I have a few brokerage accounts (don't ask, ugh). Just noticed today that one of them has a referral program. So I thought, what with the extra TFSA room as of today (yay!), I might as well post a mini review/referral whore thread.
To sign up, go to questrade.com, click new account, yadda yadda, at some point you'll be able to enter a referral code: mine is 405924359388723
Ok, review. There are horror stories from years ago but I have never had any problems. They changed a load of stuff since those days. Live chat is usually pretty good, and of course being the obligatory INTJ I have never phoned them. Email support is good, too.
Good stuff: free ETF purchases excepting ETN fees (usually sub 10c). So you can buy ETFs one unit at a time.
Free live quotes (not live data, but when you get a quote it is live). Decent free trading platform. Dividends can be synthetically reinvested (all or none).
It just works, basically. It is not, really, for a trader - they have occasional outages which makes day traders go into meltdown, but if you're couch potatoing your way to early retirement, who cares, really.
The bad? Well, their margin rates and foreign exchange rates are bad. Margin is about 6%, forex is 2%. The forex you can get around by using Norbert's Gambit (it's really easy... again, via live chat). Margin, well. If you want margin I would strongly strongly recommend Interactive Brokers, at something like 2%.
But for your average potato like me... Questrade is good enough. It works on Canadian and US exchanges only. If you want a 'cash' account you need to pick 'margin' and make sure you switch US/Canadian funds as needed, as this does NOT happen automatically (it happens automatically in any kind of registered account).
They do RRSPs, RESPs, TFSAs, and a few more that I don't know about.
Hesitating between TD eseries, Tangerine, and Questrade? For *cheapness* Questrade wins hands down. A Canadian market tracker can be had with 0.05% MER on QT, vs 0.3-ish% on TD.
Oh yeah, and they give you money for transferring from other brokerages (to cover the cost), and money depending on how much you transfer/deposit with them.
I like 'em. Interactive Brokers are better if you're a power user, and have more than $100k (otherwise there is an account fee). But for simplicity I'd take Questrade.
