Buying stock online

[Finner]

Originally Posted by macker

I would go with E-trade. Banks are banks and will always find ways to fee you to death! E-trade has everything you need including free research, tutorials .......

Actually BNS owns e-trade canada.

I work for TD Waterhouse DB. If you want any information regarding us just ask.

Supposedly we have the best Customer Service, and are open 24/7 for any questions. We are also by far the largest DB in canada, controlling well over 50% of both assets and accounts.

Webbroker (online trading platform) is admittedly getting old, however it is getting updated within the next couple months here.

Another thing is that we offer "washing" of us trades in RSP accounts. Because basically nobody allows US dollar RSP's account, we'll "wash" your us dollar security trades with US MMKT so there is no f/x conversion, which i don't believe anyone else offers.

Also there are no account fees (except in registered accounts), and no minimum balances. Want to open an account with $1000 and buy a mutual fund? Go wild! No fees whatsoever. (Except regular MF MER's and such)

Not to mention we have some crazily awesome cool stuff coming out soon that i can't talk about here, but that no other DB in canada is going to have that comes even close.

[Finner]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

That's why I was wondering about sogotrade.com. They only charge $3.50, or if you pay a monthly fee of $10, then it's $1.50! Can that even be right?

Can someone check the site out for me and tell me if it's for real, or if am I reading it wrong...

http://www.sogotrade.com/

Sogo is not canadian. As such non-residents can't open accounts. American brokerages are way cheaper then canadian so you'll generally notice how much cheaper prices are in the states then they are here.

Its due to how much competition there is in the states, and the massive exchange fees the TSX charges brokerages that they naturally pass on to customers.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Finner

Sogo is not canadian. As such non-residents can't open accounts. American brokerages are way cheaper then canadian so you'll generally notice how much cheaper prices are in the states then they are here.

Its due to how much competition there is in the states, and the massive exchange fees the TSX charges brokerages that they naturally pass on to customers.

Oh, ok. I knew there must be a catch.

Funny that someone posted this site on Yahoo to a question someone asked about buying stocks in Canada online... but then again, it doesn't surprise me that CP > Yahoo! in that regard.

[macker]

Originally Posted by fotze

You're not going to have any luck buying Taliban Energy.

The PE ratio is around 9

[macker]

Originally Posted by Finner

Actually BNS owns e-trade canada.

I work for TD Waterhouse DB. If you want any information regarding us just ask.

Supposedly we have the best Customer Service, and are open 24/7 for any questions. We are also by far the largest DB in canada, controlling well over 50% of both assets and accounts.

Webbroker (online trading platform) is admittedly getting old, however it is getting updated within the next couple months here.

Another thing is that we offer "washing" of us trades in RSP accounts. Because basically nobody allows US dollar RSP's account, we'll "wash" your us dollar security trades with US MMKT so there is no f/x conversion, which i don't believe anyone else offers.

Also there are no account fees (except in registered accounts), and no minimum balances. Want to open an account with $1000 and buy a mutual fund? Go wild! No fees whatsoever. (Except regular MF MER's and such)

Not to mention we have some crazily awesome cool stuff coming out soon that i can't talk about here, but that no other DB in canada is going to have that comes even close.

Yep,
This is an old thread from May. E-trade was acquired in July. Was also surprised to see BNS buy up Sunlifes stake in CI recently I found Sunlife to be a better big brother for CI but I guess they have other balance sheet issues to take care of and BNS is trying to bulk up in wealth management...

[Phanuthier]

Wow just checked E-Trade... $6.99 if you do 150+ trades per quarter (thats 600 trades a year, or almost 2 a day) ... day traders?

I'm with BMO Investorline, $10 per trade. Pretty cheap, but horrible horrible interface. Finner, how much is TD Waterhouse for < 50 trades a quarter?

[Bertuzzied]

Originally Posted by Phanuthier

Wow just checked E-Trade... $6.99 if you do 150+ trades per quarter (thats 600 trades a year, or almost 2 a day) ... day traders?

I'm with BMO Investorline, $10 per trade. Pretty cheap, but horrible horrible interface. Finner, how much is TD Waterhouse for < 50 trades a quarter?

Investorline? get out quick. I set my parents up with their account about 12 years ago and they have the worst real time quote system in the world. Only 1 real time quote at a time and only through order entry? Thats 1998.

I used to work for Waterhouse and their real time quote system is better. you can check like 10 at a time. I still have my self directed with them but because I trade so little in that account i get hammered with commissions every time. I'm going to move that over to Etrade too.

If you can trade 30 trades a quarter it is a no brainer. The Etrade Power Market Trader is awesome. Real time streaming, real time streaming level 2 and advanced charting. It is better then the StarQuote system we used to use as Waterhouse employees.

Transferring money to your trading account takes 2 days, so kind of slow but getting money from them can be on the same day as long as you request it by 11am(well after your settlement period, unless you have a margin account.)

[V]

Can you use TD Waterhouse for FOREX trading as well? I'm about to start a live account, but I'm a little leary of the bucket shops. I'd rather get something I can trust.

[Phanuthier]

I use Google Finance to get my updates.

What did you do for TD Waterhouse?

E-trade scares me, not too sure why. Anyways $10 a trade is pretty good, for the amount of trading I do, E-trade wouldn't be a good deal for me. Unless there's some particular reason for me to buy and sell a stock within a few days, I'm hoping to buy stocks based on long term growth and dividend yeild rather then day trading. I watch stocks move just on pure interest, not really for the profits.

No offense, I just have a real hard time understanding day traders, it just seems like gambling to me. When I first started getting into stocks and started reading some books on stocks (its history, how it works, what makes the markets go up and down, etc) it really makes me think that day trading and speculation can't be what the stock market should be about.

[Bertuzzied]

Originally Posted by Phanuthier

I use Google Finance to get my updates.

What did you do for TD Waterhouse?

E-trade scares me, not too sure why. Anyways $10 a trade is pretty good, for the amount of trading I do, E-trade wouldn't be a good deal for me. Unless there's some particular reason for me to buy and sell a stock within a few days, I'm hoping to buy stocks based on long term growth and dividend yeild rather then day trading. I watch stocks move just on pure interest, not really for the profits.

No offense, I just have a real hard time understanding day traders, it just seems like gambling to me. When I first started getting into stocks and started reading some books on stocks (its history, how it works, what makes the markets go up and down, etc) it really makes me think that day trading and speculation can't be what the stock market should be about.

I used to be a trader over the phone and pushing trades through Webbroker. I'm sure that is automated now though. That was back in 2002 before they closed our Calgary office and moved up to Edmonton for cost cutting. Got a great severance though.

Does google finance give real time quotes? I know yahoo just recently started giving real time quotes for free now, but only on US stocks.

I just love the etrade real time streaming because i can see up to 50 stocks at a time, plus if there is any news on it you just click the symbol and it sends to you to the news release.

I guess if you just buy and hold you don't really need more then the 15 minute delayed tracker on investorline.

[Phanuthier]

Yeah, Google Finance does have a list of stocks you can add to your portfolio, and I believe you can synch with what you bought for and how much. The best part is that for your portfolio, there is a tab that will display all the top stories related to your holdings too. I also love the sector summary and the trends just to keep an eye on how things are going over the entire market to get a good story. Google's articles are all found autonomously using software that searches the net's main websites to gather info and is sorted based on popularity or something like that so you get a good idea of whats going on. They display stories without redundant stories, again all programmed in autonomously; and if you want to read more, of coarse there is related articles.

One of my friends works for Google finance, doing the front end development - the graphs and data in particular. So I have a bias toward google.