RBC Direct Investing (formerly Action Direct) experience

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IdOp
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by IdOp »

The good: Recently I had a GIC interest payment get stranded inside a registered account. It was my bad for buying an annual-pay GIC. The amount was less than $1000, and I thought it might get stuck in cash. Not that big a deal, but anyway I tried to put in an order for MIP510 anyway. It ended up working fine because they waive the $1000 minimum purchase when it's a registered account. :thumbsup:

The bad: So I log into my RBCDI account today, and every time I click to a new page, a pop-up opens saying "ScanStyles does nothing in Webkit/Firefox". Well ok, I'd be pleased to be informed of this once (whatever it means), but I'm sure glad I wasn't trying to place a timely order.
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by parvus »

Virus infection?

I don't seem to have that problem.
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IdOp
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by IdOp »

parvus wrote:Virus infection?

I don't seem to have that problem.
Thanks for reporting your experience. :) Your post prompted me to try again, and it is still there for me. I'll have to log in again in the next few days to get the monthly statement, and will try another OS and browsers to see what happens.
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by IdOp »

Here's a summary of a few different tests:

Code: Select all

Linux
did NOT happen with Opera
did NOT happen with FireFox
happened with SeaMonkey

NetBSD
happens with SeaMonkey and FireFox
I suspect the site is just keying off the browser identification string. Anyway, it can be worked around.
the pop-up
the pop-up
scanstyles.png (8.65 KiB) Viewed 2287 times
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Shakespeare
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by Shakespeare »

RBCDI has lowered its flat commission to $50K assets.
RBCDI wrote:Effective December 22, 2010, RBC Direct Investing clients who hold between $50,000 and $100,000 in household2 assets invested through RBC Direct Investing, will pay a flat commission of $9.95 per Canadian or U.S. equity trade when placing orders through its online investing site or automated telephone service. Canadian and U.S. option commissions have also been lowered to $9.95, plus $1.25 per contract.

2 Household asset accounts are defined as RBC Direct Investing accounts for clients living in the same household, with the same address. You must advise RBC Direct Investing of these multiple account relationships.
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by Furio »

I found something peculiar while doing some trading at RBCDI today, and I don't remember it happening before.

I sold 20K of an HISA fund (BTB100). I then checked the available funds within the account, it showed only $18K (90% of the market value of the fund). No other trades had been pending or executed.

When I spoke to a CSR, they said that this 90% rule applies to all mutual fund sales. That is, once a mutual fund is sold, the "Available funds" function will only show 90% of the fund's market value.

Is this new at RBCDI?

I can understand an equity or fixed income fund that are volatile and there is end-of-day pricing that must be accounted for. But a money market fund?

I find that the changes they implemented last year, such as real-time available funds, and the inability to debit or credit external bank accounts for non-registered accounts a real nuisance and misleading.

As in this case, the information the system provides is simply wrong.

Update: When I placed the original sell trade of 20K, I sold "All" units, and did not specify the dollar amount. That's when only 90% of the fund's value appeared as available funds.

I repeated the "sell order" in another registered account, this time specifying the dollar amount. This time, the available funds matched the market value of the fund sold.

Just a FYI in case anybody is interested.
Last edited by Furio on 22 Dec 2010 11:19, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by Shakespeare »

Is this new at RBCDI?
I'll let you know Friday, when I will enter the sale of MIP510 to fund my Dec. 30 LRIF withdrawal and Jan. 2 swap of TD shares from my non-registered account.
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by Shakespeare »

I just entered the sale of MIP510 for my Dec. 30 LIRA withdrawal. 100% of the amount entered showed as cash available.
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

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Shakespeare wrote:I just entered the sale of MIP510 for my Dec. 30 LIRA withdrawal. 100% of the amount entered showed as cash available.
Thanks for info.

Did you specify the dollar amount to be sold, or did you sell "all units" of MIP510?

The reason I am asking is because I repeated the sale of BTB100 in another account, while specifying the dollar amount, and as you, the full amount was shown to be available as well.

If that's the case then, my complaint of only 90% being available is limited to when one chooses to sell "all units".
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by Shakespeare »

I entered a certain dollar amount.
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by AltaRed »

I suspect the back office automatically shows a tentative 'holdback' on anything coded as 'units' of a mutual fund sold to compensate for 'unknown' pricing. Technically MMF are not fixed price units, i.e. they could break $10 though they rarely*, if ever, have. Such anomalies are really simply temporary and irrelevant.

* But a case in point. I have a legacy brokerage account in USA from my ex-pat days. A MMF I have there with ~$2500 in it pays 4 or 5 cents a month in interest depending on the month.... for the past 2 years. That is pretty close to breaking (in the USA) $1/unit pricing. Don't ask why I have that kind of money in a US domiciled MMF.
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by Shakespeare »

I just received the VT distributions on the US$ side of my RRSP and LIF. To transfer to C$, I had to call in; the transfer can not be done on-line yet. The usual vigorish - about 1 1/2% - applies.

The amounts were too small for Norbert's Gambit.
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

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Shakespeare wrote:I just received the VT distributions on the US$ side of my RRSP and LIF. To transfer to C$, I had to call in; the transfer can not be done on-line yet. The usual vigorish - about 1 1/2% - applies.

The amounts were too small for Norbert's Gambit.
Why not buy EWC or something Canadian until you want to convert? If you need the money you can sell something on the Canadian side.

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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

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Distributions are spent.
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by Shakespeare »

Well, for the second time this year RBCDI withheld 10% from my LIF withdrawal, even though it is at the minimum. It's taxes I owe anyway; I'm just a little puzzled because they didn't withhold any tax last year.

I guess I needn't have bothered with that December tax installment. :roll:
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

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Can't get through to do a swap - I guess everybody is calling about there TFSAs (mines already done, online).
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by Springbok »

Shakespeare wrote:Can't get through to do a swap - I guess everybody is calling about there TFSAs (mines already done, online).
I was on hold for 30min before talking to anyone at BMOIL about my RRIF withdrawal - Had to listen to Christmas Carols the whole time :(

Did our TFSAs on-line while waiting!
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by Shine »

Springbok wrote:
I was on hold for 30min before talking to anyone at BMOIL about my RRIF withdrawal - Had to listen to Christmas Carols the whole time :(
I was in my favourite coffee shop this afternoon with a capuccino and newspaper (and crossword) and was pleased to hear some jazz back on the soundtrack - no more tedious "seasonal" songs by Dean Martin and Sinatra et al.

It is good to be in January with the retail ritual over.
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by ukridge »

Have been trying to place a trade with RBCDI. It keeps kicking me out before the order confirmation, citing a system issue. Irritating!

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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by deaddog »

No problems : Trade went throught OK at 7:30 PST.
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by ukridge »

Called their tech support. Turns out that the problems were due to the Firefox browser cache. The rep asked me to clear the cache. And bingo, things work ok.

Thanks for the response deaddog.

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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

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A few trading days ago, I placed sell orders for some warrants that I hold in both my BMOIL and RBCDI taxable accounts. The orders expired, so I placed new orders at a slightly higher selling price. Both orders were plaved at approx the same time - BMO at 4:55pm and RBCDI at 5pm.

We have been travelling, but when I checked back in, I found that the warrants in my BMOIL account had been sold, but my RBCDI order had been "rejected". Reason given was that I did not have sufficient stocks in my account. But the warrants were and still are there. It seems it is just another RBCDI deficiency. Even although I placed order 1hr after trading ended and order expired, their system "thought" it may have acted on my order and therefore rejected the order.

I have re-instated the order, but missed the opportunity to sell at the day's high.

This may not seem like a big deal, but it is just another example of how second rate RBCDI is.
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by deaddog »

Springbok wrote: This may not seem like a big deal, but it is just another example of how second rate RBCDI is.
Why are you still dealing with them?
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by Springbok »

deaddog wrote:
Springbok wrote: This may not seem like a big deal, but it is just another example of how second rate RBCDI is.
Why are you still dealing with them?
We benefited from their 1% offer a while back. We transferred our registered accounts back to BMOIl, but kept part of our taxable account with them. This was partly because we thought it was the right thing to do at the time and partly just to have experience with more than one broker. But time has probably come to consolidate everything in one place.
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Re: RBC Action Direct experience

Post by BRIAN5000 »

But time has probably come to consolidate everything in one place.
I had the same idea but with everything in one account, protected by one password, accessable with one trading platform (which may be operating or not) I think not.
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