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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup October 18 2013

After all of inescapable deal making drama in Washington this past week, it appears that stock markets had already placed their bets that events would unfold with a deal being struck.  Rather than a disastrous crash, The S&P 500 hit an all-time high and Canadian traders also shrugged off their Thanksgiving turkey hangovers to push the TSX to close at its highest point since July 2011.

What does all of this mean?  It seems a lot of folks will be asking that question, so in this week’s roundup, there was one Canadian discount brokerage who offered up a trader’s perspective on what happens next.   In this post-Thanksgiving week, one discount broker got into the giving spirit by offering a chance to win some free trades while another discount brokerage officially rolled out some new features to their trading interface.  Finally on the roundup, it looks like a proposed switch over from a major discount brokerage is now rolling out, albeit somewhat slowly for the likes of a few investors.

What’s the Deal with the Deal?

If Jerry Seinfeld chimed in on airplane snack food, one can only wonder what he would be asking what now that there has been a deal to extend the debt ceiling in the US.  It just so happens that a video from TD Direct Investing’s investor education section looks into that.  In this episode, Ryan Lewenza  (North American equity strategist & portfolio manager for TD Waterhouse private investment advice) laid out his thoughts on the market sentiment in response to the debt ceiling deal.

TD Waterhouse Weekly Video on the Debt Deal

Trading Gravy

Questrade got into the Thanksgiving spirit by offering to give away 10 free trades. The deal was announced on their blog on October 9th with the contest rules and regulations stating that it would run until October 16th.

Questrade Thanksgiving trade giveaway terms screenshot

Later on in the week though, a couple of tweets by Questrade seem to suggest that the contest is still on although it is not quite clear based on the rules for the contest when this offer expires.

Questrade trade giveaway tweet 1

Questrade Thanksgiving trade giveaway tweet

Taking Quotes to the Next Level

As hinted at last week, the new feature from Qtrade that got released was an addition of free level 2 trading data on Canadian stocks to their equity order screen. It should be pointed out the quotes are ‘snap’ quotes not streaming quotes so users wanting to see updated information on a particular stock or ETF’s trading activity will have to hit refresh.  As this feature is limited to Canadian equities at the moment, it might be of interest to those looking for additional depth information on smaller or less liquid names.

Qtrade equity order screen with level 2 quote

Canadian Discount Brokers React to J.D. Power Survey Results

A recent article in Investment Executive this past week covered the recent results from this year’s J.D. Power’s discount brokerage rankings. In particular, the article highlighted the win by National Bank Direct Brokerage as well as how discount brokerages, such as BMO InvestorLine, are trying to figure out how to respond to some of the information and advisory needs of self-directed investors.  Interestingly, while BMO InvestorLine may have been first out of the gate to launch an ‘on demand’ advisory type feature, other discount brokers appear to be opting for providing portfolios that investors can ‘follow along with’.  To learn more about the J.D. Power discount brokerage rankings for 2013, click here.

Rolling Out the Canadian Carpet

Around the forums, the chatter on discount brokerages was somewhat subdued this past week. There was, however, important news on the roll out of Interactive Brokers Canada account transition announced earlier this year.   The following post from forum user Mark77 in the RedFlagDeals forum suggests that Interactive Brokers Canada clients are having their account restrictions updated to reflect the changes that were announced earlier this year.

RFD Forum on Interactive Brokers Canada

Despite the short week, there was still lots to digest (including the turkey!). Have a great weekend all and for those who’ve made it this far, here’s a tusk-in-cheek cartoon from cartoonist Mike Luckovich on the recent Washington shenanigans.

Cartoon on debt ceiling

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup October 11 2013

After a bumpy week in the markets, it is nice to get to Friday.  For Canadian readers, it’s Thanksgiving long weekend so that means Canadian markets will be closed on Monday while everyone digests the news and a whole lot of turkey.

On the heels of the major announcement last week from BMO InvestorLine, this week there was a flurry of activity with several Canadian discount brokerages launching new features for research and trading.  The news wasn’t all smiles and sunshine though. While one discount brokerage was improving access to low cost funds, another discount broker decided that margin trading had started to become too risky for some stocks and subsequently raised margin requirements.  Finally, a couple of forum posts on a pair of Canadian discount brokerages were worth sharing this week.

CIBC Investor’s Edge Announces New Features

After their recently announced RESP administration fee elimination, it seems like CIBC Investor’s Edge is again moving to improve their service offering to Canadian self-directed investors. This time, it looks as if research tools and education support are being given a lift.  Specifically, this past week, CIBC Investor’s Edge announced that they are rolling out an improved ETF research centre with resources from Morningstar (such as screeners, educational materials and more) powering the section.      ETF education and support materials are offered by other Canadian discount brokerages, with discount brokerages such as National Bank Direct Brokerage, Qtrade and RBC Direct Investing also offering “ETF Centres” too.

RBC Direct Investing Lowers Investing Threshold on Series D Mutual Funds

In a news release this past week, RBC Direct Investing announced that they are lowering their investment minimum on their Series D mutual funds from $10,000 to $500.  This will certainly be of interest to those investors with smaller portfolio sizes and those looking for lower Management Expense Ratio (MER) investment products.   For more information on the RBC Direct Investing Series D Funds, click here.

Qtrade Launches New Features

Major bank-owned discount brokerages weren’t the only ones busy launching new features, a major independent discount brokerage is quietly rolling out some of their latest improvements for users. This past week, Qtrade launched several new or improved features for clients including:

  • A new model portfolio feature that allows clients to ‘follow’ different portfolio types
  • An improved ETF centre that provides detailed information and research on ETFs (powered by Morningstar)
  • Improved account transfers between brokerages
  • Improved new issues centre
  • Improved trading interface with improved quotes, order tracking and help resources

Look out for a more detailed look at these new features in an upcoming post. In the meantime, users might be interested to know that are also some hints by Qtrade of further exciting changes coming to their trading interface. Stay tuned!

Interactive Brokers Hiked Margin Requirements for certain stocks

Interactive Brokers laid the smack down on margin traders this week by hiking margin requirements for many recently popular momentum stocks.  A move like this begs the question – why now? The following two articles (Article 1 & Article 2) from Zero hedge tackles why Interactive Broker with a very interesting series of theories. Be warned though, these articles are fascinating but could definitely leave readers feeling a little nervous about market directions in the near term.

From the Forums

This past week, sifting through the chatter on discount brokerages on Canadian investing forums landed two interesting threads on CIBC Investor’s Edge and TD Direct Investing (TD Waterhouse) from Canadian Money Forum.

The first was a great discussion started by the user “2tire2work” who was interested in getting their personal finances in order – specifically getting going with some investing they had been thinking about.  Click here to read more about what others in the forum had to say about which discount brokerage to choose.

TD Direct Investing vs CIBC Investor's Edge

In the second discount brokerage related post, dividend payment time was on the mind of the user “Gibor” who was curious to know why their dividend payments were getting posted to an account at CIBC Investor’s Edge at a different time from than at their account with TD Direct Investing.  There were lots of interesting answers by forum members on this one – click here to read the thread.

Dividend payments at CIBC Investor's Edge and TD Direct Investing

That brings us to the end of the roundup for this week.  Have a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving long weekend (for the Canadians!) and a great Columbus Day for those in the US.  As a quick reminder, Canadian stock markets will be closed on Monday but US Markets will remain open for trading.

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – August 2, 2013

As we officially launch into August, there is a lot of “behind the scenes” action that discount brokerages are up to in order to get ready for their busy season in the fall.

This week’s roundup features some updates on current discount brokerage deals, a couple of interesting upgrades to discount brokerage websites that were spotted and reports showing that investor participation in US markets continues to increase and a transaction between the owners of two major online brokerages.

Deal me in, again.

Being the beginning of the month, we have updated the discount brokerage deals section for August.  A couple of noteworthy deal extensions were spotted including an extension of the “Refer-a-Friend” offer by Scotia iTrade until the end of August as well as the extension of the commission-free ETF trading offer by National Bank Direct Brokerage (which we cover in depth here) until the end of October.

It’s time to put on makeup; it’s time to dress up right

Two of the major bank-owned online brokerages rolled out some cosmetic improvements to their websites recently in the hopes of making their content more accessible to investors.

The first upgrade was spotted at National Bank Direct Brokerage on their homepage and in their educational sections.   The new layout includes a video by their President, Nancy Paquet, as well as improved events listings and an improved link into their education centre.  There will be an in-depth look at the improved education centre in a follow-up posting, however the new layout of the investor education center section contains much of their existing material but in a much cleaner and user friendly presentation.

Upgrades to the investor education sections at TD Direct Investing were also recently rolled out.  The in-depth feature on this improvement (available here) showcases the improved way in which investors can now find out about and connect to investor education seminars via TD Direct Investing’s website.

With both TD Direct Investing and National Bank Direct Brokerage stepping up their investor education sections, other brokerages that currently provide substantial investor education seminars or content will likely be looking to see how they improve on their offering to try and maneuver around these developments.

Investors Trickling Back In

While it’s difficult to know exactly what retail investor is like given the recent market performance in the US, the data on trading volumes from Interactive Brokers continues to signal improved participation, at least state side.  The July figures for trading volumes at Interactive Brokers paint a mixture with trading volume increasing 13% year over year but actually declining 12% compared to June.  Margin-loan balances and customer equity showed increases on both a yearly and on a monthly basis.

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TD Direct Investing Upgrades Investor Education Calendar

One of Canada’s largest discount brokerages continues to chip away at improving its website for investors. TD Direct Investing has quietly rolled out the long awaited improvements to their investor education seminar section. As far back as August of last year, we mentioned that something was in the works to improve the delivery of investor education resources however it wasn’t until this summer that the roll out officially took place.

This past year has seen a number of significant changes for TD’s discount brokerage division. In December 2012, TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage changed its name to TD Direct Investing and the website got a substantial overhaul in the process. One of the laggards, however, was the investor education area, specifically the investor education seminars section.  In terms of the new upgrades, the focus appears to have been on improving the user interface and the organization of the content, both of which should enhance the accessibility of this section for self-directed investors.

Improved Content Structure

One of the first noticeable improvements is the structure they’ve provided to their seminar types.  Previously, seminars and special events lacked descriptions as well as information on what investor experience level the events were appropriate for.  Not having this information made it difficult for investors to determine what a particular seminar was about and whether it was worth attending.

In keeping with the categories they rolled out in December, TD Direct Investing has decided to use the following 3 categories when referring to types of self-directed investors:

  1. New to Online Investing
  2. Experienced Investor
  3. Advanced Trader

Sessions have now been grouped around the anticipated needs of each of these categories of investor (see table below).  For example, for those new to online investing, TD Direct Investing has bundled their platform orientation seminars along with their “Introduction to Investing” seminar to allow users to familiarize themselves with the platform.

From a user experience perspective, the combination of the grouping seminars by experience level and providing seminar descriptions will definitely cut down on time spent evaluating and deciding which seminars to attend. As a bonus, it is now also possible to register online for an event as well as see the availability of spots for the session.

New to Online Investing Experienced Investor Advanced Trader
Introduction to Investing Introduction to Options Trading Active Trader Platform
Introduction to WebBroker Introduction to Technical Analysis Advanced Options
WebBroker: Markets & Research Understanding Margin & Short Selling Options as an Income Strategy
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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – July 26, 2013

It’s hard to believe but July is almost coming to an end.  As it rounds out though, there seemed to be a spike in the interest by self-directed investors in asking about discount brokerages.  With US stock indices such as the S&P 500 and Dow Jones continuing to push all-time highs, it seems like Canadian investors are taking notice.  In this week’s roundup we cover a couple of the news stories on discount brokerages getting dinged for regulatory infractions and take a tour of the discount brokerage conversations in the forums.

Brokerages Behaving Badly

The list of discount brokerages getting dinged for violating market rules continues to grow. This past week the terms of the settlement between the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) and two different discount brokerages were published and continued to show that breaking the rules isn’t cheap.  Since May of this year, over $400,000 in fines (including costs) have been handed out against a number of brokerages including Scotia Capital Inc, parent of Scotia iTrade ($160,000), Questrade ($80,000), Interactive Brokers ($60,000), and JitneyTrade ($100,000).

As part of Jitneytrade’s settlement agreement, they admitted that between February 2011 and February 2012 they:

 “failed to implement an appropriate trade supervision system reasonably well designed to prevent and detect violations of UMIR requirements for the size and nature of its Direct Market Access Clients’ business, contrary to UMIR 7.1 and Policy 7.1”

Jitneytrade was fined $90,000 for the infraction and also paid $10,000 in costs to IIROC.

IIROC also published the settlement agreement between itself and Interactive Brokers. As part of that agreement, Interactive Brokers was penalized $50,000 (plus $10,000 to IIROC for costs) for violations of UMIR 7.1 and Policy 7.1 between November 2007 and April 2008.

Opening Remarks

The forums were buzzing this past week with questions about discount brokerage services and comparisons.  In particular, two postings on account openings in different forums caught my eye. The two different brokerages in those postings were TD Direct Investing and Interactive Brokers. Interestingly, Interactive Brokers came up in a couple of different threads indicating it was on the minds of more than a couple of different forum users.

In the Canadian Money Forum, the user “2tire2work” posed the question of whether or not he/she should open a TD Direct Investing (TD Waterhouse) account.

Several of the forum users provided insight on where the original poster (OP) could find additional resources to get started and how to tell apart some of the jargon regarding types of fees and commissions.  The explanation of management expense ratios (MERs) was well done and an important concept for those with a buy and hold approach to understand. To read the full posting click here.

While Interactive Brokers came up in a couple of different forum discussions this past week, one of the best discussions on using Interactive Brokers came from the RedFlagDeals investing forum. Specifically, the user ‘Error916’ asked the forum users for their thoughts on using Interactive Brokers and what some alternatives would be for discount brokerages offering registered accounts (because Interactive Brokers Canada doesn’t currently support registered accounts).

In particular, a couple of users pointed out the restrictions on Canadian margin amounts as well as the account funding requirements for those considered to be ‘pattern day traders’, considerations that those looking to Interactive Brokers should be aware of.   To read the full thread, click here.

That’s it for this week’s roundup. If you would like to check out the other forum links discussing discount brokerages from this past week you can click the links below.  Have a great weekend!

Canadian Money Forum: Short Seller Friendly Broker

Financial Webring Forum: Interactive Brokers Thread

RedFlagDeals Investing Forum: Online Brokerages that Allow Norbert’s Gambit

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – July 19, 2013

With the summertime weather in full effect from coast to coast, it’s no wonder things have quieted down on the forums, markets and with discount brokers.  Not everyone is away on vacation though as we’ll see in this week’s roundup.  We’ll look into the discount brokerage earnings that were released this past week, some new research products launched being launched for investors,  and what looks like a new project under development at a popular discount broker.

Interactive Brokers Gets Rich

Its earnings season again and this past week Interactive Brokers (IBKR) released their quarterly results for Q2. In the earnings report, one of the interesting stats was the increase of almost 28% in revenues from commissions and fees. The increased revenues in this area are another positive sign that trading activity is improving in the marketplace.

TD Waterhouse Gets Technical

TD Waterhouse released its first “Technical Take” newsletter this past week. The newsletter is prepared by Ryan Lewenza, a Senior US Equities Strategist and his team at TD Waterhouse Portfolio Advice and Investment Research.  Ryan Lewenza was one of the featured speakers at the TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage Investing Expo last year (click here for the review) where he presented on technical analysis.  The new newsletter (see below) covers a number of sectors, indices and a few interesting featured companies.   Pages 13-16 provide an interesting birds-eye view of the different sectors of the S&P 500 along with thoughts on where each sector sits within short and long term trends.

The Technical Take – July 15, 2013(2) by dpbasic

Questrade Gets Curious

One of the larger forums in the US for investors , Elite Forums, is where Questrade reached out for feedback on development. In what looked to be a mix of genuine interest for feedback and also the chance to do some late night marketing, a rep from Questrade asked forum users for their feedback on options trading as well as the research and trading features they would like to see.

The answer by user ‘heiasafari’ (below) was particularly well explained and as with other comments that followed, the fact is that Interactive Brokers and ThinkOrSwim are going to be extremely tough platforms to compete against in terms of features.   To read the whole thread, click here.

That’s it for this week’s roundup – have a great weekend and stay cool!

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – June 21, 2013

While storms were raging across stock markets this past week, it was definitely calmer waters in terms of discount brokerage news and chatter.  In this week’s roundup, we look at the actions that landed another Canadian discount broker in the IIROC penalty box, a report by TD on Canadian investors as well as a review of the chatter on stock forums about brokerages and some useful cautionary investing tales. Finally, we take a quick look at the results from the twelfth edition of  the U.S. Self-Directed Investor Satisfaction Survey results from J.D. Power released earlier this week.

Scotia Capital gets called for an offside

Over the past several weeks, it seems that that Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) has been handing out a series of penalties to Canadian discount brokerages. Joining the likes of Questrade and Interactive Brokers, the decision against Scotia Capital Inc (the parent of Scotia iTrade) was based on activity between 2009 and 2011, shortly after it had acquired E*Trade in 2008.

Scotia Capital was hit with a $150,000 fine for failing to have policies and procedures in place that could detect potential wash trades and high closing prices.  To read more about the settlement, check out the IIROC press release or a great write-up about it in the Globe and Mail.

The Investor Survey Says…

TD Bank Group released results from a recently commissioned a survey of Canadian investors. The survey asked just over 1000 Canadian investors about their thoughts and perspectives on the investing climate in the next 12 months.  Of those surveyed, 41% felt that their personal portfolios would improve even in the face of mild Canadian and US economic recoveries and a poor global economic outlook.    This suggests that investors surveyed might be more interested in looking closer to home for investing ideas rather than looking abroad.

Another interesting finding from the survey is a classic illustration of behavioural finance in action.  Given the run up in the markets experienced for the first half of this year, the rising prices seemed to have also lifted the outlook of investors. Paradoxically, investors are constantly told or reminded that past performance doesn’t guarantee future results, yet it is interesting to see how the past does, in fact, shape investor perceptions.   As described in their press release, those investors surveyed who experienced a loss were more prone to being pessimistic about the future than those investors who experienced a gain.

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Special Series: Dalbar Canada’s Direct Brokerage Service Award – Part 2

In part 1 of this series, we took a brief look at how self-directed investors typically access information about discount brokerage customer service and introduced Dalbar Canada’s research in this area.  Specifically, Dalbar’s Direct Brokerage Sales Effectiveness (DBSE) program measures the performance of client service teams at discount brokerages.

In this part of our series, we take a closer look at the evaluation itself to see how Dalbar measures quality customer service, how the evaluations are conducted and what the implications are for self-directed investors when comparing customer service at discount brokerages.

Knowing what counts

Given the number of evaluations being conducted to try and find ‘the best’ Canadian discount brokerage, it is increasingly important that self-directed investors be clear on exactly how a measurement of a discount brokerage is structured.  To avoid falling victim to clever marketing, whenever Canadian investors see a discount brokerage ranking, the following three questions are worth keeping in mind:

  1. What is being measured (ranked)?
  2. How was it measured?
  3. Does the measure actually measure what it says it does?

In the case of Dalbar Canada’s Direct Brokerage Service Award, what is being measured is “quality” of the customer experience when interacting with a particular discount brokerage’s customer service agents.  Of course, how “quality” is defined can be highly subjective so readers should keep this in mind when considering the explanations below.

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – May 31st 2013

Discount Brokerage News

This roundup features deal spotting from Disnat and TD Direct Investing at the Cambridge House World Resource Investment Conference, a new review of Qtrade and news about a costly mistake made by a  Questrade trader. In addition we take a quick peek at the latest ranking of Canadian discount brokerages.

Deal Me In

TD Direct Investing is quietly launching the new free trades deals. This is an interesting move on TD’s part given that they’ve largely stayed away from offering free trade promotions and because of the timing/roll-out of the deal.  The “50 free trades” promotion was launched towards the end of May and expires mid-July.  Check out our deals section for more info.

Also in the deals section is an updated promotion from Disnat that was being offered at their SCATE tour and at the last World Resource Investment Conference in Vancouver this past week.

Positive Feedback

Money Smarts blog posted an interesting review of Canadian discount brokerage Qtrade earlier this week.  The review contains some feedback from account holders, and it appears that customer service was a point most (including the article’s author) agreed was a strong point of the Qtrade experience. Interestingly, Qtrade did not perform nearly as strongly on the Dalbar Direct Brokerage Service Experience evaluation as other Canadian discount brokerages did.  The Dalbar study directly measures customer service and so the difference between what many consumer posts suggest and what some other studies also show

False Start on the Offense

Earlier this month, Questrade was in the penalty box with the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) for trading actions one of its employees took between August of 2009 and February 2010.  According to the decision document, the trader was found to have “entered orders on the Toronto Stock Exchange that he ought reasonably to have known could reasonably be expected to create an artificial bid price for Quebecor Inc. Class A securities”  while Questrade was penalized for not having adequate controls in place to prevent such practices from occurring. Both the trader and Questrade were fined for these infractions.

Joining the Ranks

The June 2013 edition of MoneySense magazine is on newsstands and features a review of Canada’s Best Discount Brokerages.  This is yet another in the growing list of discount brokerage rankings.  The rankings themselves are actually compiled by Surviscor, so the data is also available for free on Surviscor’s site too.  Check out our article regarding the numerous Canadian discount brokerage rankings in which we try to make sense of those who claim to be “Canada’s best discount brokerage.”

Interestingly, JD Power’s Investor Satisfaction Award survey is also currently being deployed to Canadian investors.  The survey is generally conducted in the late spring/early summer time frame and  results should be released in the fall.

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Bulls, Brew & Bottoms: Review of the Vancouver World Resource Investment Conference 2013

World Resource Investment Conference 2013This year’s World Resource Investment Conference (WRIC) in Vancouver came a bit earlier in the calendar than last year’s conference against the backdrop of a mining and exploration market fraught with pain and nervousness. In the mining sector, hope seems to be the rare commodity everyone is looking for these days.

The two-day WRIC featured the standard recipe of resource companies exhibiting and presenting, familiar speakers from Cambridge House conferences past and of course, the big bull.   Unlike previous conferences, however, this year’s WRIC felt like a much smaller show.  Attendance figures showed that close to 3700 individuals attended the conference this year which is down considerably from 2012.

Speakers and exhibitors also pointed out the smaller crowds this time around. One of the more popular speakers often present at Cambridge House shows, Danielle Park, remarked that the small numbers of attendees at this past conference are a far cry from the height of investor fervor during 2007.   As a follow up to that statement, however, she pointed out that fewer investors in the conference may actually be a healthy albeit contrarian indicator that the business cycle in junior mining and exploration stocks is working itself out.

From many of the talks, the sentiment appears to have shifted from denial of bad news to acceptance. As any seasoned investor knows, when it sounds like other investors are throwing in the proverbial towel, it is probably a good time to start looking over the merchandise to see what might go on sale.

Despite the widely acknowledged doom and gloom, there were a number of bright spots throughout the conference.  For attendees, this year’s speakers offered a great mixture of colourful analysis and opinion. In particular, the closing panels on both days saw spirited debates about the future of venture capital funding for junior companies (day 1) and an especially fiery closing panel on the world outlook (day 2) that saw outspoken personalities Rick Rule and Danielle Park exchange clever quips across the panel table, some of which landed on Marin Katusa who was seated between them.

Also spotted at the conference were a couple of the usual discount brokerage suspects, TD Direct Investing as well as Disnat.  What was particularly noteworthy was the promotion by TD Direct Investing that has yet to be widely launched. They have jumped into the ‘free trades’ game and will be offering up to 50 free trades to new clients between now and mid-July.  Check out our deals section here to find out more.   Disnat was also offering an ‘unadvertised’ deal which was being offered during their SCATE tour. The big lures for the Disnat deal are a 1 year subscription to Tyler Bollhorn’s daily alert newsletter and $300 in commission rebates. For more details on this deal, click here.

Other interesting bright spots included the Rocks to Riches course preview in which attendees could learn about some of the important concepts within geology by doing some hands on (experiential) learning.  This course is likely going to be offered in January 2014 at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference. For more information on it, click here.Visual Capitalist Beer

Lastly, Visual Capitalist, an innovative Vancouver communications firm that creates fun and informative infographics (and apparently craft beer too) on a number of commodity and mining-related topics , is launching the beta-test of their new mining and exploration company comparison tool: TickerScores.  This tool aims to tackle making the difficult process of scanning and researching mining and exploration stocks much more intuitive and far less time-consuming.  To learn more about this neat tool, check out the link here.

The upcoming summer months will provide many answers to the predictions made by the analysts and experts at this conference as to the fate of many cash-strapped junior companies.  This lines up nicely with the timing of the last of the Cambridge House conferences in Canada in 2013, the Toronto Resource Investment Conference to be held in September.  Of course, for those investors and companies hoping for a market bottom, how they manage to stomach these next few months will be worth hearing about in September.