Discount/Online Broker Research Comparison

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KCinWhitby
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Best Discount Broker for me?

Post by KCinWhitby »

Good morning, it's been some time since my last post. I read over my overly detailed questions back on 2009 and hate to say I have been far too hesitant to do much investing over the last couple of years. I am happy to say that business has gone well so in spite of missing out on some gains or dividends, my net worth is doing well. I was really expecting a correction or double dip and have been sitting on and hoarding cash for some time. Well it is time to start getting smarter about that cash. I also have too much money still with my financial planner, who I've come to realize is not much more usefull than any mutual fund salesman.

The first thing I want to do is to decide on a good dicount broker for my business money. I have personal accounts with TD Waterhouse, and for now I'll leave my money there. (Although a USD RRSP would be useful) I have not tried their alternative to use a USD money market and "wash". I also like their research although I can't really say I understand most of it.

The problem for my business money is that TD has terrible account information when it comes to reports, and historical information. You literally have to re-enter every buy and sell in a seperate portfolio manager and for some reason that does not even match when I enter things from years ago. (Something is off about the DRIP and I don't have time to figure it out. It could be my error)

I need to be able to run date specific reports for my business fiscal year. October 1 to September 30. (I realise I get a T3 and T5 for calendar year but it does not help me or my accountant for year end.)

I am hoping some of you can recommend brokers that have great account reporting functions and history. (please don't worry about this being for a "business". They all seem to allow corporate accounts)

I have to admit after initial research and one phone call to customer service I am thinking Qtrade may be a good fit.

Thanking you all in advance for your support.


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Re: Best Dicount Broker for me?

Post by Insomniac »

I am with Qtrade and can confirm that you can run history reports for specific date ranges. I just ran a report for Jan 04 to Dec 06. The report can be exported to Excel for further analysis. Trades, contributions, distributions, commmisions are all there.
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Re: Best Dicount Broker for me?

Post by BRIAN5000 »

The problem for my business money is that TD has terrible account information when it comes to reports, and historical information. You literally have to re-enter every buy and sell in a seperate portfolio manager and for some reason that does not even match when I enter things from years ago. (Something is off about the DRIP and I don't have time to figure it out. It could be my error)
I heard yesterday they are working on this, one of the top ask's by user's, don't hold your breath. I find Portfolio Manager slow and worthless.
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KCinWhitby
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Re: Best Dicount Broker for me?

Post by KCinWhitby »

Thanks for the responses insomniac and Brian. I've spoken to QTrade and I have to admit I am impressed. Except for the $50.00 per USD RRSP account. But I want this for my business anyways.

Anybody have any experience with Questrade? Have they gotten negative reviews lately?
I'd like to know if they have the reporting funciton I am looking for.


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Re: Best Discount Broker for me?

Post by KCinWhitby »

Strange, after a few calls and e-mails QTrade does not feel that they can provide the reports I need. I'm confident that they can. I'll investigate a couple of others. Seems like Questrade is not the prefferrred choice of many people on here.

Too bad TD Waterhouse won't work on those account details history and reports.
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Re: Discount/Online Broker Research Comparison

Post by KCinWhitby »

So much information on this Forum. Taking some time to get through most of it. I've been searching for the best discount broker for my business money and need something much better than what TD Waterhouse has to offer due to their account history and lack of reporting functions.

Can anyone refer me to a good Online Brokers that offers better reporting funcitons? I am investigating with QTrade now, and received responses that did not make sense. They actually told me that they can not provide what I am looking for which is account history for specific date range we choose that include, dividiends and capital gains. Or at least to extract the data so I can figure out the gains etc. With a year end not being a calendar year I don't want an accountant charging me a fortune to do the calculations from my statements.

The other thing I am wondering is if anyone knows a discount broker that offers incentive lately. I've read about 1% incentives for larger accounts and it would be amazing if I could pull that off.

Thanks for you help and have a great weekend.

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Re: Best Discount Broker for me?

Post by newguy »

KCinWhitby wrote:Too bad TD Waterhouse won't work on those account details history and reports.
I don't know anything about business accounting but it's not hard to get info from TDWH.

I just copy paste the activity page into an editor, fix it up and put it in a spreadsheet. It can't take more than 10 minutes per month. After that you can sort or retrieve things by date if you like.

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Re: Discount/Online Broker Research Comparison

Post by deaddog »

RBCDI will let you download your activity statements to excel.

From there you’d have to manipulate the data yourself.
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Re: Best Discount Broker for me?

Post by KCinWhitby »

Thanks Newguy, that is a great tip. Just had a look at my personal account. It is still alot more work than I want to do. I don't wont to retire to constantly work on my spreadsheets. LOL. But I just might have to. I just extacted the recent Activity and it is all over the place and I only have 3 ETF. I'm sure i just need to sit and get my head around it, but there must be easier ways to do this.

Thanks again, I do have a starting point.


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Re: Best Discount Broker for me?

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KCinWhitby wrote:Thanks Newguy, that is a great tip. Just had a look at my personal account. It is still alot more work than I want to do. I don't wont to retire to constantly work on my spreadsheets. LOL. But I just might have to. I just extacted the recent Activity and it is all over the place and I only have 3 ETF. I'm sure i just need to sit and get my head around it, but there must be easier ways to do this.

Thanks again, I do have a starting point.


Kevin
That's why I said put it in an editor first. You can use notepad if you have almost nothing to do. Then just arrange it into a line with commas in between what you want for columns. You have to remove commas that are thousands separators but you can do this with edit replace and put a comma in the first box and leave the second one blank. There are many more powerful editors but this way would take maybe 1 minute to fix up 5 or 10 lines.

Once it's in a spreadsheet you only have to sort it or filter it, it doesn't take any extra time playing with it compared to online reports.

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Re: Discount/Online Broker Research Comparison

Post by Mikouli »

KCinWhitby wrote:So much information on this Forum. Taking some time to get through most of it. I've been searching for the best discount broker for my business money and need something much better than what TD Waterhouse has to offer due to their account history and lack of reporting functions.
Kevin
Look here... http://www.tdwaterhouse.ca/products-ser ... orting.jsp Let us know if ti is what you're looking for ? You can Export in CSV and XLS an some accounting software can sort the data since it's a "Big Bank".

I think only big bank will offer such services... others will offer raw data as Excel / CSV flies.
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Re: Discount/Online Broker Research Comparison

Post by KCinWhitby »

It looks like that is their Portfolio Manager where you ahve to manually add every single buy and sell manually. That is why i am looking elsewhere.
I recently entered two ETF I bought years ago and the end result does not match my current balance. (Could be my error) I have not had time to review it. It is just a nightmare of additional work in my mind.

Thanks though, appreciate the input.


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Re: Best Discount Broker for me?

Post by KCinWhitby »

I appreciate it Newguy, I'll try that, but still sounds like alot of unnecessary work. Just cutting and pasting to Excel seemed to go well. Haven't really reviewed it, just did it fast. I just wnat to avoid alot of steps that human error can cause a major accounting error.

People seem to love the Waterhouse on here. :D


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Re: Discount/Online Broker Research Comparison

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Two almost exact threads running parallel were merged together
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adrian2
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Re: Discount/Online Broker Research Comparison

Post by adrian2 »

Online brokerages slowly raising fees
Rob Carrick, via TDW, on May 10, 2012, wrote:After a few years of dramatic declines, costs are starting to creep higher in the online brokerage world.

These increases aren’t widespread, but they do offer a warning that do-it-yourself investors can’t be complacent about fees after a long period of declines that brought sub-$10 online stock trades to the masses.

The most notable increase comes from Scotia iTrade, which has boosted the minimum online commission for people with less than $50,000 in their account to $24.99 from $19.99. Scotia has also introduced a $100 annual RRSP admin fee for accounts with assets of less than $25,000 in all their iTrade accounts combined. These increases were made as part of the merger of the lamentable ScotiaMcLeod Direct Investing into Scotia iTrade. SMDI clients are getting lower commissions as part of the merger, while iTrade clients will pay more in these two instances. The only offsetting benefit for iTrade clients is a cleaner, more up-to-date website offering a few more research tools.

An increase coming July 1 from RBC Direct Investing means clients will no longer pay one commission when placing multiple orders for the same stock, on the same side of the market in one day. Instead, commissions will apply on a per-order basis. RBC said the change brings it into line with industry practice.
(edited to fix the spelling of Rob Carrick)
Last edited by adrian2 on 11 May 2012 12:42, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Discount/Online Broker Research Comparison

Post by Mikouli »

Rob Crarrick, via TDW, on May 10, 2012, wrote:After a few years of dramatic declines, costs are starting to creep higher in the online brokerage world.
Thx for the info I was not aware of this.. So I take a look on Google and for Scotia it was an "old news" from November and for RBC DI it's recent from April...

I was Curious cause I've just change from Disnat to TDW and I have make a lot of phone calls b4 moving my account (Over 250K) to have the best pricing for me...
And TD will stay for me with their 7.00 trade that is fine for me, they don't intend to increase their price but they intend to make available the ThinkOrSwim platform for CDN account :)

BUT One of my friend that is a "Full Broker" for VMD told me that Desjardins is trying to eliminate all small account ( that give no money to them) by RAISING Minimum requirement to be able to open VMD account.
And also they raise their fees minimum "transactions" fees for smaller account, so it's a general move NOT ONLY for "Discount Broker" but also for Full-Service Broker and all small account infortunately :(

So if you have a "big" account with "a lot" of transaction you don't have to worry, but for small account you have to do your homework b4 choosing a bank.

Regards :thumbsup:
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Re: Discount/Online Broker Research Comparison

Post by par4 »

Is $7 the present cost per trade at TDWH? Or is that a come-on for new clients? :o I pay 9.99 ( President's acct.)
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Re: Discount/Online Broker Research Comparison

Post by Mikouli »

Is $7 the present cost per trade at TDWH? Or is that a come-on for new clients? :o I pay 9.99 ( President's acct.)
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Re: Discount/Online Broker Research Comparison

Post by optionable68 »

For taxable accounts, you can't do better than Interactive Brokers. :thumbsup:
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Re: Discount/Online Broker Research Comparison

Post by adrian2 »

optionable68 wrote:For taxable accounts, you can't do better than Interactive Brokers. :thumbsup:
IB's tax slips are probably the most inaccurate you can get.
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Re: Discount/Online Broker Research Comparison

Post by Mikouli »

For taxable accounts, you can't do better than Interactive Brokers. :thumbsup:
There is not really a better brokers than another one, it's depend of your need:
  • How much money you have?
    In which currency you trade?
    Forex, futures or Equity?
    How many trades per Quarter?
    On which market you trade ( CDN USA INTL) ?
    Average Size of your trade ?
    Do u need Levell II depth of book?
    Real Time chart (At which cost)
    Type of account you REALLY need?
    Which Trading platform ?
    Exchange rate ?
    Your style: Hold and Buy. Swing trading, Day trading, Scalping etc
And many more you will find with time...

So nobody can say this broker ( or my broker) is better than this one.

It's not a contest for the favorite broker as well as it's not a one size fit for all :)

The Purpose of this thread is to give informations on brokers not saying this broker is better...

There is no perfect brokers ;-)

Best regards !
Good Week-End To All
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Re: Discount/Online Broker Research Comparison

Post by optionable68 »

adrian2 wrote:
optionable68 wrote:For taxable accounts, you can't do better than Interactive Brokers. :thumbsup:
IB's tax slips are probably the most inaccurate you can get.
Adrian, good point. I don't disagree with you.

Solution: Keep good trading records (and enjoy low commissions, amazing forex, smart-trading for tighter spreads and decent cash balance credits)
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Re: Discount/Online Broker Research Comparison

Post by newguy »

optionable68 wrote:
adrian2 wrote:
optionable68 wrote:For taxable accounts, you can't do better than Interactive Brokers. :thumbsup:
IB's tax slips are probably the most inaccurate you can get.
Adrian, good point. I don't disagree with you.
I disagree with both of you. TD is cheaper if you do more than 700 or 1000 share trades at a time.

The tax slips aren't any better or worse than other brokers I've read problems about here. I also don't think brokers tax slips have any relevance to anything unless you're paranoid about audits which I'm not.

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Re: Discount/Online Broker Research Comparison

Post by Mikouli »

You're Right Newguy, it's one of the reasons I've go with TD versus IB... and also No ECN fee for me

But like I told One size does not fit for all with brokers.. ;-)
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Re: Discount/Online Broker Research Comparison

Post by optionable68 »

newguy wrote:TD is cheaper if you do more than 700 or 1000 share trades at a time.

newguy
I disagree with you.

You assume people only buy stock.

For those who are options traders, IB is the way to go. Hands down.
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