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Questrade drops most commissions
February 12, 2025
1:14 am
everhopeful
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I got an email from Questrade that they have now dropped their commission fees on most trades in self-directed accounts. So there is now another option out there along with Disnat, NBDB, and Wealthsimple (note: don't trade US$ securities in WS).

They are just a couple of years too late with it (I transferred out from them). Hopefully this puts more pressure on the Big Five to follow suit.

February 12, 2025
4:47 am
zgic
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Yes. Even I got an email about the 0 commission. I am with Questrade for a long time. But when I did a trade yesterday there was a still a charge of 29 cents due to SEC fees and ECN fees. I checked with them and they said that :
"I have checked regarding this and ECN and SEC fees may also be charged but are not charged by Questrade. These are fees that are incurred by Questrade for facilitating your trade execution and we simply pass it on to you."
Is this true for the other 0 commission brokerages as well?
Thanks

February 12, 2025
5:41 am
mordko
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everhopeful said So there is now another option out there along with Disnat, NBDB, and Wealthsimple (note: don't trade US$ securities in WS).
  

Trading USD with Wealthsimple is fine. I do it regularly. Zero fees. No “ECN” fees or any other fees. The issue is for small accounts only, (under $100K, I think; they need to pay a monthly fee of $10 for USD accounts).

February 12, 2025
8:17 am
GIC-Fanatic
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And out of curiosity, what are their GIC rates like. Feel free to post them, if you can.

February 12, 2025
8:24 am
Norman1
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The daily Questrade bond bulletin includes GIC's offered.

February 12, 2025
8:39 am
The Rock
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I transferred my brokerage account to Questrade because of this and the 1.5% funds transfer bonus.

February 12, 2025
9:33 am
GIC-Fanatic
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Norman1 said
The daily Questrade bond bulletin includes GIC's offered.  

Thank you.

February 12, 2025
9:57 am
bobwatford
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zgic said
Yes. Even I got an email about the 0 commission. I am with Questrade for a long time. But when I did a trade yesterday there was a still a charge of 29 cents due to SEC fees and ECN fees. I checked with them and they said that :
"I have checked regarding this and ECN and SEC fees may also be charged but are not charged by Questrade. These are fees that are incurred by Questrade for facilitating your trade execution and we simply pass it on to you."
Is this true for the other 0 commission brokerages as well?
Thanks  

I left Questrade years ago due to these added ECN and SEC fees. Even though their price per trade was much half of my bank brokerage's, these extra fees made many of the trades much more expensive (on some large trades). Decided it was better to know that I was being hit with 9.99 a trade flat fee than playing guess the fees every time I traded. So yeah if they're still passing these fees along and you trade large amounts many of your trades will be far from free.

February 12, 2025
11:46 am
Briguy
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bobwatford said
I left Questrade years ago due to these added ECN and SEC fees. Even though their price per trade was much half of my bank brokerage's, these extra fees made many of the trades much more expensive (on some large trades). Decided it was better to know that I was being hit with 9.99 a trade flat fee than playing guess the fees every time I traded. So yeah if they're still passing these fees along and you trade large amounts many of your trades will be far from free.  

They used to say that if you trade shares or ETF funds in lot sizes of 100 or multiples of 100, and use limit prices slightly better than current price so that the order has to sit in queue to be filled, you will avoid ECN fees.

Their current announcement said "$0 ECN fees on most stocks, options, and ETFs (ECN will apply to Direct Market Access and select OTC orders) " . So I think if you use limit buy or sell you can avoid ECN fees.

An advantage of Questrade, Interactive Brokers, and CI Direct is that they allow existing clients to move abroad and still trade. ( with some conditions ) . Wealthsimple will freeze your account.

February 12, 2025
2:51 pm
zgic
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bobwatford said
So yeah if they're still passing these fees along and you trade large amounts many of your trades will be far from free.  

Thanks for your response. I checked and the fee charged was 0.28 SEC fee only for a Sell of approx. 10K. sf-laugh
Not bad at all. It was $4.95 + 0.28 before. Now no trading fee at all. What a relief.sf-smile

February 14, 2025
4:46 pm
geotabs
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Disnat also charges the SEC Fee!
I'm assuming all the 0 commission free brokers are charging this even if you are adding liquidity. And the SEC fee is only on the sell side.
IB will also charge the
"FINRA Trading Activity Fee: USD 0.000166 * Quantity Sold"
"FINRA Consolidated Audit Trail Fees: USD 0.000035 * Quantity to 0.0000469 * Quantity"
And exchange fees.

I'm hoping that IB brings in IB lite, no commissions
It's a pain in the A$$ knowing that most US brokers offer free commissions and better charting, data and tools compared to Canada sf-cry

FYI QuestTrade still charges for streaming data and it's not cheap
Set up an account when the rep stated that the basic free plan offers streaming level 1 data so I tried it by connecting to trading view and it's not streaming but refreshed data and was confirmed by another rep!

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