doesn’t ordinarily appear in it.

What Goes Into the Online Brokerage Rankings?

Over the past two decades, there have been numerous changes to the review, ranging from what time of year it gets published, to the criteria used to evaluate brokerages, to the accessibility of the reviews themselves. These small changes make comparing absolute performance from year to year a challenge, so as a result, one of the best ways to understand the meaning of these reviews is on a relative basis. Contextually, there are important changes or factors that arise over time that make up part of how online brokerages get evaluated.

An important factor to note in the assembly of the rankings is that this review is based on data from the prior year. Or at least that’s how things used to operate. While the bulk of the 2021 online brokerage rankings are based on data from 2020, there is a significant addition to this year’s results: telephone customer service wait times that were collected in mid- to late-January of 2021. The data, which was supplied by financial research firm DALBAR Canada, tested the telephone wait times at all Canadian online brokerages.

It bears mentioning that the likely reason behind including telephone customer service experience stems from the many (many) complaints from online investors over the past year and especially in the latter portion of 2020 (and early 2021) concerning reaching an online brokerage by phone. If there is one thing that Rob Carrick’s reviews and commentary on the online brokerage space in Canada have evolved into, it’s a barometer for some of the most salient issues (and frustrations) faced by DIY investors.

With some important context out of the way, let’s dive into the results themselves to see what the scores looked like across the board this year, who was included (and who was not), as well as some of the important drivers of success in this year’s rankings.

Results from the 2021 Canadian Online Brokerage Rankings

To help put this year’s results into context, the table below compares the most recent set of scores to those of the past two years (2020 and 2019).

Online Brokerage	2021	2020	2019
BMO InvestorLine	B	B-	B
CIBC Investor’s Edge	C+	C	C
Desjardins Online Brokerage	C	C	C-
HSBC InvestDirect	D+	D+	C-
Interactive Brokers	B+	B+	B+
National Bank Direct Brokerage	B	B	B-
Qtrade Investor	A	A+	A
Questrade	B+	B+	A-
RBC Direct Investing	B	B+	B
Scotia iTrade	B	A-	A-
TD Direct Investing	A-	A	A
Virtual Brokers	B	B+	A

One of the first things that jumps out is in relation to first place in these rankings and which online brokerage scored the best: Qtrade Investor.

For the past three years, Qtrade Investor has achieved the highest score in this ranking and, in 2019, had to share that accolade with Virtual Brokers and TD Direct Investing. Since 2019, however, Qtrade Investor has handily outscored its rivals – including last year, when it scored an A+ rating. This year, Qtrade did earn the highest mark, an A, but it was a lower score than last year. No stranger to the podium, Qtrade Investor has been voted best online brokerage by The Globe and Mail 12 times in the 22-year history of the rankings.

Coming in second this year was TD Direct Investing, which is one of Canada’s largest and most popular online brokerages. As with Qtrade Investor, TD Direct Investing saw their score in 2021 drop from 2020, in this case falling to an A- from an A.

Third place, interestingly, was a tie between Interactive Brokers and Questrade, both of whom received grades of B+. One of the reasons this is an interesting result is because Interactive Brokers was, for many years, not included in The Globe and Mail rankings since they primarily catered to more active investors and traders (as opposed to the “everyday investor”) and they lacked an RRSP offering, which they now currently do offer. Since 2019, Interactive Brokers’ score has remained fairly level at B+, but Questrade has seen their score slip slightly, from an A- in 2019 to B+ in both 2020 and 2021. This year, however, that B+ was good enough to tie for third place.

While the middle-of-the-pack experience has largely remained intact, HSBC InvestDirect has consistently remained at the bottom of the rankings for the past three years. Despite their low commission rates, international access, and award-winning client service, several factors that matter more to these ratings, such as mobile accessibility, impacted the scores.

Also of note this year, only two of the 12 Canadian online brokerages covered this year improved in their scores relative to last year. BMO InvestorLine raised their score from a B- to a B, and CIBC Investor’s Edge improved from a C to a C+. In contrast, five online brokerages dropped in scoring compared to last year, the most notable among them being Scotia iTrade, which went from an A- to a B. Another interesting negative trend showed up for Virtual Brokers. In 2019 they tied for the highest score, an A that year, with Qtrade Investor and TD Direct Investing. In 2020, however, they slipped to a B+, and in 2021 they scored a B.

Not on the list of Canadian online brokerages reviewed for this ranking was Wealthsimple Trade – a notable absence given both the visibility and the popularity with younger investors. This is not the first review that the newest kid on the online brokerage block has had to sit out. However, in the context of Wealthsimple Trade’s features, pricing, and volume of interest, not to mention sheer growth in numbers, DIY investors are likely curious about how the brokerage would fare in the rankings framework.

As far as grades go, a comparison to 2019 shows that performance across the board has, on a relative basis, worsened. The strongest drivers for scoring on The Globe and Mail brokerage rankings have always leaned toward the experiences of “everyday investors” rather than more-active traders. This year, the ranking criteria are based on:

Convenience and security
Cost
The investing experience
Tools

Importantly, a big part of the convenience and security component of this year’s results included phone access, something that has been a major pain point throughout 2020 but especially into the end of the year.

Call Options

To address this timely topic, in addition to relying on data generated from 2020, this year the online brokerage rankings included telephone wait time data supplied by financial services research firm DALBAR Canada – and those results were also fascinating.

One of the first, and most glaring, results from that snapshot is that wait times in January at online brokerages averaged out at 92 minutes, with a standard deviation of almost 52 minutes. The importance of reporting the standard deviation here is clear because, while an average wait time of 92 minutes is bad enough, it doesn’t accurately convey how bad things are right now for DIY investors trying to contact customer service.

For a more accurate view, there’s going to be a little bit more math required.

What the overall average of wait times doesn’t convey is that the data has a couple of very clear outliers at both the short and the long ends of wait times. To help put this into perspective, the shortest wait time average was 7 minutes (Virtual Brokers), and the longest was 179 minutes (Scotia iTrade). That works out to almost 26x more time spent waiting to speak to someone at Scotia iTrade than at Virtual Brokers.

Online Brokerage	Wait Times (min)
BMO InvestorLine	87
CIBC Investor’s Edge	101
Desjardins Online Brokerage	170
HSBC InvestDirect	125
Interactive Brokers	66
National Bank Direct Brokerage	69
Qtrade Investor	28
Questrade	128
RBC Direct Investing	90
Scotia iTrade	179
TD Direct Investing	58
Virtual Brokers	7

These two extreme data points suggest they were outliers, and outliers tend to add noise or skew the more realistic picture. The next outlier in the data was Qtrade Investor, with an average wait time of 28 minutes – which is still long by most reasonable standards but is significantly lower than the next highest online broker, TD Direct Investing, where telephone wait times were 58 minutes on average.

Excluding the wait times of Virtual Brokers and Qtrade Investor as outliers, the average wait times at 83% of the Canadian online brokerages worked out to be 107 minutes, more than double what it would be if Virtual Brokers and Qtrade Investor were included in the analysis. Even more telling, the standard deviation drops to 42 minutes. At the upper end of the wait time range, if we exclude Scotia iTrade, with a wait time of 179 minutes, and Desjardins Online Brokerage, with a wait time of 170 minutes, a much more accurate view of wait times emerges.

The average wait time drops from 107 minutes to 91 minutes (about a 15% decrease), and the standard deviation drops from 42 minutes to 26 minutes (a 38% decrease). This represents 66% of the data, or eight out of 12 online brokerages.

Wait Times	Average (mins)	Standard Deviation (mins)	% of Brokers Represented
All Brokerages	92	52	100
Shortest Outliers Excluded	107	42	83
All Outliers Excluded	91	26	66
3 of Big 5 Banks (outliers excluded)	93	7	25

In light of the above data (that excludes outliers at the upper and lower extremes), and assuming a normal distribution, 68% of the time, calling an online brokerage in Canada in January would have resulted in a wait time of between 65 and 117 minutes. And 95% of the time, or 19 times out of 20, the wait time for a DIY investor would have been between 39 and 143 minutes. And 99.7% of the time, a Canadian DIY investor would have waited between 13 and 169 minutes. In other words, getting served quickly would be more because of good fortune than because of the system working as it should.

Let that sink in for a moment. These are private, profit-driven, million- or billion-dollar brands (in some cases) that are posting these kinds of numbers. For illustration, three out of the big five Canadian bank-owned online brokerages posted a remarkably consistent range of wait times: 93 minutes with a standard deviation of 7 minutes. On a peer-to-peer basis, this highlights how far ahead TD Direct Investing’s scores (with wait times of 58 minutes) would be relative to the others and how far behind Scotia iTrade sits. In either of these two cases, these would be considered so far outside of a statistical norm that it is not by accident that they’re achieving these numbers.

Imagine the frustration, dropped calls, and erosion in trust that occurs when an on-demand world meets a two- or three-hour wait time. And this doesn’t even factor in waiting by online chat.

It naturally raises the question: What are Virtual Brokers and Qtrade Investor doing so well, which causes them to be able to answer the phone so fast (relatively speaking), and what are Scotia iTrade and Desjardins Online Brokerage doing so poorly? One possible conclusion points to a capability of being ready to scale up, as pointed out in the Influencer Edition of the Look Back / Look Ahead series.

Now, to be clear, these numbers do not indicate whether or not issues were resolved, just how long it took for someone to answer the phone. Also, these are snapshots in time, and there is no comparable data taken from similar time periods to benchmark against. The fact that these tests added to the caller queue means they affected wait times, even if the impact was slight, so the numbers do need to be treated with some caution.

Even so, it is cause for concern for DIY investors to see that wait times can be meaningfully measured in hours instead of minutes. Coming into the peak season for RRSP contributions, it means that volume will only increase, as will frustration levels. If there are any outages, huge rallies or crashes in the market, or other market-moving events, then RRSP contributions via telephone are going to be nearly impossible at most Canadian online brokerages.

Of course, telephone service isn’t a major selling point for a lot of online investors. In fact, many will never have to deal with a client service rep on the phone, but there are some things that can happen only by talking to a representative. For a portion of the DIY investor population, that translates into being forced to wait.

That said, there are indications that this is clearly an issue of concern to certain online brokerages and that relief may be on the way.

Relief for Long Wait Times

First, in an interesting interview by Preet Banerjee with BMO InvestorLine’s president, Silvio Stroescu, there were some fascinating insights on the impact of the past year on this online brokerage. According to Stroescu, the huge influx of demand for online investing accounts, as well as from investors looking to “upgrade” their accounts, took customer service wait times from an average of five minutes in early 2020 to about 40 minutes in 2021.

The numbers reported by Stroescu for 2021 are still much higher than he was happy with, and in the interview he did explain a number of steps that BMO InvestorLine is undertaking to close the service gap. In fact, as early as this past summer, Stroescu mentioned that BMO InvestorLine undertook significant hiring and ramp-up to provide additional service support. Nevertheless, the observed results of DALBAR’s numbers and reported numbers of Stroescu all point to a significant wait time for online investors calling in.

Another interesting piece of news came from Questrade, in advance of the RSP season rush, in the form of a client email. In that email, they acknowledged that “longer wait times are the norm with all brokerages at this time,” that over the past year they have doubled the number of client service specialists, and that in the “coming weeks” they are slated to add over 100 customer service agents.

Putting the Pieces Together

Clearly, there’s much to digest from the data in this year’s edition of the Canadian online brokerage rankings by The Globe and Mail’s Rob Carrick.

So much of the story that started in March of 2020 was about the volume of activity as well as the influx of individuals who wanted to trade on the market. The impact on Canadian online brokerages, in terms of service as well as stability, has been clear. The statistics point to a systemic lack of capacity to be able to address the surge in interest in online investing coupled with technology and operational shortfalls.

What, as a DIY investor, is especially worrisome about the online brokerage experience is that it has taken so long to remedy the capacity issues. Markets rely on confidence, and confidence comes from certainty. The relative stability of scores in the Canadian online brokerage space points to a “business as usual” pace that was moving far too slowly, or did not plan adequately, for the kind of strain that ultimately emerged over the past year. That said, at certain online brokerages, the persistent wait times point to a much deeper issue and lack of prioritization of client service. Conversely, some other brokerages have clearly shown the capacity to keep up somewhat reasonable wait times.

The qualitative commentary this year was in line with previous years; however, one of the great features for investors trying to get a quick answer on comparing features is toggling comparisons for key items like commission-free ETFs, high-interest savings ETFs, and performance reporting.

As much as we have said about this year’s rankings, there’s also a lot that we haven’t yet covered, including the reactions of investors to this data. This year’s rankings generated almost immediate reactions by readers, with the dominant theme being wait times at various brokerages.

With the latest rankings data in hand, it won’t just be hedge funds feeling the squeeze this year. The online brokerages in Canada now have added pressure to solve the customer service wait time issue and win back the trust of investors. Failing to do so quickly would almost certainly, at this point, raise the prospect of additional regulation and compliance to mandate accessibility and accountability.

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

Discount Brokerage Tweets – Curated tweets by SparxTrading

From the Forums

Up & Up & Up

After so many years of the markets doing well and interest rates dropping, one investor wonders in this post if a market downturn is now unlikely, if not impossible. Other Redditors share their strong opinions on whether the stock market can stay up forever.

Into the Close

That’s a wrap on just one of the several big events that transpired this past week. Looking forward, there’s a new month, which means a deals update is on its way, and there will likely be no letup from the buying army of retail investors who’ve firmly locked into all sorts of shorted stocks, including silver. Buckle up for volatile times ahead.

Posted on January 21, 2021 by user — Leave a comment

Look Back / Look Ahead: National Bank Direct Brokerage Q&A

What can beginner investors expect from your firm?
At National Bank Direct Brokerage, beginner investors are taken care of and guided from the very beginning of their experience. For young and not-so-young, we are the place to start investing in ETFs with $0 commissions. We support them with an ETF Centre, an easy-to-use filter tool and ETF research reports from Morningstar and National Bank Financial.
For young investors aged 30 and under, we offer special and advantageous pricing, with 10 annual free trades, $4.95 pricing on stocks and no administration fees.
NBDB offers the necessary tools to trade, but we also offer an educational component. We have training courses, a YouTube channel where we publish instructional and educational videos, and several other tools that allow new investors to gain confidence and make informed decisions.

What can active investors expect from your firm?
Best pricing, best service and a high-performance transactional Market-Q tool. Active investors can have the best of both worlds: $0.95 per trade on stocks and $0 on ETFs, when they qualify. For 2021, active investors can expect continued downward pressure on commission fees, including option pricing.

What online investing trends do you expect to matter to DIY investors?
The feedback that we’ve received from our clients is clear: Clients are looking for greater online content (fundamental analysis, technical analysis, ETFs, options and strategies) and support that can assist them in managing their investments and become better investors.

What does user experience mean at your firm?
At NBDB, we value customer experience. That is why we routinely send surveys to our customers to better understand their needs. This valuable information is then used to guide our decision-making, whether it be for tools, services or any other aspect of our business. We are customer-focused, and that is why our customers’ opinions are taken into account on a daily basis.

What sets your firm apart from your peers?
We may not be the biggest direct broker in Canada, but we are the first in setting the tone by offering competitive pricing that benefits everyone. We offer innovative tools and services; a distinctive service for high-net-worth clients, InvestCube (ETF portfolios); and tools and services not offered by the competition.

This Q&A was featured in the Look Back / Look Ahead magazine.

Posted on January 4, 2021 by user — Leave a comment

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – January 4, 2021

2020 is now officially behind us. 2021 will be one of those years that most of us will not have any trouble remembering to write correctly, even in the first few weeks. And, speaking of easy to remember, this month and year are off to a memorable start. Once again cryptocurrency FOMO is sweeping through online investors, there’s a whole host of drama in the US in the lead-up to the inauguration, and RRSP season is now in full swing. Lace up your new sneakers because week one of the new-year news cycle is going to hit the ground running.

Keeping things manageable but exciting heading into week one is on our agenda for this Roundup. The first story of the new year is one that will definitely be worth diving into as we look at the huge volatility in deals action heading into 2021 and what online investors can expect in the weeks leading up to the RRSP contribution deadline. Up next are a series of fun announcements about new features to look forward to from Sparx Trading. We know time is a premium as everyone eases back into the workweek so we’ll keep this edition short and sweet. Happy New Year and enjoy!

Volatility Hits Online Brokerage Deals and Promotions

There’s no doubt that the end of 2020 couldn’t come fast enough. In the real world, it was a year of challenges and tragedies, and while there is no question it was a year that many want to leave behind, anyone looking at the “digital world” of equity markets or cryptocurrency would say there were at least some things that 2020 brought that were not bad.

For Canadian online brokerages, the start of 2021 is an interesting moment as it represents the convergence of several key factors that point to one heck of a year ahead. Already the latest deals and promotions activity forecasts a heavy dose of volatility (if not outright drama).

The first key factor to the start off the new year is that this is the time of year when Canadian discount brokerages kick into overdrive to get on the radar of online investors. The RRSP contribution deadline (March 1st) is behind the ramp-up of efforts to win over investors in the market for online investing accounts. And, DIY investors can expect to see even more advertising, offers, and other activities from asset-hungry online brokerages.

From a deals and promotions perspective, December was the busiest stretch since the start of 2020, signaling a return by online brokers to this popular tactic of attracting new clientele. Interestingly, the official start to 2021 (i.e. January 1^st) was a holiday, and, as such, many of the offers that were scheduled to end on December 31^st were left posted on the websites of several online brokers. It is unclear if the offers that were scheduled to expire at the end of December will actually be renewed or extended or if other offers will be launched to replace the outgoing ones. Suffice it to say, it will be a busy first week back to amend dates, update websites, or launch new offers. So, stock markets aside, we expect a bit of deal volatility to start the year.

Brokerages with offers that expired at the end of December include National Bank Direct Brokerage, Questrade, RBC Direct Investing, and Virtual Brokers. It would be hard to imagine a scenario in which all of these online brokerages stay on the sidelines for the duration of RRSP season, especially considering that all of the other major bank-owned online brokers have live offers and that, as of mid-December, Qtrade Investor jumped into the promotions pool with a new cash-back offer as well.

The second key factor that is bound to play a role in DIY investor demand for online trading access harkens back to the start of 2019. Similar to what took place two years ago, there’s been a huge run-up in the price of cryptocurrencies to start the year. What’s also on the menu this year (akin to the cannabis push in 2019) are rumblings of a new push into psychedelics. These “hot” new investor stories are compounded by enormous gains from tech companies benefitting from the work-from-home boom. The takeaway: Retail investor sentiment to jump into fast money seems to be driving markets to very frothy levels.

For Canadian online brokerages this a very bullish signal – something that could factor into either the scale or the duration of offers that might yet still come to market. Note that during the height of the market volatility here in mid-2020, many online brokerages pulled their deals altogether, with retail investor interest being sufficiently strong to render offering promotions and incentives unnecessary. We believe, however, that RRSP season is too tempting an opportunity to pass up, in spite of the retail investor sentiment, suggesting more offers to come from online brokerages this January. Also coming: increased urgency to open accounts and the accompanying frustration to get started right away.

Given the run-up in cryptocurrency prices, there is one Canadian online brokerage that stands to benefit disproportionately compared to its peers: Wealthsimple Trade.

Heading into the end of the year, we saw them launch a very short and creatively packaged cash-back promotion. Tearing a page out of the US online brokerage Robinhood’s playbook, Wealthsimple Trade pitched a “free stock” promotion that offered new users the equivalent dollar value to certain popular stocks traded on Wealthsimple Trade. The promotion ran for just about a month, and so it is curious from a timing standpoint as to what could be coming next for this online broker. Nonetheless, they are the only Canadian online brokerage to offer up direct cryptocurrency (Bitcoin and Ethereum) trading – something that would undoubtedly attract retail investor interest at this point. For that reason, there is a serious tailwind behind Wealthsimple Trade until (or if) cryptocurrency prices turn.

With so much happening in just the first week, we’ll be keeping our eyes on the deals activity among Canadian online brokerages throughout the month. There’s almost certainly going to be additional promotions updates coming and, if 2020 has taught us anything, probably a surprise or two before the month is over.

Announcements From SparxTrading.com

One of the fun things that the start of a new year affords us the opportunity to do is to change things up just a bit. Normally, we’d recap the latest developments in this section, but seeing as how we’re coming off a bit of a quiet spell in December (not counting the fact that Robinhood is in the crosshairs of financial regulators in the US), we’re going to take the opportunity to talk about a few big developments taking place at Sparx Trading.

Relaunching of Our Newsletter

Elon Musk won’t be the only one sharing epic launches in 2021. Sparx will also be launching a few big items, although ours will be into cyberspace and way less boring (pun intended).

The first of these will be an epic reboot of the SparxTrading.com newsletter. After being dormant for more than a few years, the newsletter is being completely remade and will feature a handy way for you to stay on top of the latest online brokerage news – and especially the Weekly Roundups. The newsletter is going to be published monthly and will feature quick recaps of the biggest stories across the online investing space over the previous month as well as any important updates taking place on SparxTrading.com (of which there will be more than a few!). Look for the first edition to launch in mid-January, and sign up using the following link:

Even More Perspectives on 2021

We’re thrilled with our latest Look Back / Look Ahead edition. Not only does it give readers a unique window into the world of the Canadian online brokerage industry during the pandemic – from the vantage point of those in charge of leading those brokerages – but it also provides previews on what’s coming up next in 2021.

Online brokerages, however, aren’t the only voices that have a unique and influential impact on how DIY investors navigate online investing. We’re excited to be launching a follow-up to Look Back / Look Ahead that features some of the most influential reviewers in the Canadian online brokerage landscape.

This exciting new edition is coming up at the end of January so be sure to follow us on one of our social media handles (like Twitter) for a first look. In the meantime, you can review the online brokerage edition of Look Back / Look Ahead.

A Shiny New Website

This one we’ve telegraphed already, but we’re getting close to launch and are really excited to be testing out features on the new SparxTrading.com website. A lot has changed about the online brokerage world since we started Sparx Trading, and much has also changed about the team behind the scenes at Sparx. With more hands on deck, and even more excitement about where we can take things, it was only fitting that we tackle something more ambitious. So, fingers crossed, we’re good to launch by the end of January, and users will be able to research online brokerages even faster, look for deals and promotions more intelligently, and track the latest developments at the online brokerages they’re most interested in more conveniently.

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

Discount Brokerage Tweets – Curated tweets by SparxTrading

Into the Close

That’s a wrap for this first-of-2021 edition of the Weekly Roundup. With cryptocurrency mooning and stocks in rally mode to start the year, there’s a welcome dose of green amidst some of the negative news still confronting us regarding COVID-19. Clearly, there’s a lot to take in for the week so best of luck catching up, and we look forward to a wild month and year ahead. Happy New Year again, and stay healthy and profitable!

Posted on January 1, 2021January 30, 2021 by user — Leave a comment

Discount Brokerage Deals & Promotions – January 2021

*Update: January 8* Cheers to 2021! While 2020 marked a year full of surprise and change – both inside and outside the DIY investing space – we believe it is safe to say we are all ready for a fresh start. To help you ring in the new year and celebrate in (financial) style, Sparx Trading has rounded up the latest deals and promotions from Canadian discount brokerages.

With 2021 officially here, RRSP season is now officially in full swing. Whether it is a personal New Year’s resolution of yours or not, make sure you do not fall victim to procrastination this year. The deadline for contribution to RRSPs to count for the 2020 tax year is March 1^st, 2021.

Scroll on to learn more about all the current online brokerage deals and promotions for January – including a new offering and a few that are set to expire at the very start of the month.

As always, we will continue to monitor the deals space and provide updates on new discount brokerage developments, so make sure you check back throughout the month. In the meantime, if you discover any new deals that you believe would be of interest to fellow DIY investors, please let us know in the comments below.

Expired Deals

The stroke of midnight not only signified the beginning of a new year, but it also signified the end of several online brokerage deals. Optimistically, we expect that after the holiday, various online brokerages will be updating their sites and long-standing offers which technically happened to expire might be given a new lease on life. That said, here’s what officially expired as of January 1st, 2021.

National Bank Direct Brokerage’s 100 free online trades
~~Questrade’s 5 commission-free trades and month-long commission-free trades/advanced data~~ (now back)
RBC Direct Investing’s 25 commission-free trades
Virtual Brokers’ “No Minimum 2020” promotions all expired on December 31st, 2020

During the month of December, we also saw a rather creative cash back offer from Wealthsimple Trade quietly expire.

Looking ahead, three promotions are scheduled to expire on January 5th, 2021: BMO SmartFolio’s cash back promotion, BMO InvestorLine’s refer-a-friend campaign, and BMO InvestorLine’s Fall 2020 cash back campaign. See tables below for full promotion details and eligibility requirements.

Extended Deals

*Update: Jan. 8 – Questrade’s promotion section is now up to date as their entry level five commission-free trade offer makes a comeback. Also back, is the 30 days of unlimited commission-free stock and option trades in the form of commission rebates, plus one free month of an advanced data package, when opening a new account. Both deals will expire on December 31st. See the full terms and conditions in the tables below.*

New Deals

*Update: Jan. 8 – RBC Direct Investing has launched a new cash back promotion that will run until the spring. Set to expire on March 31st, this new deal offers cash back and commission-free trades to investors who open a new account and transfer funds from a non-RBC investment account to their new account. See the table below for full terms and eligibility details.

BMO InvestorLine has also launched a new cash back promotional offer which is set to expire on March 2, 2020. This new promo is a tiered promotion and qualifying deposit levels start at $15,000. Scroll down to see the full promotion terms and conditions.*

Though not technically new, we are adding the Wealthsimple Trade referral promotion to our coverage. DIY investors can receive cash towards their next trade each time a new client signs up for an account using their referral link. For more details, including eligibility requirements, please see the table below.

Discount Brokerage Deals

Cash Back/Free Trade/Product Offer Promotions
Referral Promotions
Transfer Fee Promotions
Contests & Other Offers
Digital Advice + Roboadvisor Promotions
Offers for Young Investors

Cash Back/Free Trade/Product Offer Promotions

Company	Brief Description	Minimum Deposit Amount	Commission/Cash Offer/Promotion Type	Time Limit to Use Commission/Cash Offer	Details Link	Deadline
	Open a new RBC Direct Investing account by March 31, 2021 and fund it with at least A) $5,000; B) $25,000; C) $50,000; D) $100,000; E) $250,000; F) $500,000 or G) $1M+ by May 31, 2021 and you may receive a cash back of A) $50; B) $100; C) $200; D) $300; E) $500; F) $1,000 or G) $2,000; plus 10 free trades to be used by August 31, 2021. The fund must be from a non-RBC investment account. Use promo code WCMP2 during account opening and be sure to review the full Terms and Conditions.	A) $5,000 B) $25,000 C) $50,000 D) $100,000 E) $250,000 F) $500,000 G) $1M+	Cash Back: A) $50 B) $100 C) $200 D) $300 E) $500 F) $1,000 G) $2,000 Plus 10 free trades	Free trades must be used by August 31, 2021.	Cash Rebate and Free Trades	March 31, 2021
	Scotia iTRADE is offering two choices for new investors who open accounts before March 1, 2021 and fund it with at least A) $5,000; B) $10,000; C) $25,000; D) $50,000; E) $100,000; F) $250,000; G) $500,000 or H) $1M+: Option 1: you can use promo code C21 to receive cash reward of A) $25; B) $50; C) $100; D) $200; E) $400; F) $750; G) $1,000 or H) $1,500; plus a discounted commission of $6.99 per trade until June 30, 2021. Option 2: Use promo code FT21 and you may be eligible for A) 10; B) 20; C) 50; D) 100; E) 200; F) 300; G) 400 or H) 500 free trades to use for 90 days after the account is funded. See terms and conditions for full details.	A) $5,000 B) $10,000 C) $25,000 D) $50,000 E) $100,000 F) $250,000 G) $500,000 H) $1M+	Cash Back: A) $25 B) $50 C) $100 D) $200 E) $400 F) $750 G) $1,000 H) $1,500 or Free Trades: A) 10 B) 20 C) 50 D) 100 E) 200 F) 300 G) 400 H) 500	Free Trades: 90 days	Scotia iTRADE’s Cash Back or Free Trade Offer	March 1, 2021
	Fund your new or existing CIBC Investor’s Edge account before March 2, 2021 with at least A) $10,000; B) 25,000; C) $50,000; D) $100,000; E) $500,000 or F) $1M+ and you may be eligible to receive a cash back reward of up to A) $50; B) $100; C) $200; D) $500; E) $1,000 or F) $2,000. To qualify, the fund must be from outside CIBC. No promo code required. See terms and conditions for full details.	A) $10,000 B) 25,000 C) $50,000 D) $100,000 E) $500,000 F) $1M+	Cash Back: A) $50 B) $100 C) $200 D) $500 E) $1,000 F) $2,000		Program Page	March 2, 2021
	Open a new qualifying account at BMO InvestorLine with new assets worth at least A) $15,000; B) $50,000; C) $100,000; D) $250,000; E) $500,000 or F)$1M+, and you may be eligible to receive a cash back reward of up to A) $150; B) $250; C) $500; D) $800; E) $1,000 or F) $2,000. Use promo code SDCASH2000 when registering to qualify. Be sure to read full terms and conditions.	A) $15,000 B) $50,000 C) $100,000 D) $250,000 E) $500,000 F) $1M+	Cash Back: A) $150 B) $250 C) $500 D) $800 E) $1,000 F) $2,000		Winter 2021 Cashback Campaign	March 2, 2021
	Open a new TD Direct Investing account by March 1, 2021 with promo code INVESTNOW and fund it with new assets worth at least A) $15,000; B) $25,000; C) $100,000; D) $250,000 or E) $500,000, and you may be eligible to receive a cash back reward of up to A) $100; B) $200; C) $300; D) $500 or E) $1,000. The fund must be deposited to the account by April 30, 2021 and at least one trade is placed by June 30, 2021. In addition, you may also be eligible for another $100 cash reward by setting up a Monthly Contribution Plan (min. $100 per month) with the first contribution occur before April 30, 2021. The maximum reward one could receive is $1,100. See terms and conditions for full details.	A) $15,000 B) $25,000 C) $100,000 D) $250,000 E) $500,000	Cash Back: A) $100 B) $200 C) $300 D) $500 E) $1,000		TD Direct Investing Cash Back Promotion	March 1, 2021
	New clients who open and fund a new Qtrade Investor account before March 01, 2021 with at least A) $25,000; B) 50,000; C) $100,000; D) $500,000; E) $1M or F) $2M+ may be eligible to receive a pre-paid Visa gift card of up to A) $50; B) $100; C) $250; D) $800; E) $1,500 or F) $2,000. Only the first 500 customers are eligible. Please use promo code VISA2K. See terms and conditions for full details.	A) $25,000 B) $50,000 C) $100,000 D) $500,000 E) $1M F) $2M+	Cash Reward: A) $50 B) $100 C) $250 D) $800 E) $1,500 F) $2,000		Up to $2,000 Visa Gift Card Offer	March 1, 2021
	New accounts opened between Jun 22 and Dec 31, 2020 will be awarded 100 free online trades in one year. This promotion applies to new and existing NBDB clients who use the code “FREE2020” to open new accounts. There’s no minimum funding requirement, however some other restrictions may apply.	$0	100 Free Trades	1 year	Please refer to the full details of the deal.	December 31, 2020
	Open and fund a new account (TFSA, Margin or RRSP) with at least $1,000 and you may be eligible to receive $88 in commission credits (up to 17 commission-free trades). Use promo code SPARX88 when signing up. Be sure to read terms and conditions carefully.	$1,000	$88 commission credit	60 days	Access this offer by clicking here: $88 commission-credit offer. For full terms and conditions, click here.	none
	Open and fund a new account (TFSA, Margin or RRSP) with at least $1,000 and you may be eligible to receive 5 commission-free trades. Use promo code 5FREETRADES when signing up. Be sure to read terms and conditions carefully.	$1,000	5 commission-free trades	60 days	5 commission-free trade offer	December 31, 2021
	Open a new RBC Direct Investing account by December 31, 2020 and fund it with at least $5,000 by March 5, 2021 and you will receive commission rebates for 25 trades that occur within 1 year of account opening. Be sure to use promo code NTBW2 during account opening. You will be charged regular commissions on the trading date, and the rebate will be deposited back into your account after 3-5 business days. If you are an existing customer to RBC DI, the type of the new account being opened must be different from the account types that you current have.	$5,000	25 commission-free trades for a year	1 year	25 commission-free trades	December 31, 2020
	Open and fund a new qualifying account with at least $25,000 and you may qualify for one month of unlimited commission-free trades and up to one month free of an advanced data package. Use promo code ADVANTAGE14 when opening a new account. Be sure to read terms and conditions for full details.	$25,000	commission-free trades for 1 month + 1 month of advanced data.	1 month	Active Trader Program	December 31, 2021
Expired Offers
Last Updated: Jan. 10, 2021 18:00PT

Referral Promotions

Company	Brief Description	Minimum Deposit Amount	Incentive Structure	Time Limit to Use Commission/Cash Offer Deposit	Details Link	Deadline
	Refer a friend to Questrade and when they open an account you receive $25 cash back and they receive either A) $25; B) $50; C) $75; D) $100; or E) $250 depending on the amount deposited amount. Enter code: 476104302388759 during account sign up to qualify. Be sure to read the terms and conditions for eligibility and additional bonus payment structure and minimum balance requirements.	A) $1,000 B) $10,000 C) $25,000 D) $50,000 E) $100,000+	$25 cash back (for referrer per referral; $50 bonus cash back for every 3rd referral) For referred individuals: A) $25 cash back B) $50 cash back C) $75 cash back D) $100 cash back E) $250 cash back	Cash deposited into Questrade billing account within 7 days after funding period ends (90 days)	Refer a friend terms and conditions Code Number: 476104302388759	none
	If you refer a friend/family member who is not already a Scotia iTRADE account holder to them, both you and your friend get a bonus of either cash or free trades. You have to use the referral form to pass along your info as well as your friend/family members’ contact info in order to qualify. There are lots of details/conditions to this deal so be sure to read the details link.	A) $10,000 B) $50,000+	A) You(referrer): $50 or 10 free trades; Your “Friend”: $50 or 10 free trades (max total value:$99.90) B) You(referrer): $100 cash or 50 free trades; Your “Friend”: $100 cash or 50 free trades (max total value: $499.50)	60 days	Refer A Friend to Scotia iTrade	tbd
	You may receive $10 cash incentive for each new client that you refer to Wealthsimple Trade. They must use your unique referral link during account opening and make a trade value of at least $100. The referred friend will also get $10.	$100	You and the referred friend will each get $10.	n/a	Referring a Friend to Wealthsimple Trade	none
	If you (an existing Qtrade Investor client) refer a new client to Qtrade Investor and they open an account with at least $1,000 the referrer and the referee may both be eligible to receive $25 cash. See terms and conditions for full details.	$1,000	$25 cash back (for both referrer and referee)	Cash deposited at the end of the month in which referee’s account funded	Refer A Friend to Qtrade Investor	none
	If you (an existing BMO InvestorLine client) refer a new client to BMO InvestorLine and they open an account with at least $5,000 the referrer and the referee may both be eligible to receive $50 cash. To qualify the referee must use the email of the referrer that is linked to their BMO InvestorLine account. See terms and conditions for full details.	$5,000	You(referrer): $50; Your Friend(referee): $50	Payout occurs 45 days after minimum 90 day holding period (subject to conditions).	BMO InvestorLine Refer-a-Friend	January 6, 2022
Expired Offers
Last Updated: Jan. 10, 2021 18:00PT

Transfer Fee Promotions

Company	Brief Description	Maximum Transfer Fee Coverage Amount	Minimum Deposit Amount for Transfer Fee Eligibility	Details Link	Deadline
	Move your brokerage account to Questrade and they’ll cover the transfer-out fee up to $150.	$150	n/a	Transfer Fee Promo	none
	Transfer $15,000 or more to RBC Direct Investing and they will pay up to $200 in transfer fees.	$200	$15,000	Transfer Fee Rebate Details	none
	Transfer $15,000 or more into a new HSBC InvestDirect account and you may be eligible to have up to $152.55 in transfer fees covered.	$152.55	$15,000	Confirmed via email contact with HSBC InvestDirect Rep. Contact client service for more information.	none
	Transfer $15,000 or more to Qtrade Investor from another brokerage and Qtrade Investor may cover up to $150 in transfer fees. See terms and conditions for more details.	$150	$15,000	Transfer Fee Rebate	none
	Transfer $20,000 or more to a National Bank Direct Brokerage account and they will pay up to $135 plus taxes in transfer fees.	$135	$20,000	Transfer Fee Rebate	none
	Transfer at least $25,000 or more in new assets to TD Direct Investing when opening a new account and you may qualify to have transfer fees reimbursed up to $150. Be sure to contact TD Direct Investing for further details.	$150	$25,000	Transfer Fee Promo Contact client service for more information (1-800-465-5463).	none
	Transfer $25,000 or more into a CIBC Investor’s Edge account and they will reimburse up to $135 in brokerage transfer fees. Clients must call customer service to request rebate after transfer made.	$135	$25,000	Confirmed with reps. Contact client service for more information (1-800-567-3343).	none
	Open a new qualifying account with BMO InvestorLine or fund a qualifying existing account and you may be eligible to have transfer fees covered up to $200. Contact client service for more details.	$200	Contact client service for more information	Contact client service for more information (1-888-776-6886)	none
Expired Offers
	Desjardins Online Brokerage is offering up to $150 to cover the cost of transfer fees from another institution. To be eligible, new/existing clients need to deposit $10,000 into a Desjardins Online Brokerage account. You’ll have to call 1-866-873-7103 and mention promo code DisnatTransfer. See details link for more info.	$150	$10,000	Disnat 1% Commission Credit Promo	January 8, 2020
Last Updated: Jan. 01, 2021 10:00PT

Other Promotions

Company	Brief Description	Minimum Deposit Amount Required	Details Link	Deadline
	The minimum commission per equity trade ($1.99) is waived for new accounts from account opening till December 31, 2020. As a result, your commission is just 1¢/share (max $7.99). However, this offer does not apply to Odd Lot orders (i.e. orders with quantity less than 100 shares if price >= $1 or price < $0.10; or less than 500 shares if price in the $0.10 – $0.99 range). Please be reminded that at Virtual Brokers ETFs are always free to buy.	$0	No Minimum 2020 – Terms & Conditions	December 31, 2020
	Submit your information via the Hardbacon website to be referred to National Bank Direct Brokerage. Open and fund a qualifying account and you may receive up to 200 commission-free trades and discounted trading commissions. Be sure to read full terms and conditions.	n/a	Hardbacon Free Trade Promo	none
	Open a new Non-Registered trading account and fund it with at least $100 by December 18, 2020 and you may receive a random cash bonus ranging from $1 to $4,500. The cash bonus amount will be equivalent to the value of one of the fifteen stocks that have been selected by Wealthsimple Trade for this program. Please refer to the Terms and Conditions for more details.	$100	Wealthsimple Trade Free Stock Promotion	December 18, 2020
	Desjardins Online Brokerage is offering $50 in commission credits for new Disnat Classic clients depositing at least $1,000. See terms and conditions for full details.	$1,000	Broker@ge 18-30 Promotion	none
	Scotiabank StartRight customers can receive 10 commission-free trades when investing $1,000 or more in a new Scotia iTrade account. Trades are good for use for up to 1 year from the date the account is funded. Use promo code SRPE15 when applying (in English) or SRPF15 when applying in French. Be sure to read full terms and conditions for full details.	$1,000	StartRight Free Trade offer	none
	Be one of the first 100 clients to open and fund an account with a minimum of $10,000 at Qtrade Investor using the promo code TRADE695 and you may be eligible for 100 trades at a preferred commission rate of $6.95 for 6 months. See terms and conditions for more details.	$10,000	100 Discounted Commission Trades	March 1, 2020
Expired Offers
Last Updated: Jan. 01, 2021 22:00 PT

Digital Advice + Roboadvisor Promotions

Robo-advisor / Digital advisor	Offer Type	Offer Description	Min. Deposit	Reward / Promotion	Promo Code	Expiry Date	Link
	Discounted Management	Open and fund a new Questrade Portfolio IQ account with a deposit of at least $1,000 and the first month of management will be free. For more information on Portfolio IQ, click the product link.	$1,000	1st month no management fees	KDKFNBBC	None	Questrade Portfolio IQ Promo Offer
	Cash Back	Open a new SmartFolio account and fund it with at least $1,000 and you could receive 0.5% cash back up to $1,000. Use promo code SFJAN1000 when opening a new account. See terms and conditions for full details. This offer is limited to new SmartFolio clients only, and can be combined with the refer-a-friend promotion.	$1,000	0.5% cash back to a maximum of $1,000.	SFJAN1000	March 2, 2021	SmartFolio Cash Back Promo
	Discounted Management	Open a new account with BMO SmartFolio and receive one year of management of up to $15,000 free. See offer terms and conditions for more details.	$1,000	1 year no management fees	STSF	April 30, 2019	SmartFolio New Account Promotion
	Cash Back – Referral	BMO SmartFolio clients will receive $50 cash back for every friend or family member who opens and funds a new SmartFolio account. Friends and family referred to SmartFolio will receive $50 cash back for opening and funding an account, plus automatic enrollment into SmartFolio’s mass offer in market at the time. See offer terms and conditions for more details.	$1,000	$50 cash back (referrer) $50 cash back (referee)	Unique link generated from SmartFolio required.	None	SmartFolio Website
	Transfer Fee Coverage	Transfer at least $25,000 into Virtual Wealth when opening a new account and you may be eligible to have up to $150 in transfer fees covered by Virtual Wealth.	$25,000	up to $150 in transfer fees covered	None	None	Contact customer service directly for more information.
Last Updated: Jan. 08, 2021 10:00PT

Offers for Young Investors

Brokerage	Offer Type	Eligible Age Range / Client Segment	Offer Description	Min. Deposit	Expiry Date	Link
	Student pricing	Clients with CIBC Smart™ Account for students	$5.95 per trade and zero annual account fees	not required	None	CIBC Student Pricing
	Broker@ge 18-30	18-30 years old	Benefits: * 5 free transactions (Minimum deposit of $1,000 required) * No inactivity fees * No asset minimum to maintain for free registered accounts * Exclusive events * Disnat Mobile App	$1,000	None	Broker@ge 18-30
	Offers for professionals & students	Students in selected fields of study	Professionals and students in the below fields can benefit from a reduced pricing structure: * Engineering students * Legal, accounting and business students * Healthcare students * Health sciences students * Nursing students Benefits: * $5.95 commission on equities * $0 commission on ETFs * $0 annual administration fee	not required	None	NBDB Student Pricing
	Young investors offer	18-30 years old	Accounts holders who are 30 years old or younger are offered 10 free trades each year. After the free transactions, a commission rate of $4.95 per transaction will be applied (which is just half of the regular price).	not required	None	Young Investor Offer
	Young investor pricing	18-30 years old	Benefits: * $7.75 commissions for stock and ETF trades * No account minimums * No quarterly admin fees	min. $50 a month through pre-authorized contributions.	None	Young Investor Pricing
	Waiver of account maintenance fee	Clients who have RBC Student account, currently or in the past 5 years.	The Maintenance Fee ($25 per quarter) is waived, regardless of the account balance.	not required	None	Zero Account Management Fee
	Young investors offer	Clients 26 years old and under	Low activity account administration fee and the RSP account administration fee are waived.	not required	None	Young Investors Offer
	Waiver of account administration fee	Clients younger than 26 years old	The account administration fee ($24.95 per quarter) is waived.	not required	None	$0 Account Administration Fee
Last Updated: Jan. 01, 2021 10:00PT

Posted on December 21, 2020March 5, 2021 by user — Leave a comment

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – December 21, 2020

The phrase that’s been a mantra for many of us in 2020 – aside from “You’re on mute” – has been “Is it over yet?” Finally, it’s a lot closer to being true than at any previous point in the year. Thank goodness. In keeping with the sentiment of a very long year, this end-of-year edition of the Weekly Roundup is itself longer than usual. Unlike 2020, however, it is intentionally long because so many interesting things took place.

Packaging so many big developments into one post was a challenge. So, for this final edition of the Roundup for the year, we offer up an homage to a movie franchise that seems to go on just about as long as 2020 has. This Fast and Furious edition of the Roundup recaps the year one quarter at a time. Keep reading for high-octane stories that powered the Weekly Roundup for the past year, including important feature releases, interesting trends, and the stories that were kind of a big deal. In true Weekly Roundup form, we roll the credits on 2020 with DIY investor chatter from Twitter and the forums.

Buckle up, it’s going to be a wild ride.

Q1 2020: Everything Was Normal Until It Wasn’t

Looking back on the beginning of the year, the start to 2020 in the Canadian online brokerage space seemed pretty “normal” by most accounts.

One theme early in the year was pricing drops. Desjardins Online Brokerage, for example, significantly dropped their commission rates, especially for active investors, to under $1 per trade. Similarly, HSBC also teed up an offer for active investors: zero-commission pricing between April and December 2020. Although these two firms aren’t as well known in the Canadian online brokerage space as other mainstream firms or the big-five bank-owned online brokers, it was clear that commission pricing in 2020 would continue to be under pressure as smaller firms looked to gain market share. These moves were also timed around the start of the year because of the heightened interest in RSP accounts, and, as such, there would be a much larger audience of investors willing to consider these new pricing features. Interestingly, the rest of the Canadian online brokerage industry did not immediately move to lower commission prices. As it turned out, once the tsunami of investor demand for online brokerage accounts took hold, commission prices stayed largely untouched until the latter part of 2020.

Another important theme early in the year (prior to COVID-19 hitting with full force) was the release of online brokerage reviews and rankings. Both The Globe and Mail and Surviscor released their respective rankings of Canada’s online brokers in order to coincide with the time in the calendar when many DIY investors hunt out new online investing accounts and offers.

What stood out about the 2020 edition of The Globe and Mail online brokerage rankings (which happened to be the 21^st edition of these rankings) was that a number of firms scored a respectable grade (B or better), but of the top three firms by letter grade, two of them were bank-owned online brokers: TD Direct Investing and Scotia iTrade. The firm that reappeared at the top of these rankings was Qtrade Investor, which earned an A+ rating overall. Ironically, TD Direct Investing suffered from a trading interruption (something that would become a lot more commonplace across the industry in 2020), and Scotia iTrade continued to face challenges responding to clients in a timely fashion over the phone.

In the Surviscor rankings, Qtrade Investor also took top spot, edging out Questrade and TD Direct Investing. Not to be outdone, Questrade earned a DALBAR award for client service, providing additional points for their brand in a year that started off strong in terms of rankings progress.

Of course, the major story during the first quarter of 2020 was COVID-19, and specifically how it roiled markets and caused a massive shock to trading systems, online brokerages, and DIY investors. For some, it was catastrophic, but to others, the opportunity of a lifetime. It was this latter group that won the day, however, as new investors jumped at the chance to invest in household-name stocks at incredible prices. Further, the “Robinhood effect” was cited as another reason the volatility seemed to skyrocket. The US online brokerage had moved to a largely commission-free model, and, as such, investors could “scalp” trade – making small and frequent trades – with no real downside (in terms of commission pricing). It turned out, however, that most online brokerage systems were not equipped to handle the surge in interest in trading combined with market volatility.

Some weird things happened. Among them, Wealthsimple Trade having to effectively halt new clients from being able to trade on their platform.

@wstrade As a new user, why would you not include this message when I was signing up and depositing money? I now can’t make trades and have not even been provided with a timeline of when I can expext to be off the waitlist #disappointing pic.twitter.com/tO2Y52wmjF
— Parker Gold (@Parker_Gold) March 26, 2020

Major online brokerages also suffered trading platform downtime, slammed telephone reps, and the biggest surge in online brokerage account opening since the bitcoin craze in 2018. Oh, and they had to contend with all of this while being transitioned to a work-from-home model.

Also strange, people deciding to hoard toilet paper.

Q2 2020: Outages & Outrage

The start of the second quarter picked up right where the first ended, as things went from weird to certifiably insane. Volatility and trading volumes managed to take down trading systems at multiple Canadian bank-owned online brokerages, but that would not even be the weirdest thing to take place in April. As it turns out, prices for commodities, like barrels of oil, could not only fall to zero but also go negative.

Unfortunately for traders – and especially for Interactive Brokers clients – the oil contract price going negative wound up impairing (if not wiping out) a significant number of traders, and that was because of a programming glitch on Interactive Brokers’ platform that didn’t account for prices of contracts being able to turn negative. All told, Interactive Brokers ended up taking a $90 million loss because of the exceptionally rare move to reimburse traders caught offside by this issue. Of course, while embarrassing for Interactive Brokers, these were truly unusual times, and there were other traders who didn’t see it coming.

Nonetheless, Interactive Brokers also had a huge silver lining after the oil futures contract fiasco: They experienced record-breaking new-account growth. As the canary in the coal mine, Interactive Brokers telegraphed exceptionally strong account openings (+22% year over year) and revenue gains from the sheer volume of activity taking place. In fact, there were more accounts opened at Interactive Brokers in April 2020 than in the last six months of 2019 combined.

Against the backdrop of market volatility, another online brokerage ranking was published, this time from J.D. Power. The Self-Directed Investor Satisfaction Study was revealing in that even before many of the issues that came to light during the heavy volatility in the markets, the Canadian online brokerage industry was starting to slip in terms of investor satisfaction. The report card showed that online brokerages fared worse in 2020 than they did in 2019 when it came to overall satisfaction.

Questrade managed to take top spot in the rankings for 2020, an accolade that is the result of a long journey of constant improvement. Conversely, the bottom four online brokerages in Canada, according to J.D. Power, were from the big five: RBC Direct Investing, TD Direct Investing, CIBC Investor’s Edge, and Scotia iTrade, respectively, were the firms that scored the lowest on the 2020 edition of this ranking. One telling stat was that website stability and accessibility were areas where online investors felt underserved, with 46% of those polled experiencing a problem with their provider’s website.

One of the best, smartest, impromptu speeches I have ever heard. Amazing leadership. pic.twitter.com/SHiPBdVDvC
— Ahmed Fareed (@FareedNBCS) May 30, 2020

Finally, the major development in the second quarter of 2020 (outside of COVID-19) was the death of George Floyd and the igniting of social justice movements in North America (and across the world) to a point not seen since the US Civil Rights movement. Though the stock markets were largely insulated from the headline risk, major names in the public markets (like Nike) took very public stands on the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement. One potentially coincidental shift that we noted in the websites of two online brokerages at this time was the use of more inclusive and diverse imagery. What a DIY investor was “supposed to look like” changed in terms of the imagery used on the websites of Interactive Brokers and Virtual Brokers. Other online brokerages in Canada had already made the shift to more inclusive imagery, so it was nice to see these online brokers take a step in the right direction when it comes to representation.

Another important note on Virtual Brokers emerged during this time, which was that the parent company, CI Financial, had opted to consolidate the “Virtual Brokers” name under CI Direct Investing along with another key name in the digital investing space: WealthBar. Although no definitive timetable was published on this move, it means that a long-standing name in the online brokerage space will disappear, and DIY investors will have to learn another new name. To make matters even more challenging, the new online brokerage that formed from the acquisition of Jitneytrade by Canaccord is named CG Direct. These two names are bound to confuse DIY investors even more than the current challenge of sorting out Qtrade Investor and Questrade.

Q3 2020: Sun and Shade

With the nicer weather and relative calm in stock markets, it seemed like an opportune moment for several online brokerages to make big announcements and feature enhancements/changes. And there were a few.

Starting in June, TD Direct Investing announced updates to its mobile app that focused on enhancements to investor education. Interestingly, as it came to be seen later in the year, this move toward bolstering investor education was both a timely one, given the number of new investors coming into the stock market, and a well-calculated one, supporting the big reveal that would come in Q4. The trend of improvements to mobile trading experiences was something that surfaced several times in the year, notably with RBC Direct Investing as well as Virtual Brokers.

One of the biggest announcements to cross the tape was that Wealthsimple Trade would be launching cryptocurrency trading in Canada. Offering trading in both Bitcoin and Ethereum, this move by the “zero-commission” online broker in Canada was yet another step to appeal to a younger, more tech-savvy audience who wanted both an easier way to access these digital currency instruments and a more user-friendly way. This pilot program will ultimately help to inform whether cryptocurrency trading can be properly regulated by financial authorities in Canada. In 2020, Wealthsimple Trade continued to lean into its identity as a “Robinhood Canada,” given the success of the US online brokerage in winning over new investors to its platform.

One big feature roll-out that didn’t quite go as planned was from CIBC Investor’s Edge. Unfortunately, the feature upgrade’s first attempt resulted in trading interruptions that, in turn, prompted the online broker to offer commission-free trades to those who were impacted by the outage. Eventually, however, a new online trading experience was rolled out – in part – and set the stage for further improvements to the user experience.

After a very quiet stretch, signs of life in the deals and promotions section started to appear. National Bank Direct Brokerage launched a sizable commission-free trade offer, and, interestingly, Wealthsimple Trade launched a contest with a draw for $5,000 in cash. What made the latter offer stand out is that it was an early signal that despite offering zero-commission trades, Wealthsimple Trade also had to undertake some further effort to entice new clients to their platform (something that showed up again in Q4).

Q4 2020: A Few Good Mends

It’s hard to believe that the fourth quarter was actually just one quarter, given how much happened. The resurgence of COVID-19 via the “second wave,” the huge rally in the stock market to set new highs, and the US federal election all would have been massive stories on their own but, combined, they made it nearly impossible to keep from watching the news.

Despite all of the negative headlines, what did emerge for online brokerages and DIY investors was an interesting convergence of events.

While the first portion of the year showed unprecedented strength of interest by online investors to open up accounts and trade, by the time the fourth quarter rolled around, things had levelled off somewhat. Nevertheless, Canadian online brokerages, much like their US counterparts, were seeing elevated trading activity and, unlike their peers in the US, were generating significant revenue as a result. The fourth quarter in the year is also the time when online brokers in Canada typically start their ramp-up to campaigns for RSP season. What resulted from these events taking place simultaneously was that the deals and promotions activity in November just exploded. Offers came to market from all major online bank-owned brokerages as well as most other Canadian online brokers in one way or another. Even Wealthsimple Trade managed to jump into the deals and promotions fray, once again taking their cues from Robinhood and launching a promotion to give away cash in an amount equivalent to a particular popular stock.

Deals were just one part of what the fourth quarter of 2020 had to offer. Also on deck for the end of the year was a huge announcement from TD Direct Investing, which launched their new commission-free ETF trading platform, GoalAssist. While the platform only allows commission-free trading for TD-branded ETFs, it is a huge step in moving the needle forward on commission-free trading for Canadian DIY investors. Already ETFs are free to buy (at Questrade and Virtual Brokers) or free to buy and sell (all ETFs at National Bank Direct Brokerage and a limited selection at Scotia iTrade and Qtrade Investor). So, for TD Direct Investing, one of the biggest names in Canadian DIY investing circles, to launch this product (and in a mobile-only format to boot) means that they are directly going after the commission-free trading offering by Wealthsimple Trade.

TD GoalAssist™ is here!
Learn more here 👉 https://t.co/nl2sHMvFPx #TDGoalAssist pic.twitter.com/agj7n4SKNR
— TD Direct Investing (@TD_DirectInvest) October 27, 2020

Ironically, it appears that in the fourth quarter, Wealthsimple Trade was already at work to challenge the traditional Canadian online brokerage offering of a “desktop experience.” Prior to this year, Wealthsimple Trade had been available in mobile-app format only – something that ultimately ended getting Wealthsimple Trade disqualified from being included in some of the Surviscor online brokerage rankings.

As of the fourth quarter, however, Wealthsimple Trade has launched a desktop version of their web platform that is being tested by users. Given that fewer people are actually going into an office or are on the go to and from an office, more and more users are spending time on their laptops or desktop computers. So, this highly sought-after feature is another shot across the bow aimed at the online brokerage industry indicating that Wealthsimple Trade is getting up to speed on the features that online investors want.

New features didn’t stop there for Canadian online brokerages, however. BMO InvestorLine rolled out a 2.0 version of their online trading experience, which significantly streamlines their existing web interface, though it is still being updated in terms of features. At first blush, it looks like the trend among online brokerages has shifted away from completing all features before launch, moving instead to an “agile” model of shipping features out and enhancing/optimizing over the product lifecycle. Another big announcement from an online broker regarding features was from National Bank Direct Brokerage, which officially rolled out OptionsPlay as part of their offering to clients. This platform is intended to assist individual investors in manoeuvring through trading options.

Finally, one more noteworthy milestone took place in the quarter, as the Sparx team launched the fourth edition of the Look Back/Look Ahead series. This publication featured in-depth coverage of several of Canada’s most popular online brokerages, which offered a unique glimpse at how 2020 unfolded for them as well as what features and trends they’re looking to in 2021. In addition to the online brokerage space as a whole, the magazine also offered a sneak peek at the new SparxTrading.com website coming in 2021.

Even summarizing it a quarter at a time, this year had lots of other stories that we didn’t get a chance to highlight in the Roundups as well as in this ultimate year-end review of stories that shaped 2020 in the Canadian (and US) online brokerage industry.

2020 being what it is, there’s still room for some kind of unplanned surprise that could impact investors – whether it’s a new deal or feature launch – however, the good news is that with just a few more days until the official end of the year, online brokerage employees are going to be in holiday mode, too. As such, we don’t anticipate more feature releases going live just yet.

So, on that note, we’ll be doing something different and signing off for the Weekly Roundup for 2020 for the final stretch of December. We will be rebooting in early January, with a few other surprises to mention right out of the gate, as well as more exclusive content. Unless, of course, 2020 drops a story too big not to cover in the online brokerage space.

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

Discount Brokerage Tweets – Curated tweets by SparxTrading

From the Forums

A Sure Thing?

In this post, one investor asks for recommendations of stable, secure American companies to invest in for the next 10 to 15 years. The advice pours in, covering ETFs, the couch potato strategy, Canadian versus American stocks – and why you should avoid taking advice about specific stocks from random people on the internet.

Live and Learn

An investor who knows very little about their own investments asks about the best way to learn about the topic. Redditors share their favourite books, websites, courses, podcasts, and more, along with their personal financial journeys.

Into the Close

That’s it for the final Roundup for 2020. With vaccines now in place and hope on the horizon, there is lots to look forward to in the coming months. The next few weeks will be the most challenging; however, to pull a (final) line from the Fast and Furious franchise, “We do what we do best, we improvise.”

Stay safe, healthy, and connected, and see you again in 2021.

Posted on December 7, 2020 by user — Leave a comment

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – December 7, 2020

Take a deep breath. Believe it or not, December is here, and with it, news of several COVID-19 vaccines, stock markets making record highs, and hope on the horizon. Certainly not a coincidence. Another non-coincidence at this time of year is the appearance of special treats and the idea of wrapping things up with a bow.

In this special edition of the Roundup, we turn once again to the topic of deals and promotions, with a regularly scheduled check-in of the deals landscape to kick off the new month. From there, the big announcement: Sparx Trading’s exclusive Look Back Look Ahead series for 2020-2021 is now live! We’ve got a great overview of this unique series that features Canadian online brokers giving their perspective on the past year as well as on what’s coming in 2021. And, as always, we’ve got a full helping of DIY investor comments from Twitter and the DIY investor forums.

De(al)cember Update

The countdown to the end of the year has been going on for some time, but now that December’s here, the finish line to 2020 is in sight.

Despite the gloomy weather and even gloomier forecasts for COVID-19, the SparxTrading.com online brokerage deals and promotions section offers some brighter news. As is customary at the start of each month, we take stock (pun intended) of the deals and promotions landscape among Canadian online brokerages. The good news: this year is as strong as ever in terms of promotional activity among Canadian brokerages.

Although no new deals launched at the beginning of December, a very competitive offer from National Bank Direct Brokerage did get extended for another month. The 100 commission-free trade offer by NBDB is one of the most competitive offers for DIY investors interested in commission-free trades, and with zero deposit requirements, it also has the lowest hurdle.

Last month was a watershed moment for deals and promotions activity among Canada’s online brokerages. After being mostly dormant since the end of RSP season last year, almost all online brokerages decided to launch a cash-back or commission-free trade offer.

Interestingly, there are still a few brokerages currently not on the deals and promotions list, something we anticipate changing either this month or early next month. Firms we expect to see stepping into the promotional space soon are Qtrade Investor, HSBC InvestDirect, and Virtual Brokers, given the fact that other brokerages are already offering something.

Finally, another deal we’re watching this month is Wealthsimple Trade’s “free stock” offer, which is set to expire on December 18^th. It is an unusual time for a promotion to end, but it is encouraging to note that the deal is happening at all, since offering zero-commission trading is a significant draw on its own.

With all of these offers currently in play, this is likely an ideal window for online investors interested in an investing account to maximize the selection of promotions.

So, while the weather outside is frightful, this might be the most wonderful time of the year for getting a little extra boost for opening an online brokerage account.

Sparx Trading’s Online Brokerage Look Back Look Ahead Is Live!

More countdown-related content continues to emerge this month, this time from yours truly at Sparx Trading.

Our highly anticipated fourth edition of the Look Back Look Ahead series is here, and – to borrow from Robinhood’s Market Snacks podcast (fair game to borrow from Robinhood, amirite?) – this is the best one yet.

This edition features in-depth submissions from six Canadian online brokerages that offer a fascinating set of perspectives on how 2020 unfolded and preview what they have in store for 2021. In addition, we’ve given our own perspectives on the online brokerages that did not provide a submission and outlined what we thought were noteworthy developments during the year. Finally, we’ve provided a detailed preview of what the next version of SparxTrading.com has in store for DIY investors.

Online brokerages featured in this issue include:

The series is now in its fourth iteration, and it’s interesting to see how things have evolved since we first launched it in 2014. One of the readily apparent changes is that in addition to a blog format, we also have a magazine edition, which we rolled out starting in 2018. Even though it takes considerable work to pull together a magazine format, we thought it was an opportunity to create something great-looking and engaging, which offered a different way to present stories about an exceptionally fascinating year.

One thing that has remained consistent about contributions to the Look Back Look Ahead series has been the unique perspective that only the voices of the online brokerages’ senior leaders can provide. It remains a rare opportunity to hear from senior stakeholders on how the year unfolded as well as their vision for the year ahead.

Another great feature of this year’s issue is that the Q&A format provides an interesting perspective on several points relevant to DIY investors, including:

What beginning investors can expect
What active investors can expect
Which online investing trends they think will matter to DIY investors
What user experience means to their firm
What sets their firm apart from their peers

As referenced in the beginning of the blog version of this series, there were a number of themes that emerged from the responses and analysis of the online brokerage landscape from 2020. Three big themes that stood out were the need for agility, the importance of communication, and the rising prominence of user experience.

Based on a macro view of what has transpired this year, the consensus is that COVID-19 helped accelerate the future into the present. For the world of online investing, it seems that DIY investors will be looking beyond just the headline price of commissions to the full experience of what it means to be “self-directed.” Case in point: Despite DIY investors having to pay commissions for trades, the industry as a whole saw record-breaking account openings and trading volumes during the height of the market volatility, from March through the summer.

What has become clear, now even more than in previous years, is the need for transparent and ongoing communication in order to create strong relationships with clients. With the heightened uncertainty, communication channels at online brokerages have been tested, and going forward, the hallmark of an online brokerage who “gets it” will be one that excels at communicating with clients proactively. Further, DIY investors will be looking for brokerages to harden the systems that matter in a crisis or in times of extreme volatility. Patience for service interruptions or delays has worn thin, and demonstrating “uptime” is also going to become a marker of quality.

On a lighter note, observant viewers will notice that our cover art tried to capture the work-from-home look, something that embodies the spirit of 2020 for many of us. There are some special details we tucked into the image that we’re sure DIY investors can appreciate. Sticking to the aesthetic for a moment, the soon-to-be-launched new website and content will feature our bull and bear prominently. Unless it’s sensationalistic, a lot of financial content is difficult to engage with, so we hope to continue to provide a more engaging way in which to consume DIY-investor-focused content.

Personally, I found this issue to be an enriching read, and I am excited by the prospect of DIY investors discovering something new and interesting about the Canadian online brokerage landscape as we move through the end of 2020 (thankfully) and into a new chapter in 2021.

To read the Look Back Look Ahead series, click here.

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

Discount Brokerage Tweets – Curated tweets by SparxTrading

From the Forums

And Baby Makes Three

A Redditor in Ontario with a baby arriving soon asks in this post how to establish an RESP and get the full benefit of it – and also wonders if they need to be actively involved after the initial setup.

Exasperated by Exorbitant Expenses

In this post, one frustrated investor wants to know why Canadian brokerages have such high fees compared to their American counterparts. Redditors weigh in with their best theories.

Into the Close

That’s a wrap on this early-December edition of the Roundup. Markets continue to price in optimism around the corner, which should continue to lift spirits for now. There have been some significant comeback stories this past week – including Blackberry – and even more excitement as IPOs like Airbnb and DoorDash prepare their public debuts. One thing’s for sure, there’s lots to keep DIY investors glued to their screens in what was supposed to be a quieter time of year.

National Bank Direct Brokerage: Commission Price Drop

Deals & Promotions Updates

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

From the Forums

My Definition Is This

New Tuber in Town

Into the Close

Expired Deals

Extended Deals

New Deals

Canadian Online Brokerages Struggle at Delivering Service Online

The Story in Numbers

Change the Channel or Channel the Change

New Features From Online Brokerages Chip Away at Guesswork

BMO InvestorLine Launches a Checkup for Portfolios

Looking in the RRIF-View Mirror

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

From the Forums

Timing the Market

Up, Up & Away

Into the Close

Expired Deals

Extended Deals

New Deals

Discount Brokerage Deals

Cash Back/Free Trade/Product Offer Promotions

Expired Offers

Referral Promotions

Expired Offers

Transfer Fee Promotions

Expired Offers

Other Promotions

Expired Offers

Digital Advice + Roboadvisor Promotions

Offers for Young Investors

The Unsettled Elephant in the Room

2021 Canadian Online Brokerage Rankings: Spotlight on Service

What Goes Into the Online Brokerage Rankings?

Results from the 2021 Canadian Online Brokerage Rankings

Call Options

Relief for Long Wait Times

Putting the Pieces Together

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

From the Forums

Up & Up & Up

Into the Close

Volatility Hits Online Brokerage Deals and Promotions

Announcements From SparxTrading.com

Relaunching of Our Newsletter

Even More Perspectives on 2021

A Shiny New Website

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

Into the Close

Expired Deals

Extended Deals

New Deals

Discount Brokerage Deals

Cash Back/Free Trade/Product Offer Promotions

Expired Offers

Referral Promotions

Expired Offers

Transfer Fee Promotions

Expired Offers

Other Promotions

Expired Offers

Digital Advice + Roboadvisor Promotions

Offers for Young Investors

Q1 2020: Everything Was Normal Until It Wasn’t

Q2 2020: Outages & Outrage

Q3 2020: Sun and Shade

Q4 2020: A Few Good Mends

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

From the Forums

Into the Close

De(al)cember Update

Sparx Trading’s Online Brokerage Look Back Look Ahead Is Live!

Discount Brokerage Tweets of the Week

From the Forums

And Baby Makes Three

Exasperated by Exorbitant Expenses