Moving stuff from TD Waterhouse to RBC direct investing. Before I do, I just want to be certain that the costs are the same.
Is it true that:
- Vanguard (not the brokerage) sets the MER for Vanguard ETFs, thus should be the same through any brokerage
- each brokerage can set its own fee on top of that, but for Waterhouse and RBC directinvesting, that's simply $10 per trade
- having Vanguard ETFs in Waterhouse or RBC direct investing should cost exactly the same
Am I missing anything?
I'm holding Vanguard at Questrade.
No fees at all, so its easy to put in $50 here and $100 there. Although all our other banking is at RBC, I went with QT for the TFSA since ETFs trade for free. MERs are attached to the fund itself so there is no way to dodge the fees.
My portfolio is pretty simple - its the couchpotato setup with VAB, VXC and VCN. Were I to do it again, I would track the three funds for a month or two while saving, then buy the funds individually when they were down. I dumped everything in at once thinking "the sooner the better". Things have slumped since, and I haven't been able to catch up to my losses, especially on VCN and VAB.
I also allowed myself a $100 side bet in individual stocks just for fun. Right now its in ZZZ.TO and doing remarkably well just in the past couple weeks. This investment is so small though that it really has little to no effect on the whole portfolio.