| |
 |
  |
|
| News Articles Stocks DRPs Brokers Links Free Newsletters |
| Rothery Report: Login Learn More Performance Sample Subscribe Contact Us |
Fund Discount Brokers
Commission Calculator
Broker News
Finding a good broker is a difficult task. To help, we've collected a wealth of information and provided quantitative comparisons of a variety of Canadian discount brokerages. However, the qualitative aspects of the broker-client relationship should not be discounted. Factors other than cost should be considered when choosing a good broker.
Broker Info
Canadian Discount Broker Stock Fees
Canadian Discount Broker Fund Fees
Canadian Commission Calculator
Broker News
| Fee-only must mean just that | ||
| "Canadian financial planners should eliminate the ambiguity by scrapping the phrase "fee-only" when charging fees computed as a percentage of client assets. Instead, they should use the term "asset-based," which is far less confusing for clients." [04/29/08] | ||
| Find the right broker for you | ||
| "Your next stop is the Stingy Investor website. (Go to www.ndir.com and search for Canadian discount brokers). It's run by Norm Rothery, chief investment strategist at Dan Hallett & Associates Inc. Here you can find up-to-date comparisons of the fees and commissions charged by 15 Canadian online brokerages (as well as phone numbers and email addresses). What you pay usually depends on how many trades you make per quarter or year, how many shares you buy at a time and how many dollars you have in assets at the firm." [04/14/08] | ||
| Beware: A 'safety net' full of holes | ||
| "Regardless of what they're called or the advantages they claim to offer, these products have two things in common: very high commissions for your adviser and, thanks to fees averaging about 2% to 3% a year, very low returns for you. And you often have to pay a surrender charge, or exit fee, of 6% or more if you want to withdraw the money in the first six to eight years. Another feature you'll commonly find with these safety nets is confounding complexity. I've had plenty of clients who signed disclosure forms stating that they had read and understood the 473-page policy, yet they still had no idea what they were buying." [04/02/08] | ||
| Do-it-yourself broker | ||
| "Individual investors continue to flock to online investing as a low-cost alternative to full-service brokerage accounts. As of December, 2007, Canadians had $179-billion invested in online or discount brokerage accounts, according to Investor Economics Inc. That's no trivial amount, although it's still dwarfed by the $720-billion stashed in full-service accounts, says senior consultant Guy Armstrong. "We're still predominantly an advice-oriented society."" [03/28/08] | ||
| Online brokers: Sizing up your RRSP options | ||
| "Investors of all types can benefit from an online broker, be they conservative types who prefer bonds and GICs, aggressive stock traders or middle-of-the road types who want stocks, bonds and mutual funds. The challenge is to find the broker that best fits your needs. To that end, Portfolio Strategy has evaluated 13 online brokers to find the best choices in six areas relevant to RRSP investing." [02/05/08] | ||
| Online upstart stands out | ||
| "An upstart online brokerage has bested the bank-owned competition in addressing one of the biggest complaints investors have about stock trading. Questrade Inc. will announce on Monday that clients can hold U.S. dollars in their registered retirement accounts. The industry norm is to allow only Canadian dollars in registered accounts, which means costly currency conversion charges are often unavoidable for investors who buy and sell shares listed on U.S. exchanges." [01/10/08] | ||
| Qtrade wins again | ||
| "Investors have the online brokerage business right where they want it. To start with, stock-trading commissions are plunging. After years of being stuck in the $24-to-$29 range, more and more brokers are charging just under $10 as long as your accounts have at least $50,000 to $100,000 in total assets. At the same time, these firms are giving clients more for their money with better tools for finding investments and managing their accounts." [10/07/07] | ||
| TD Ameritrade suffers database breach | ||
| "TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. said Friday one of its databases was hacked and contact information for more than 6.3 million customers was stolen. A spokeswoman for the Omaha-based brokerage firm said more sensitive information in the same database, including Social Security numbers and account data, does not appear to have been taken." [09/14/07] | ||
| The high price of free insurance | ||
| "Typically, those who sell policies receive about 20% to 30% of the death benefit. For a $1 million policy belonging to someone with a life expectancy of seven years, a purchaser might pay $250,000, says Adam Balinsky, a partner at Baker & McKenzie in Toronto. But after paying various fees to middlemen that buy policies, the seller would be likely to take home only about $150,000, he calculates. From those proceeds, the seller would have to repay the loan plus various lender fees and interest of 12% to 18%. In the end, the insured might only net about $42,000, Balinsky figures." [04/23/07] | ||
| A buyer's guide to online brokers | ||
| "This year's Globe and Mail survey of online brokers for RRSP investing includes 15 firms and it focuses strictly on services delivered over the Internet. All the usual players are here, from BMO InvestorLine to TD Waterhouse, but there are three newcomers as well. DisnatDirect, Questrade and TradeFreedom mainly target aggressive stock traders, but they're increasingly reaching out to more mainstream investors who focus on stocks." [02/10/07] | ||
| Saving Mom from annuity pitches | ||
| "Have you ever heard the expression "to a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail"? Well, some financial advisers who make a good part of their living selling annuities see variable annuities as the answer to virtually every client's financial needs. Looking for tax-sheltered returns? A variable annuity will do the trick! Retirement investment? Can't beat a variable annuity! Looking for safety and guarantees? I've got just what you need - a variable annuity!" [12/08/06] | ||
| E*Trade raises the stakes with high-rate offering | ||
| "E*Trade is fighting the dominant, bank-owned discount brokers for market share in Canada and it already slashed the cost of trading stocks to as low as $9.99, compared to as much as $29 elsewhere. Now, it's offering a solution to a quandary faced by virtually all investors: How do you squeeze a decent return from the cash in your brokerage account in a low interest rate environment? E*Trade will announce a new offering today called the Cash Optimizer Investment Account, which carries a rate of 4.15 per cent for Canadian-dollar balances and 4.75 for U.S. dollars. There are no fees of any kind or any minimum deposit." [11/22/06] | ||
| The defiant one | ||
| "The ex-employee who tried to bring down Saskatoon financial advisor Brian Mallard died two years ago. But Mallard's fight for his reputation didn't." [11/10/06] | ||
| Rob's on-line brokerage rankings | ||
| "Costs are the most important factor in this eighth edition of the Globe's broker ranking, and the reason is that they're uppermost in the mind of do-it-yourself investors. In a survey conducted recently on the Globeinvestor.com website, a little more than one in three of the 1,641 participants ranked cheap commissions and fees as the top attribute of an on-line broker. No other attribute was even close." [09/20/06] | ||
| Clients deserve to know annual rate of return | ||
| "A Toronto financial consultant is leading a campaign to have investment companies fix a ridiculous deficiency in the way they show clients how much money they're making or losing." [08/05/06] | ||
| The time's come for full disclosure on return rates | ||
| "Certainly, the vast majority of firms do not disclose to clients how much money their portfolios are making or losing each year. This is scandalous when you think about it and yet another example of how the investment world sometimes treats its clients like infants." [08/05/06] | ||
| The study of the decade | ||
| "Over the next few years, you will be hearing a great deal about a ground-breaking new study that is just now starting to receive nationwide attention. The only notice of it that I have seen in the public media just appeared in a popular money magazine: "A new study compares the cost and performance of more than 4,000 mutual funds--some sold by brokers, some selected by people on their own--from 1996 to 2002. The people won." In other words, do-it-yourselfers outperform financial advisors." [06/23/06] |
|
|
| About Legal | Contact Us |
A Dan Hallett and Associates Inc. publication. Norm Rothery, Ph.D., CFA, is the Chief Investment Strategist at Dan Hallett and Associates Inc. (DH&A) and the founder of StingyInvestor.com. DH&A is registered as Investment Counsel in the province of Ontario. Norm, DH&A, or related-parties may have an interest in the securities mentioned. More...