Best online Discount Broker Firm for DayTrading in Canada

i've no idea what cibc and bmo are doing in your list.

unless you're a 5-star bmo client you'll get delayed quotes. Add this to the fact that every client has to navigate all the way to the new bmo order entry platform to obtain detailed quotes including sizing for each individual security, one security at a time. This latter feature is a real burn, imo. There's no way to flash up a page containing 10 or more detailed quotes, including options and leaps options, all in real time, the way every client can do at the td.

because scotia bought etrade canada recently, i'd assume they've kept the old cheap etrade commish and the real-time quotes. It's possible scotia is adding better service & execution to what used to be viewed as a fairly poor-quality etrade business, at least i'd assume that's what scotia is doing. Something to check out.

fin du compte, what would be wrong with td's active trader platform. It's designed for day traders. At present it's an expensive subscription if you're doing less than 150 trades per quarter, but very soon they'll introduce a new fast platform that will be much cheaper. In the meantime their standard webbroker service, rated the fastest among canadian online houses, is still the best available @ 9.99 commish, imo. Recent complaints about td server interruption are exaggerated, imo. In my experience, td's website malfunctions far less often than bmo's.

rino, what excellent questions.

i can only reply in a personal way. Don't work for the td, so have only got hazy notion how "they" decide.

but here's my view. Remember, the competition to acquire new clients, esp the frequent traders, is fierce. Every decent online house has marketing reps or front runners. So i'd actually meet & sit down with one of these. I think they'd probably like to see more than one month's trading summary. Would you have an entire quarter, or 3 months' trading reports. Possibly also a copy of last year's trading summary for entire year (i once submitted this latter in quest to gain exceptions & accommodations, which they granted, although it wasn't the td.)

if i were the td or any right-thinking business, and if a prospective new client's prior reports from previous trading houses clocked in, i'd certainly admit a new day trader with all the usual perks & commish straight from Day One.

btw the top-ranked td accounts are called president's accounts or PAs for short, so you might try to meet with a PA desk rep.

hum

Humble_pie, Thanks a lot for your help...It seems like the Canadian brokers have some catching up to do when compared to the standards in the states but I'm sure their services will improve to keep up with the intense competition.
And Hopefully I will have a chance to visit an office of TDW in the following week.

FrugalTrader, I read your review and will certainly look into the details in a more comprehensive manner. Thank you

And Leslie, I appreciate the heads-up with IB commissions. Thanks

Dwon, I looked into Questrade; they have a fairly reasonable commission structure but as I indicated in my original post, I read some reviews on slow execution, weak customer support/service, and a lot of down time when it comes to reliability of the servers. Believe it or not these 3 are even more critical than the commissions. But Thank you for the input; I might look into them for some Swing and longer time-frame trades&/Investments.

And I feel very sorry for mogul777 posting such an immature response; why are you even posting something when you're not answering my question or adding something useful...It is quite evident that you clearly don't like to read a post thoroughly before replying. Humble_pie already mentioned the fact that he doesn't think CIBC and BMO are optimal options but since you don't like to read, you probably missed the point altogether and it's usually best to leave people like you with no response since you can't even get a simple idea of yours across using proper manners. So, the top criteria for successful DayTrading is the commission in your opinion? Just mention this statement to a professional DayTrader, then I'll tell you what is considered the stupidest thing.

Rhino,

What you are looking for is Direct Access Trading,
Commission 0.001 per share or 1$ per 1000.
You will be payed by ECN for adding liquidity to the market!
around 2$ per 1000 shares, adding liquidity when you use buy at bid.
BUT if you take out Liquidity, you will be penalized by same ammount.

Look into JC Trading, and Golden Market Management.
They even allow you to trade there capital, with small downpayment like 5000$ will allow you too trade 50,000$, but they will take from your prifit certain percentage.

That what I call daytrading. You will not find lowest rates , I did this research and about to open an account myself.

Good luck.

Order Excetion problem with TD waterhouse

I have recently experienced order execution problem with TD waterhouse.

Normally I use market order to sell my stock, which is fast at TDW. Sometimes I have to use 'stop to sell' order since I am away from computer. The 'stop to sell' order is that after the market price is reached, my order is activated to 'market' order. The order execution is really bad.

When I sold 'TSE:HSD', it was sold 15 min after my order was triggered.

Today, I sold 'NYSE:SH', is was sold 5 min later after my order was triggered.

I both cases, I got bad price.

I called Customer service, the answer is the triggering is not done by computer, it was done by human!!! it is ricularus. But this is the answer I got from their CS.