Questrade vs Interactive Brokers Side-by-side broker comparison

You’ve got no annual administration fees to pay for your registered plans . Additionally, you can get $50 in free tradeswhen you start investing with Questrade. There is a fee added to the exchange rate whenever you need to exchange currencies from CAD to USD or the other way around. Since exchanging currencies is one of the services offered by Questrade, you should expect to pay a small processing fee in the exchange rate to get your desired currency. Norbert’s Gambit does in fact work for Questrade margin (non-registered) accounts.

The CSR on the online chat said it must be used within 30 days. Occasionally getting burned in the past with promo bonuses, I decided to also call Questrade with the same question. Hard one to answer – one of the banks probably , but to be honest, all the banks trading platforms suck, so if you want to self manage, not sure the best route. If you are fine with some one else managing, I would use a full service (locally have used Odlum Brown & Hollis Wealth and they have done fine). Yes, Questrade makes doing an Electronic Funds Transfer between Canadian financial institutions very easy. You can deposit or withdraw money in one to three business days for free in this manner.

At around noon, I sent an email requesting, “Please journal 2000 shares of DLR.TO to DLR.U.TO. Within a few minutes I received an automated confirmation email from Questrade, along with a case number, saying essentially “we’ll get back to you asap”. I’ve had similar experiences trying to sell DLR.U at the ask price. It can be a tedious waiting process and the opportuntiy cost of having your money tied down for too long likely exceeds the cost savings of selling DLR.U at the ask price.

• Because DLR’s price fluctuates so slowly, I only do market orders with DLR.
• The Questrade trading platform offers access to a variety or asset classes and has some of the lowest trading fees in the industry.
• Once you have contributed the maximum amount to your RRSP and TFSA accounts, and (if you’ve got children) the Questrade Family RESP is on autopilot, your next step becomes a good news – bad news situation.
• Questrade charges a range of fees depending on what kind of investment you want to buy or sell.

This means you’ve converted $1300 CAD to $1000 USD, a 1.30 USD to CAD rate that was locked in when you bought DLR.TO in the beginning. I’ve used DLR/DLR.U to convert currency often and have definitely saved hundreds of dollars in invisible fees. However the last time I did was March 20th when USD was 1.46 CDN and very volatile. It took 5 days to complete (settle, journal, sell – weekend in middle) by which time the rate had dropped – would have been better for me to eat the Questrade fees in that case. This is a possibility, but unless you are bullish on Telus then it’s a riskier proposition when comparing to using DLR. If you’re journaling shares using a non-DLR interlisted stock, then you incur the additional risk of the underlying company stock dropping in price between the time you buy, journal, and sell shares of that stock.

More features of Questrade

However, if you are buying thousands of shares, avoiding ECN fees can help you save a lot. We will now begin the actual process of Norbert’s Gambit by buying shares of DLR.TO on the Questrade trading platform. There’s a specific exchange-traded fund that’s used for Norbert’s Gambit. It’s called the Horizons U.S. Dollar Currency ETF, and its price reflects the conversion rate between CAD and USD. The ticker symbols are DLR.TO which is denominated in Canadian dollars, and DLR.U.TO which is denominated in U.S. dollars. Ready to save big on conversion fees and keep more of your hard-earned cash?

Get $500,000 CAD and $500,000 USD in virtual cash, and try all features for free for 90 days. What this means to the average customer is that the parent company of CWB Trust Services stands behind the safety of your registered accounts. While the bank isn’t the largest in Canada, it’s still a pretty massive company with a $2.2 billion market cap and is fully regulated by the Canadian government as a Schedule One Bank. At the end of the day Quest Mortgage looks like a solid mortgage broker solution for folks that want to get things done online.

Locate the Order entry box to the right, and follow the instructions below. Note that the infographics are based on the Questrade Edge interface. However, for the purposes of performing Norbert’s Gambit, you will want to use Questrade Edge, which was their original trading interface from before the update. The advantages quickly scale up the more money you need to exchange.

This is something that hhttps://forex-review.net/ened to me and I was unaware of it. Tom Drake is the consumer and credit expert at Retire Happy, sharing his knowledge on the best ways to get the most for your money. Whether it’s credit cards, banking products, or travel tips, Tom shares his insight as a financial analyst and as the writer behind the award-winning MapleMoney. The Questrade Global trading platform lets you trade foreign currencies and commodities across more than 15 international exchanges.

Excellent Customer Service:

Opening your Questrade Canada account can now be done completely online, and in as little as 24 hours. Opening your Questrade RRSP, TFSA, or RESP accounts is easier than ever before. Given how complicated this process was in the past, the Questrade team has really upped their game. Free Electronic Fund Transfers up to $50,000 CAD and $25,000 USD. A rock bottom $4.95 for up to 500 shares, to a maximum of $9.95.

• In terms of charting, you’ll want to download Questrade’s IQ Edge platform, which we will go over next.
• You are better off at a place like Desjardins which operate Disnat.
• Make no mistake; annual account fees will eat into your returns over the long run.
• He did journal it in a minute, and then I can sell it right away.
• This means that the price of DLR.TO fluctuates according to what the USD to CAD conversion rate currently is.

When converting from US to Canadian Dollars, you could wait for the price of DLR.TO to increase before performing Norbert’s Gambit. However, you can only sell DLR.TO at the end of the journaling process, which takes 3-4 business days from the time you request the journal. During that time, the price of DLR.TO can increase or decrease.

ETF Portfolios

You can either call, open a live chat, or email Questrade support to journal the shares. They all essentially accomplish the same thing, and it’s purely up to preference which way you choose to let them know. Buying on the US stock exchange requires that you have USD in your Questrade account. If you don’t, Questrade will automatically convert for you, but will do so at their standard exchange fees, which are typically quite higher than if you do Norbert’s Gambit. But if speed is of the essence and you need to convert right away, you can just let Questrade do the conversion.

That’s why the total amount converted is labelled as an estimate only. When you buy DLR.TO, you can attempt to avoid that fee by placing a buy limit order at the bid price. If it goes through, you will pay $0 or next to $0 in commissions for this trade, depending on whether you bought in multiples of 100 shares. If the USD.CAD rate is relatively static, you can have days on end when the price of DLR.TO and DLR.U.TO doesn’t fluctuate much during the trading session so you don’t get filled.

This means I can’t update all of my spreadsheets until I get my Questrade statement. I would like to comment on your comparison between Questrade and Qtrade. I have used both brokerages as well as TDW, RBC and iTrade.

More on Investing

Therefore, you lock in your rate when you finally sell DLR.TO. The DLR.TO stock price could have decreased to $12.90 for example during that time, which means your USD to CAD exchange rate would be 1.29 at the time of sale. Informed clients have portfolios with better investment performance, which provides value for both the active trader and broker. Questrade came onto the investment scene in Canada in 1999 as the first real low-cost alternative to traditional, high-fee investment platforms. It remains the largest discount brokerage service in the country and also offers a robo-advisor service called Questwealth Portfolios.

Qtrade is our top pick for best Canadian discount brokerage. Now, I realize that some people are buying more than 10 shares at a time. If you purchased $10,000 worth of Bell stock, then you’d be buying 192 shares, and your ECN fees would be a grand total of 67 cents.

Well, that’s the biggest difference between Questrade and Wealthsimple — fees. At Wealthsimple, we don’t charge commission for stock and ETF trades (when trading U.S. stocks and ETFs there is a 1.5% currency conversion fee). Questrade, meanwhile, charges at least $4.95 a trade, up to $9.95 a trade. So even if you buy $1worth of a stock, your total bill will be $5.95.

Account Types

The top competitor to questrade forex in the forex broker space is Interactive Brokers. For the vast majority of DIY investors who are using ETFs to build passive investing portfolios, you won’t need IQ Web or IQ Edge. Just stick to the basic trading platform, and you’ll be just fine. When switching to Questrade, some financial institutions may charge you a transfer fee. Don’t sweat it – Questrade will reimburse transfer fees up to $150 per account. This is a good deal considering transfer out fees can be hefty at most places.

Founded in 1999, Questrade now has over $25 billion of assets under management. If the idea of picking your own stocks and ETFs makes you not want to finish this sentence, both Questwealth and Wealthsimple offer a managed investing solution. Those who want access to a range of premium features have the option to upgrade from a “Basic” to a “Plus” account. The upgraded accounts are available for $10 per month, plus applicable taxes.

Personally, it’s not really a factor I care to pay attention to. Fyi Wealthsimple does have a buying and selling spread of around 9.83% as in a mark up on crypto coin, but it is hidden so you won’t notice it until you go to buy or sell. It’s also worth noting that while Questrade allows margin account holders to borrow funds to invest, you will have to pay interest.

Questrade requires a minimum deposit of $1,000 to open an account, but no longer charges inactivity fees. Questrade is the best way to save money on your DIY investing and the way they do that is by cutting fees. Questrade charges no annual fees, and when you start investing, you’ll pay just $4.95 per trade up to a maximum of $9.95 to buy stocks, and $0 per trade to buy ETFs.