Investing

Is TD Direct Investing the Best Online Broker?

  • Last Updated:
  • Mar 14th, 2020 11:56 am
Sr. Member
Feb 17, 2012
660 posts
131 upvotes
Toronto
Are some of you still complaining about ECN fees? Easily avoidable.
Sr. Member
User avatar
Feb 5, 2017
910 posts
913 upvotes
I love TD DI. no fees whatsoever since I have a ton of assets in there. Very fast to answer any questions on the phone. Free money was given when they had web problems at beginning of year. Fair price for trades. Cool and easy to navigate plateform. They paid the fees for transferring a few assets I had in other banks. And more importatntly, I know that my money is safe over there. TD and RY will still be there when I'll die in half a century.
Deal Addict
Nov 6, 2015
3026 posts
2227 upvotes
Calgary
I've been using Interactive Brokers for over 10 years. Cheap and highly reliable (I've never faced an outage).
One thing I really like is being able to buy stocks in various currencies without having to convert funds first (IB creates a margin loan in XYZ currency to fund the trade)
Added benefit of being able to convert fx at mid-market rates as @georvu mentioned.
Jr. Member
Apr 22, 2014
116 posts
39 upvotes
ottawa
Hobotrader wrote: Too expensive, if you're just investing to retire then get something with lower commission. Having to invest 12x a year (monthly) and paying 120 to do so is ludicrous compared to 60 with CIBC of free with Questrade. I have Questrade, TD, and Scotia iTrade...Scotia is by far the worst and I only use it for my taxable where HXS is on my free list. It's 25 commission!!! THe highest, unless you have 50k with them that knocks it down to 10 bucks and maybe lower if you trade more than 150 transactions a quarter (you need to be a day trader to take advantage of this - same with TD). TD also has account fees, for instance RRSP fees. I only hold a margin account with them because the interest rates are lower than Questrade but I never use it since I just pack HXS in a taxable cash account. If you're just buying and holding, then use Questrade. If you're trading lots and trading lots of volume that can trigger Questrades high ECN fees then maybe TD/RBC/CIBC can be better.
If you exceed the minimum 150 trades per quarter, all of the major banks (including TD) will offer $5 /trade and margin at prime. In short, they all price match if you ask.

Frank2029: Only way I know of to avoid ECN fees are to use limit orders. Depending on your investing style, limit orders can be risky. I only use market orders which incur ECN fees with Questrade.

My real concern was quality service and reliability.
Deal Addict
Jun 10, 2013
3914 posts
2529 upvotes
GrandTheftAutopolis
dTinman wrote: If you exceed the minimum 150 trades per quarter, all of the major banks (including TD) will offer $5 /trade and margin at prime. In short, they all price match if you ask.

Frank2029: Only way I know of to avoid ECN fees are to use limit orders. Depending on your investing style, limit orders can be risky. I only use market orders which incur ECN fees with Questrade.

My real concern was quality service and reliability.
Gotta be big fish to spend 750 in commissions in a quarter...150 is a lot of transactions.
Sr. Member
Feb 17, 2012
660 posts
131 upvotes
Toronto
dTinman wrote: If you exceed the minimum 150 trades per quarter, all of the major banks (including TD) will offer $5 /trade and margin at prime. In short, they all price match if you ask.

Frank2029: Only way I know of to avoid ECN fees are to use limit orders. Depending on your investing style, limit orders can be risky. I only use market orders which incur ECN fees with Questrade.

My real concern was quality service and reliability.

I don't see too much love in here for BMO but for me personally it's the best one in terms of reliability and I have never waited more then a minute when I called them. Although a little pricier they offer a great bunch of tools to help.

I now use Questrade but dealing with customer service was terrible the first time requesting a cash withdraw. It took 3 weeks of back and forth bs. I was frustrated. I have stuck around because their options are the cheapest.
Member
Jan 4, 2017
366 posts
277 upvotes
I'm satisfied with them and I like the interface. TD's UI seems to be the least offensive of the Big 5, if not most financial institutions in Canada. Aside to transact, I don't pay any fees. The cost of the transaction is less meaningful for me since I do so few transactions, the strategy being to buy and hold forever (mostly dividend growers). If you transact frequently though, you're probably far better off with discount brokerages such as Interactive Brokers, Questrade or Virtual Brokers. I like having everything in one place as I use TD for the LOC and CC too.

I don't think there is any singular "best" one. It's going to depend on your needs and preferences. For me TDDI suits my needs perfectly, and I wouldn't consider switching for a slightly different transaction fee, based on how infrequently I transact. If I were to start with trading strategies instead of long term buy and hold investing, then I'm certain I would have a completely different opinion in that case!
Deal Addict
User avatar
Aug 7, 2010
1127 posts
479 upvotes
dTinman wrote: Frank2029: Only way I know of to avoid ECN fees are to use limit orders. Depending on your investing style, limit orders can be risky. I only use market orders which incur ECN fees with Questrade.
Not enough, you also need to buy in multiple of 100 shares ("board lots"), otherwise you pay ECN fees even if it's a limit order.
Jr. Member
Apr 22, 2014
116 posts
39 upvotes
ottawa
komodor wrote: Not enough, you also need to buy in multiple of 100 shares ("board lots"), otherwise you pay ECN fees even if it's a limit order.
I did not know that. That was never clearly explained at Questrade. They mentioned that limit orders add liquidity to the market and market orders remove liquidity. ECN fees appear to be compensation for the removal of liquidity.
Deal Addict
Feb 20, 2006
1186 posts
48 upvotes
Vancouver
I didn't check the other columns, but the IB column has a lot of mistakes or omissions:

They mention the $10 minimum trade fees for RRSP (which can be waived, per below), but there is a $50 annual maintenance fee as well not mentioned (maybe applies to TFSA as well, I didn't check).

For all accounts they repeatedly mention the $10 minimum trading fees in many of the rows, but this is waived for accounts with more than 100k (USD or the equivalent in CAD) in equity, so applies only to small accounts.

They say "NO" to Online Live Chat which is totally incorrect: they have 24-hous live chat on weekdays and some Saturday online live chat, which is in fact their primary contact point, which is preferred over the phone line. Chat is available in something like a half dozen languages (although not all are 24 hours).

This is not a mistake or omission, but there are some rows that don't appear here which would make IB look relatively better, like FX fees (can be one hundred times cheaper than the competition), margin rates and things like international market access. Some of these reasons can easily dominate all others if you use them: if you get income in CAD but want to change to USD to buy US stocks, IB can easily save you hundreds of dollars per year (and thousands when you are making a big one-off conversion, e.g., selling USD equities to buy a house in CAD).

I switched to IB mostly for the FX fees and cheaper trades (this was back in the era where almost everyone was at $29 trades and iTrade was "cheap" at $19), and stayed because they are generally reasonable. They are not good at Canadian tax forms, and their trade-cost advantage has largely eroded since then (and the costs suck for large trades of low-priced shares: you'll pay $100 to trade 10,000 shares where a lot of other places would be less than $10).
Deal Addict
Apr 22, 2014
3097 posts
474 upvotes
Oshawa, ON
IB. I feel like such a fool for what I’ve spent at RBC and TD over the years. Those dollars alone would be a significant chunk of wealth.
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Deal Addict
Oct 21, 2012
1436 posts
498 upvotes
Toronto
I believe the best brokerage is dependent on what you require from the brokerage. Every brokerage will have positives and negatives. Some people WANT their brokerage with their current bank or a big 5 bank. Some people have a large amount to invest and may only periodically invest more. Some people want to invest weekly / biweekly with their paycheque. Some people want to day trade. Some people have very small amount of principle.

I don't think there is a best, just a best for what you need and your personal situation.

I personally use iTrade and TDDI for different reasons and am happy with both.
Deal Fanatic
Jan 21, 2014
8511 posts
6255 upvotes
so we don't have a choice with iTrade on non-reg account annual fee unless you do > 12 trades? no minimum holding value to waive that? I am thinking of opening iTrade but I don't think I will do 12 trades a year even
Deal Addict
User avatar
Aug 9, 2011
2052 posts
409 upvotes
GTA
does TD offer real time quotes on positions of your holdings for regular clients by default?
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Dec 20, 2003
7248 posts
1322 upvotes
London
I trade 87,000,000 dollars worth of stocks last year and ONLY use I.B. My average trade is under a buck and I'm usually in and out in less than 2 minutes.
Deal Addict
Jan 5, 2006
1054 posts
253 upvotes
Mississauga
imflying12 wrote: does TD offer real time quotes on positions of your holdings for regular clients by default?
If you go to enter a buy or sell order you can get a fairly accurate real-time quote. If you want streaming quotes, I believe you need advanced dashboard for that. Check out their products page for details: Advanced Dashboard
"If one's conviction is strong enough whether you're a bear or a bull, you should put your money where your mouth is. Otherwise, you don't have skin in the game, and you are nothing more than a cheerleader in the stands" - SamInfinity
Deal Addict
Oct 21, 2012
1436 posts
498 upvotes
Toronto
mkl38s wrote: so we don't have a choice with iTrade on non-reg account annual fee unless you do > 12 trades? no minimum holding value to waive that? I am thinking of opening iTrade but I don't think I will do 12 trades a year even
25k waives the fee from all accounts.
Sr. Member
Feb 13, 2008
977 posts
765 upvotes
Edmonton, AB
I quit TD many years ago and moved to RBC.

I have trading authority on my sister's TD account and it is nothing but trouble with the reps. They have no clue what a W-8BEN form is.
Deal Fanatic
Jan 21, 2014
8511 posts
6255 upvotes
joey1234 wrote: 25k waives the fee from all accounts.
Thanks, but looks like you need $50K+ to get commission down to $9.95. Hmm, I probably go with CIBC

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