Tag: Weekly Roundup

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – Nov 30th 2012

On the heels of the results from the annual Globe and Mail Canadian Discount Brokerage rankings, the 2012 Morningstar Canadian Investment Awards were handed out on November 28th and included a “Best Discount Brokerage” category.  While not nearly as well known as the J.D. Power and Associates award for Investor Satisfaction, the Morningstar Awards offer discount brokerages the chance to submit themselves (for a fee) for consideration by a panel of judges for the title of “Best Discount Broker.”  This year, Qtrade took top spot and maintained their three year reign as the title holder of this award.   Certainly it’s a bright spot for them after recently having been displaced from the top of the Globe and Mail rankings by Virtual Brokers. To learn more about the Morningstar methodology for “Best Discount Broker” click here. BMO Investorline’s  “Advice Direct” also earned recognition for “Best Use of Technology” (another category for which entrants had to submit a fee to be considered).  Unfortunately, neither the list of candidates nor the scores were published so we are not sure how many discount brokerages participated in this year’s submission.

Another big piece of news for self-directed investors came in the form of an increased contribution limit to tax-free savings accounts (TFSAs).  Most Canadian discount brokerages offer TFSAs so for those who choose to invest via their TFSAs, the news is definitely welcomed.  Starting in January 2013 Canadians will be allowed to contribute a maximum of $5500 dollars (instead of the previous limit of $5000 per year).  To learn more about which discount brokerages offer TFSAs, click here.

If you want to learn more about TFSAs themselves, check our special “The Mighty TFSA.”

Event Horizon

As we turn the corner into December, an interesting opportunity for individuals to sit and discuss some investing related topics is being held at the TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage centre in downtown Vancouver.  The event, entitled “stock chatter” will take place on December 5th from 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM.

Best Discount Brokerage Tweet of the Week

This past week saw the finale of Financial Literacy Month but also it was the conclusion of the now infamous “Mo-vember”.  @Jitneytrade deserves a tip of the hat for getting their team on board and actively participating in this great event.  Check out their tweet here which has the link to their movember ‘stache pics.

The People Have Spoken

Questrade is one of the most active discount brokerages when it comes to offering discounts and promotions.  Recently they’ve offered individuals either an iPad mini if they transfer in $100K or a chance to win one of 10 ipad minis for a smaller deposit.   The retail value of an ipad mini is $329.  In our discount broker deals section, we’ve seen deal “value” far higher for smaller deposit sizes, and so it piqued our curiosity – what do others think of this Questrade promotion? Is an iPad mini enough value to deposit $100,000?  Sure enough, the Questrade promotion caught the attention of some folks on the following Red Flag Deals forum.

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – Nov. 16/2012

Canadian discount brokerages seem to be busy in their workshops planning what to unveil for next year.  Many of the major financial institutions have their financial year end at October 31st which means they’re setting budgets and planning marketing campaigns for 2013.  Because of the upcoming Globe and Mail discount brokerage rankings due out next week (see below), marketing teams are holding their breath as to how to respond.

In the meantime, a couple of Canadian discount brokerages are jumping the gun with some new promotions.  Scotia iTrade just launched a new “refer a friend” promotion, in which referring business to them can get you either a) $50 or $100 dollars or b) 10 or 50 trades free.  If the most recent J.D. Power & Associates  Investor Satisfaction rankings prove to be correct, however,  Scotia iTrade may find getting referral business from their clients a bit of a challenge. The number of Canadian discount brokerages currently offering “refer a friend” deals is now three (Questrade and BMO Investorline are the other two).  For updated details on discount brokerage promotions, see our deals page here.

Questrade appears to be heavily promoting their new Ring the Bell with Questrade campaign (with spots on StockTwits and BNN) in which the grand prize winner will get to ring the opening bell at the NASDAQ Marketsite in New York City.  In addition to airfare, hotel and $500 in spending money, you will get broadcast on the famous NASDAQ MarketSite screen (which you can see a live webcam of here).  For more information on the “Ring the Bell with Questrade” contest, click here.

Also, as mentioned in this article in the Globe and Mail, this week Rob Carrick will release his annual Canadian discount brokerage ranking.  We know that discount brokerages are eagerly awaiting this year’s results as this comparison, along with the J.D. Power and Associates ranking are great publicity for the discount brokerages.   If you’re interested in Canadian discount brokerage rankings, look out for our upcoming special “comparison of comparisons” series where we compare the different comparisons of discount brokerages.

Event Horizon

This week will be a busy one for HSBC as they are taking their series, “Global economic forecast – the world in 2013 and beyond” across the country.  This seminar will take place in Toronto (Nov. 19th), Saskatoon (Nov. 20th), Edmonton (Nov. 21st), Calgary (Nov. 22rd) and Vancouver (Nov. 23rd).  To register for the event you have to be a member of the site Business Without Borders.  Membership to the website is free as is entrance to the talks.  For more information click here.

Best Canadian Discount Brokerage Tweet of the Week

This week’s best discount brokerage tweet comes from the affiliate of Disnat Direct,  @DesjardinsGroup.  Typically the tweets from @DesjardinsGroup point to interesting articles in the news elsewhere, but a link to original economics research caught our eye.  Specifically, the report on what might happen to the U.S. dollar going into the much talked about fiscal cliff.  To read the tweet, and the article, click here.

The People Have Spoken

This week, a post by J Watts in the Canadian Money Forum, started an interesting discussion on the “Best Bank for Mutual Funds and Direct Investing”. If, like J Watts, you’re a long-time holder of mutual funds, you might want to have a peek at what others had to say.

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – Nov. 9th 2012

The big news from the Canadian discount brokerage industry this week was the huge announcement that OptionsXpress will no longer be available in Canada.  Virtual Brokers will be acquiring all of the OptionsXpress Canada accounts as of December 1st pending regulatory approval. This now narrows the number of Canadian discount brokerages that provide a powerful and easy to use options trading platform along with great stock market education resources down by one.  According to an apparent notice sent to clients (which we found posted here but cannot confirm its authenticity) from OptionsXpress Canada, individuals who wish to transfer to another discount brokerage must let OptionsXpress Canada know in writing before November 23rd otherwise the account will be passed along to Virtual Brokers. Be sure to contact OptionsXpress Canada directly for any questions.

Questrade announced this week that they are serving as market maker on behalf of Foran Mining Corporation (FOM on the TSX Venture Exchange).  The one year agreement will take effect November 12th and Questrade will receive $5,500/month for these services.  Questrade has been somewhat active in adding companies to its market making segment adding American Vanadium, Red Tiger Mining and Destiny Media earlier this year.  To see the TSX market makers list, click here.

When National Bank Direct Brokerage announced via twitter that they have a LinkedIn page we got a little excited as they’re currently not really around on the social media scene except via their parent National Bank’s twitter feed (to see who which discount brokerages are active on social media, click here). Unfortunately, when we stopped by to have a look around there wasn’t a lot of content on there yet.

Don’t forget, November is Financial Literacy Month.  We’ll be posting all sorts of interesting gems for self-directed investors to help them enhance their knowledge of investing and finance. For more information on Financial Literacy Month activities, check out this page here.

Best Canadian Discount Brokerage Tweet of the Week

Even though the LinkedIn tweet left us scratching our heads a little, National Bank managed to score another tweet of the week for their Clearfacts newsletter on the difference between investing and trading.  You can read the article via their tweet here.

Event Horizon

This upcoming week has a couple of presentations for self-directed investors that are likely to be interesting.  Tyler Bollhorn’s new book, The Mindless Investor, is launching so he’s running a couple of free sessions to explain some of the principles from his book and how do-it-yourself investors can use these to help them with their trading.  Sessions will be held in Calgary (Nov. 12th) and Vancouver (Nov. 13th).

The People Have Spoken

Sometimes matching stock orders between buyers and sellers takes time.   It’s usually why discount brokerages give themselves a few days to get things settled behind the scenes.  Usually it’s a three day (known as T+3 as in Time + 3 days) window between the transaction date and the settlement date (for a great explanation, see this link).  This week, redflagdeals.com forum poster raxdax10 wanted to know why the money didn’t appear on their TD Waterhouse discount brokerage account after selling a stock.  Read what some helpful folks had to say here.

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – Nov. 2, 2012

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup

There were a couple of really big events that took place this past week including the impact of Hurricane Sandy, TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage’s Direct Investing Expo and Tyler Bollhorn’s soft launch of his new book, “The Mindless Investor”.  Also November is Financial Literacy Month, be sure to pay extra attention to a lot of the great resources and events for self-directed investors that we’re mentioning this month.

Hurricane Sandy Shuts Down Markets

Hurricane Sand shut down US markets for 2 days this past week marking the first time the NYSE has been closed because of weather since 1888.  The ripple effect for discount brokerage clients was obviously that they could not trade US markets but for some even trading on Canadian markets was impaired because datafeeds at some Canadian discount brokerages went down. Even though on the whole market data is fairly reliable, there are times when data feeds do go down, which is something you need to factor in to your type of trading especially if you are more active.  Usually the best response is to call your discount brokerage directly to properly respond – just be prepared for higher wait times when there are platform outages.

An alternative to getting answers is to go on twitter because chances are that there are other more active traders who will report on the status of their trading platforms.  Luckily we’ve put together a handy twitter channel for you to monitor all the discount brokerages that are on twitter in order to monitor announcements.  As a case in point, BMO took to twitter to announce an outage it had on its banking networks, tactfully managing a difficult customer service issue by keeping customers informed with progress reports.

Direct Investing Expo Review

We also reported a two part review of the TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage Direct Investing Expo.  This full day event was a great educational opportunity for self-directed investors to learn about macro-economic trends from Bob Gorman, as well as to learn about technical analysis and options trading from TD Ameritrade and Investools.  Click here to read the full review.

The Mindless Investor

This week in both Calgary and Vancouver, Tyler Bollhorn released signed copies of his book to audiences of Michael Campbell’s session with Tyler.  We managed to land a copy of it and will be putting up a review shortly.  In the meantime, you can read a preview of it here.

Financial Literacy Month

As part of Financial Literacy Month, SparxTrading.com is happy to share some of the great materials we’ve come across that can help self-directed investors better understand investing concepts that are important to learn about.  This week we put together a list of the best stock market education videos we found on the TD Ameritrade website.  Click here to access these videos.

Best Canadian Discount Brokerage Tweet of the Week:

This week’s discount brokerage tweet of the week was a tie between @virtual_brokers for their In Brief newsletter piece on understanding income statements and  @nationalbank where they linked out to a great article from their newsletter Clearfacts on easing into investing and using a TFSA.  To read more about TFSAs check out our article here.

Event Horizon

The Small-Cap Conference happening in Vancouver on November 6th is just about here. This will be a great opportunity to learn how to approach investing in smaller companies as speakers Ryan Irvine and Brent Todd are very good at laying out how to spot good opportunities.  Anyone who per-registers via SparxTrading.com, and attends this free conference will get a great bonus gift courtesy of SparxTrading! For registration details, click here.

The People Have Spoken

This week there was an interesting forum thread on the redflagdeals personal finance section.  Forum member “Squadz” felt a little overwhelmed with TFSAs, Stocks & mutual funds.  To read what everyone had to say to help squadz get through the maze of financial products, click here.

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – Oct. 26th 2012

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup

This week provided an interesting lesson in activity fees handed out to one RBC Direct Investing client, covered via Global News here.  If you’ve got an account open that you’ve forgotten about, you may want to look closely at what you’re being charged by keeping the account open (you can check out our fee comparison page here).  We looked at the latest news story evolving in markets, complicated orders, and the bigger issue of ‘fairness’ to all players the market.  An interesting twist to this comes from the exchange traded fund (ETF) industry and how major stock exchanges, such as the NASDAQ, are considering allowing a particular order type specifically for ETFs.  This latest turn might be an effort to restore waning investor confidence in stock markets and investing.

Lastly, just before press, there was a great piece published by Rob Carrick in the Globe and Mail (Three smart ways to find an online broker) in which SparxTrading.com gets mentioned.  Also included in this article are a couple of other sites to do some of your research on.

Best Canadian Discount Brokerage Tweet of the Week:

The best discount brokerage tweet for this week comes from @Jitneytrade for passing along a colorful article by author Michael Sincere explaining what options are.  You can read the tweet here.

Event Horizon

As mentioned in our last edition of the roundup, this Saturday October 27th (tomorrow) TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage will be putting on its Direct Investing Expo in Vancouver. There will be a number of speakers including Bob Gorman, Chief Portfolio Strategist for TD Waterhouse.  For more details click here.

Also, around the corner are a couple of other investment seminars, including an Evening with Michael Campbell featuring Tyler Bollhorn, taking place in Calgary (October 29th) and Vancouver (October 30th). Tyler will be talking about his new book, The Mindless Investor as well as giving signed copies of the book to attendees. The Small-Cap Conference (November 6th) in Vancouver just announced their speaker list and for those folks who pre-register via SparxTrading.com, they get a great bonus gift! For registration details, click here.

The People Have Spoken

The comments section on the Michael Sincere article mentioned in the Jitneytrade tweet also got some readers to chime in on whether or not options are easy as the article might suggest. Check out all the comments here.

Canadian Discount Brokerage Jobs

On the hiring front, there are a couple of more positions that Canadian discount brokerages are trying to fill. Sometimes the hiring pools can be indicative of things to come, as we see from the job positions popping up this week.

Qtrade recently announced that they’re looking to hire a Content Strategist and writer.  Qtrade has been  a bit quieter in the social media arena, but it looks like they’re prepping to step into it along with these other discount brokerages.

Questrade is looking for some extra hands in the form of New Accounts Specialists to help for the upcoming RSP rush (yup it’s around the corner).  If you’ve ever been curious to know what it’s like to work as a service agent for Questrade or what it is that they are tasked to do for you as a client, check out the posting we found here.

RBC Direct Investing is also looking to add an Assistant Manager to their Investor Centre staff in downtown.  Interestingly, according to the posting, “main objectives of this position and all activities conducted within the Investor Centres are to drive new client acquisition, consolidate assets from existing clients, and to increase the profitability of each client.”

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – Oct. 20th 2012

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup

From the Canadian discount brokerages, this past week saw the launch of a new contest by Questrade  called “Ring the bell with Questrade”.  Winners of the contest will get to ring the opening bell at the NASDAQ MarketSite and round trip airfare to New York City, three nights’ accommodation and $500 in spending money. For contest details you can click here.   TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage officially announced the Thinkorswim Canada platform (which readers of Sparxtrading.com already heard about a few days earlier here).  Some feature upgrades to the services at BMO Investorline earlier this month include the Recognia-based Technical InsightTM Tool being deployed (you can read the news release here).  Recognia’s tools are a popular offering amongst many Canadian discount brokerages and provide technical analysis tools and screening for major stock indices in Canada and the US.

For the US discount brokers, several discount brokerages reported their quarterly earnings.  While Schwab reported a third quarter profit increase of 12 percent, the interesting stats were the drop in revenue trades (down 19% year over year) and a huge 61% drop in new brokerage accounts opened compared to last year. Full details on the Schwab release can be found here. Etrade also reported their earnings which came in lower than expected, and also saw a 61% drop in new accounts vs last quarter.  Interactive Brokers also reported a decrease in their earnings year over year and while new accounts grew 11% year over year, they too seem be suffering from decreased trading volumes (19% lower year over year).  TD Ameritrade reports later this month. For a quick overview of the US discount brokerage stocks, check out this Forbes article here.

On the hiring front, social media folks take note. There appears to be some opportunities to work for a couple of Canadian discount brokerages if you’re so inclined.

Best Canadian Discount Brokerage Tweet of the Week

This week’s best tweet comes from @nationalbank (on behalf of National Bank discount brokerage) via their content partners at @DesautelsMcGill.  The article, entitled ‘knowledge investing: the path to safer returns – part 1’ takes a look through the lens of value investing and the role that knowledge can play in selecting potential investments. You can access @nationalbank’s tweet here.

Event Horizon

This Saturday October 27th TD Waterhouse will be putting on its Direct Investing Expo in Vancouver. There will be a number of speakers including Bob Gorman, Chief Portfolio Strategist for TD Waterhouse.  For details click here.

The People Have Spoken

The following thread on Canadian money forum discussing the launch of ThinkorSwim Canada saw some good tips on the platform and eligibility along with the usual digs/cheers for favourite platforms.

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – Oct. 12th 2012

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup

This week, the Canadian discount brokerage industry saw another member announce that it will move its clearing and settlement services in-house.  Virtual Brokers, a division of BBS Securities, announced that they will no longer be using Penson Financial Services Canada to take care of “back office” operations, such as trade clearing and settlement.  The announcement from Virtual Brokers follows the official statement from Penson that they are closing down of Canadian operations.  Two weeks ago, Questrade also announced that they too will begin to clear/settle trades in house.

While one company was exiting, another one was letting customers back in.  Thinkorswim Canada, a division of TD Waterhouse, is once again accepting Canadian accounts.  The thinkorswim platform will only be able to trade US listed stocks and options and is only available to holders of TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage US margin accounts.

Best Canadian Discount Brokerage Tweet of the Week

This week’s top tweet goes to @Questrade for sharing a great technical analysis article on moving averages. Check out their tweet here.

Event Horizon

The World Moneyshow is coming back to Toronto again from October 18th through the 20th. For more details click here.

The People Have Spoken

This week, we took a peek into the Canadian Money Forum for a common question for beginner DIY investors – where to get started.  Here’s what one group of responses had to say to a young and debt-free family about getting into investing.

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – Oct. 5th 2012

Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup:

As we roll into October, the Canadian discount brokerage industry continues to show signs of competitive evolution.   First, the huge news released earlier this week that Questrade will transition into clearing its own trades via an in-house clearing division (currently pending regulatory approval).  By replacing their current clearing agent (Penson Financial Services Canada), Questrade believes they will be able to offer more timely settlement and record-keeping services to its clients – something that they had struggled with earlier this year around tax season.  While potentially helping to smooth things out on one side of their business, another reason why this move could prove to be important competitively for Questrade is that they will no longer be paying a clearing agent to deal with clearing and settlement. So what could they do with those extra dollars per trade they’ve been paying to their clearing agent? Depending on how much it costs Questrade to clear and settle their own trades (staff, technology, compliance etc), they might be in a position to lower their already low commission fees (i.e. pass along the savings instead of charging inactivity fees). This is a model that has proven to work well for Interactive Brokers. Alternatively, they might redeploy the extra cash into strengthening other aspects of their business as the competition amongst Canadian discount brokerages continues to heat up. Either way, this should be an interesting turn of events to watch unfold.

The second big piece of Canadian discount brokerage news is from Jitneytrade. In addition to announcing a move into their new offices (coincidentally Jitneytrade and Penson Financial Services Canada are located in the same building), Jitneytrade also announced their move into currency exchange .  The new foreign-exchange component is a service  aimed at institutional clients, and is another bold move for Jitneytrade into the institutional arena.

Best Canadian Discount Brokerage Tweet of the Week:

This week’s favourite tweet comes from @Scotia_iTrade:What’s the #KISS Principle? Watch The Market Guys and avoid some of the most common investing/trading mistakes [vid], http://ow.ly/8h4dt  – great video!

Event Horizon:

The Small Cap Conference is rolling into Calgary next week (October 9th)  and should offer investors interested in some small cap companies the chance to mingle with management, get some market analysis and maybe win a cool door prize.  For more details click here.

The People Have Spoken:

When it comes to taking a shot or passing up the stock market, the Great One Wayne Gretzky would rather pass.  This prudent strategy seems to have served him well in real life however it is an interesting position for brand ambassador to TD Waterhouse to play.  In any case, there were quite a few interesting responses to Wayne Gretzky’s personal finance tips from his interview earlier in the week.

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Roundup – Sept. 28/12

Discount Brokerage Weekly roundup:

This week, we learned of a couple of major developments in the Canadian discount brokerage marketplace that  are likely to reshape the competitive landscape.  First, the major news that optionsXpress Canada is putting a hold on opening new Canadian accounts.  We found out from optionsXpress that out that for now this is a temporary measure while Schwab, the parent company of optionsXpress Canada, evaluates its overall business units.  While one discount brokerage was pausing, another one was readying to launch a long awaited product  back into the marketplace.  TD Waterhouse discount brokerage is readying itself for the relaunch of thinkorswim Canada. The ultrapopular stock and options trading platform has been on hold for some time now, but according to thinkorswim Canada reps, they will potentially be accepting new clients again starting in October 2012.

Canadian Discount Brokerage Tweet of the week:

This week saw a lot of great tweets put forward by several discount brokerages.  The winner this week (by a slim margin) goes to @questrade for the article on investing in ETFs [Do you trade mutual funds or ETFs? Give this a read:http://bit.ly/NAv7y5#TheExchange …]

Honorable mention goes to @jitneytrade for finding a  great article on the evolving capacity of global exchanges (http://bit.ly/OuyCI1)

Event Horizon:

Options Education Day is taking place in Toronto this Saturday (event details can be found here).  If the food there was as good as it was at the Vancouver session, the Toronto folks will be well rewarded for going to school on a Saturday.

The people have spoken:

The recent launch and migration of Questrade clients over to the IQ platform has been met with mixed reviews.  Change isn’t always an easy thing for clients to navigate – and this thread in the Red Flag Deals personal finance forum shows the “support” and “resistance” to the switchover.

 

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Discount Brokerage Weekly Round Up – Sept. 21/2012

Discount Brokerage Weekly roundup:

The big news this week in the world of Canadian online discount brokerages was the release of the 2012 JD Power & Associates Canadian Discount Brokerage Investor Satisfaction Survey results.  With Disnat coming out on top, followed by BMO Investorline and National Bank Direct Brokerage, the survey showed that while Canadian discount brokerages are improving, they still have some catching up to do with their American discount brokerage counterparts.  To read more about the ratings, click here.

Canadian Discount Brokerage Tweet of the week:

@virtual_brokers for their article on protective puts http://bit.ly/NHH70O

Event Horizon:

TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage is planning a “trader’s expo” this weekend at the TD Waterhouse Investor Centre in Coquitlam. Details can be found here

The people have spoken:

An article about the launch earlier this month of the BMO Investorline AdviceDirect platform to assist retail investors has certainly stirred some investors up.

At the time of writing:

The top rated comment (25 points)from “TheBluesMan” : “1% is ridiculous for this arms length advice. Another cash cow for the brokerage.”

And the lowest rated comment (-4 points) from “EJJ”: “Ya, like I would listen to advice from a bankster. That’s hilarious!”