TD webBroker | General comparisons | Discussion forum

I deal with iTrade (Bank of Nova Scotia). I do not bank with them though.

Commissions
http://www.scotiabank.com/itrade/en/0,,3693,00.html

Fees
http://www.scotiabank.com/itrade/en/0,,3694,00.html

I only have TFSA accounts there ..... NO fees. But I am at the 24.99 level for trades. There are some free trades for mutual funds and some ETFs.

Another one to look at is Questrade. But you might want to Google them as I saw some negative remarks about them.

kilarney said

I am wanting to open an account to allow buying stocks to be put into a TFSA or RSP. I have RSP,s with TD but must get a different kind of account to do it myself. Does anyone use TD webBroker for this and if so how has it worked for you? Are there a lot of fees to trade? Also is there another institution that does it cheaper and better that anyone has experience with? Thanks.

Kilarney:

I've used TD WebBroker for 10 years for my father's accounts, ending in 2008 with his death. I've used RBC Drect Investing for my own accounts for about 18 years. Both served my pruposes extremely well. Both had differences. For example, TD had a much better Fixed Income decision making platform than RBC, but I liked RBC's "dashboard" much better than TD's. There were no "show stoppers" on either platform.

The banks were all around the $25 per trade range for smaller accounts and $10 per trade for larger accounts -- for stocks. Mutual funds tend to trade for free last I looked, as the banks get trailer fees from the funds. Bonds have a built in fee that is non-transparent and is part of the quoted bond price.

My advice for someone starting out is that it gets more and more difficult to manage as your portfolio gets larger. Think of having RSP's in Institution 1 and 2 and TFSA's in institution 2 and 3 and trading accounts in institution 1 and 3. Now you decide you want to sell some stocks in trading account 3 to deposit in TFSA 2. Additionally you decide to rebalance your asset mix over the entire portfolio.

It is much easier when it is all in one place. I'm a kind of "buy and hold" type of guy and do re-balancing once a year so fees are simply just a minor blip. If you were planning on day trading or week or month trading, then fees become more of an issue. I also am at a point in life where my trades are probably significantly larger than folks starting out, so fees represent a much smaller percentage of my transaction totals.

I'd be tempted to recommend you open a self directed investing account where you bank but you should also read this for an alternate opinion.

Greg

We have been using TD Waterhouse for at least two or three decades now, and are completely 100% satisfied with their service.

At the outset, you are going to get stuck with $29.99 fee per trade until your global household holdings exceed $100,000, upon which the fee goes down to $9.99 per trade.

No matter. Even with a $30 fee, you are going to be WAY ahead with blue chip equity investments such as: the five big banks, energy like Enbridge; communications like BCE (Div=4.58%) , Bell Alliant (Div=7.18%), energy like TransAlta (Div=7.77%); and on it goes.

With simple Blue chip stuff, can be pretty sure of a 7 - 8% annual return in capital appreciation, even before considering dividends!!