Discount Brokerage Reliability

I had a lot of trouble with Questrade as well, but I really can't afford to take my business elsewhere (The fees will kill my account.) I think I will transfer out to my bank or something once I accumulate enough asset to qualify for discount at my bank.

Btw., my friend in the U.S. tells me he can get free trading at his local credit union. Is this an option in Canada? I probably should ask around at local credit unions.

I worked and lived in the States for a while and looked fairly hard for online brokerages and their fees. As far as I know, there is no place to get free trading at all (even through local credit unions). There was a company called Zecco that started up in 2008(?) that started advertising free trades, but now require at least $25000 min balance to get 10 free trades or you need to make 25 trades to get the 10 free.

None of these options are available in Canada yet as far as I have seen (unless anybody else knows of any?) and you cannot open any accounts in the US without a Social Security Number (also needed for tax purposes anyways...).

RBC Direct Investing is down again!

Connectivity to Canadian exchanges is temporarily unavailable. Order flow has been temporarily suspended. For US orders, please call RBC Direct Investing at 1-800-769-2560. For Canadian orders previously placed online, they will be released to the exchange as soon as the exchange connection is restored. For clients wishing to cancel their pending Canadian orders, please call 1-800-769-2560 and these orders will be cancelled on a best efforts basis.
Connectivity updates will be available online and by phone as they become available.

RBC Direct Investing sincerely apologizes for this inconvenience.

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I see that, is this a RBC phenomenon or is anyone else affected?

Well after a month RBC seems to be having problems again.

No quotes available and some of the links are unavailable, ie research.

Hopefully this will be fixed before the market opens.

Investors Edge is not that bad, but keep in mind that I don't do lots of trades.

The_Number said:

I had a lot of trouble with Questrade as well, but I really can't afford to take my business elsewhere (The fees will kill my account.) I think I will transfer out to my bank or something once I accumulate enough asset to qualify for discount at my bank.

Btw., my friend in the U.S. tells me he can get free trading at his local credit union. Is this an option in Canada? I probably should ask around at local credit unions.

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Credential Direct is the credit union brokerage so to speak. The fees are definitely not zero but are competitive with your typical discount brokerage.

That said I use BMO Investorline which is generally problem free, I've also recently opened a TFSA with Questrade so we'll see how that fares. I'm not about to pay $29+ per trade in a small value account. IB works fine for non-registered cheap trading.