I just want to make it clear I am not getting paid any $$ money to write this post. It is only my opinion. I don't work off of a lot of information but what I do work off of is price. I strongly urge do your own research, but if you are paying too much right now per/trade then get out, switch out, don't pay that disgusting amount. If Wal-Mart selling me bananas for .50 cents / lbs and the Indian Grocery store doing it for .55 cents / lbs, I'ma go to Wal-Mart! ($WMT)
If you don't have a trading account then this is still a good read for you, if you plan on getting one then its an even better read, if your paying $9.99, $24.99 or if you are the ultimate fail you can also be paying up to $29.99 a trade (now that is only if you are an ultimate failure). So keep reading sit back, call over momma + poppa because if they got self directed RRSP or TFSA accounts they wanna be reading this too. Some of you may already be with these brokers but honestly some aren't, so this article is for the failures. I will not list or defame any companies in this post because honestly I have a life, I am not here to bash companies, I am only here to express my opinion on what is possibly the best choice out there at this time for the general client who needs to execute some trades. So Ima basically skip everything and go to the one's who I think are legit. I personally have dealt with only one of the two brokers I will mention, but honestly within the next possibly 6 months trust me I will be dealing with the other one too.
First thing FIRST. Get yourself in a Tax Free Savings Trading account. Don't listen to the non-sense out there, I don't CARE if you are getting 1.5%, I honestly don't, take your $150 of interest income on $10,000 and go buy 17 McChicken meals, get out. If you do not need immense amounts of leverage for day trading and you are a buy and hold or you got say $25500 then don't throw that loot into a savings homie, GO get yourself a TFSA Trading account and make some real money, make some trades, make some $$$ moooollaaaahhhh ahhhh ahhh.
My Only Picks: Honestly, click the links and do the research and see which one suits your needs. Both companies offer Tax Free Savings Trading Accounts, you can choose $US or $CDN it is up to you. If it was me, go with both! haha. Honestly I only trade U.S. stocks.
There are two possible commission structures you can choose from:
1) Per Trade
- The way this works is very simple, please follow along in my imaginary situation.
- I want to buy and sell 100 shares of $AAPL, I will get charged a flat fee to buy and sell, this equals 2 trades.
- To buy I will pay possibly $4.95 if I am with Questrade and to sell I will pay another possibly $4.95.
- How much did it cost to do the entire transaction? $9.90
2) Per Share
- Now this is the structure I day trade with, hellllllsss nah am I gonna be paying $4.95 for my trades, I'd be broke people! (I really would be) Sometimes I'll make 50 trades in one day, so do the math and that is 50 x $4.95 = $247.50 in commissions in one day. Straight fail
- The way that per share works is like this: The broker will charge you a certain amount of cents for every share you trade, this means the more shares you trade the higher the cost of the trade.
- Questrade will charge you .95 minimum for a per/share trade setup and then charge 1 cent per share after that to a max of $6.95 (depending on which package you go with)
- NOW back to the example:
- I want to buy and sell 100 shares of $AAPL, I will get charged .95 cents flat fee to buy and sell and also .1 cent for every share I buy and sell. So I have 100 shares x .1 cent = $1.00
- Total Cost to buy and sell $AAPL using the per share structure = $1.95 to buy + $1.95 to sell
- Total Cost: $3.90
See which one works for you, see which broker you like, they both offer electronic funds transfers too, so there is no need of wire transfers or any of that non-sense. If you want a some what decent review of all the discount brokerages in Canada (the word discount is very misleading) read this Globe&Mail article. But honestly, don't rely on this article, do your own research. Also download a TD ThinkOrSwim Demo Account if you just wanna look at some nice clean charts, I use it, all the charts you see in my posts are from TD ThinkOrSwim, I love em, I have a real account with them too. The main thing that you want to figure out is which broker will execute your trades for the LOWEST possible price, everything else comes after. No broker gonna love you more than another, you are just a number, all you are doing is pushing buy & sell and they executing your trades. But do consider leverage, the interest for leverage, also a lot of brokers have issues with leveraging some epic things like $TVIX or other weird stocks / etf or whatever category $TVIX comes under. This is a flea market, there are fleas all around, find the best flea and let it stick to you and make you itch!
Click Below to Read my Previous Trades / Posts
Where is $AAPL going? - Tragedy
Back to the Future Trade
One Shot, One Kill
very insightful information. But i wont rely on it since you advised me not to :p
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