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Fund Discount Brokers
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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.
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Broker News
| Overoptimistic for a generation | ||
| "For the past quarter century, equity analysts' earnings-growth estimates have been almost 100% too high." [05/17/10] | ||
| The yes-man problem | ||
| "The problem: Financial planners are yes-men and -women, asserts a report co-authored by Sendhil Mullainathan, a Harvard professor and top behavioral economist. Most planners, his report finds, reinforce our bad investment behaviors instead of fixing them. And the problem, he says, may be harder to solve than the fee issue." [03/12/10] | ||
| Technology not always a godsend | ||
| "If you're a client of the online brokerage Scotia iTrade, you'll have an idea of what I'm driving at in warning about technology risk. Scotia iTrade is what Bank of Nova Scotia renamed E*Trade Canada after scooping it up back in 2008. Last month, Scotiabank set about merging iTrade's back office record-keeping operation with the bank's own system. Complaints to this column from iTrade customers began rolling in on Dec. 11 and they've continued right into the new year." [01/08/10] | ||
| Do your legwork before hiring an adviser | ||
| "There's a kind of investment risk that is statistically very rare, but crushing if it happens to you. It's called adviser risk and, thanks to coverage of the scheme allegedly perpetrated by Montreal financial adviser Earl Jones, we have a horrifying view of what it means. As much as $30-million to $50-million belonging to Mr. Jones's clients, many of them seniors, has allegedly disappeared. Some victims are looking at having to sell their homes, while others have had to rely on food banks to get by." [08/14/09] | ||
| Can you trust your financial advisor? | ||
| "Judging by the 86 comments underneath the clip, many Canadians don't trust their financial advisors and more than a few have been burned by them. With an estimated 100,000 of them in Canada alone (counting insurance agents, stock brokers, financial planners and mutual fund salespeople), I've no doubt there are a few bad apples out there. Even so, my personal experience of interviewing hundreds of advisors over the four years I wrote the Post's Advisor Post column was that 95% of them are highly educated, competent professionals who are paid fairly to do a tough job." [05/11/09] | ||
| Questrade rebating mutual fund trailer fees | ||
| "Questrade says its Mutual Fund Maximizer makes it the only direct access brokerage to rebate this fee -- representing up to 1% or more of the value of their mutual fund investments -- back to its clients." [01/14/09] | ||
| Beware of fees | ||
| "Insult is about to be added to the injury done to your investment portfolios in the past year. With the value of your account falling, you may find yourself paying higher commissions to trade stocks, as well as miscellaneous fees from which you were previously exempt. Not convinced on the merits of putting money into the markets right now, with share prices knocked way off their peaks of last summer? Now you have the additional motivation of being able to avoid parasitic fees by reinflating your depleted account." [11/12/08] | ||
| Qtrade retains crown | ||
| "Now to the question of which brokers are best. Qtrade Investor, a small firm out of Vancouver, has taken top spot for the third straight year, while BMO InvestorLine, E*Trade Canada and TD Waterhouse also scored well. Qtrade is an example of a broker that does almost everything well. Whether it's keeping costs low, providing tools that help investors make smart decisions or offering a sturdy trading platform, Qtrade has it covered." [10/25/08] | ||
| Financial advisers vs. academia | ||
| "Do investors need financial advisers? Not according to some university professors and other researchers. Financial advisers say they have the expertise to guide investors to better results and can keep them from making mistakes such as under-diversifying, chasing hot funds/stocks, and selling out at the bottom of a bear market. However, empirical studies carried out by academics find otherwise. Let's take a look at three." [08/29/08] | ||
| Scotiabank to buy E*TRADE Canada | ||
| "Scotiabank will purchase E(*)TRADE Canada for USD$442 million (approximately C$444 million), subject to regulatory approvals. The completion of today's announcement will double Scotiabank's footprint in the Canadian online investing market." [There goes another independent broker.] [07/14/08] | ||
| London 'cityboy' unmasks world of analysts | ||
| "As a utilities analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort, Geraint Anderson was advising clients how to invest. At the same time, through an anonymous London newspaper column, he was telling readers how analysts wrote 'utter gibberish.'" [06/20/08] | ||
| 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] |
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