Canadian Trading Woes!

[elliotmah]

It seems that penny stock trading in canada is restrictively expensive and hardly viable.  Please prove me wrong.  In the last few weeks i've done an insane amount of research amongst canadian discount brokerages and it seems that all of them charge an insane amount to qualify for active trader status.  And until qualifying you must pay high monthly data fees for real time streaming charts.  Any of the brokerages that are less expensive seem to charge ECN fee's which restrict the viable amount of stocks being traded.  E.g. if I were to trade 500,000 shares I would pay $2500 in ecn fee's.  The only inexpensive brokerage is CIBC, however i've read that because they are not a direct brokerage their execution rate and trading platform is horrible.  I'm worried that poor execution and platform will greatly limit my success as a beginner/novice/experienced trader.  CIBC also does not provide real-time quotes/charts as far as I know.  According to quotetracker they do support CIBC data streams, although I have had no success configuring quotetracker to do so?  I can't even find CIBC in the list of available data feeds.  If anyone has any advice or suggestions I would greatly appreciate them.

[Dr PennyStock]

To configure quote tracker just click Menu on the upper right corner, and click Data Sources/Proxy --> Quotes, chose Site, insert your CIBC username and password and the system will connect to CIBC, but, you need to have CIBC real-time streamer quotes, if not, you will not have real-time quotes on QT.

There are here Canadians in the forum, I hope they will help you to find the best broker to penny stocks in Canada, see the entire list of sites in QT, they have a few Canadian brokers with real-time quotes, and search their sites for info.

I see that in other topic someone suggested Questrade for you, looks good, the commission is $9.95 maximum and they have real-time streamer.

[Trelly]

whaaaat? Elliot - that can't be right. Even without active trader status, at MAXIMUM I would have to pay $120 and for a phone order to boot. I use TD Webbroker and usually it's $29 a trade, slightly more for pennies (all $9.99 once you hit active trader status) and my tenant uses iScotia and it's $27 no matter what you trade and $6.99 once you hit active trader.

I really like TD - instant executions and a really good platform. They have real time quotes and a decent research section. RBC has level 2 and is the same price as TD. I've heard good things about Questtrade and Tradefreedom too - probably your cheapest option, but I'm not a huge fan of the platform.

[elliotmah]

Yeah it's questtrade and tradefreedom that charge outrageous ecn fees.  I think i'm going to stick to one of the big 5, apparently BMO investorline has the gold standard in terms of webplatform and quick execution.  I really with TD used the ameritrade API.  RBC level 2 would be nice, scotia seems promising.  I'm worried that I wont get to active trader status for the first bit considering that i'm completely new; which is why I'm considering a CIBC account for the first year.  Otherwise the least I need to spend in commissions to reach active trader is $600 and that's for only 30 trades, and then I must spend 300 per quarter thereafter. I suppose I should do the math.  $1500 per year minimum vs 1130 with CIBC.  I guess either way you slice it it ends up being a bit pricey.  I'll have to just take the plunge eventually.

[elliotmah]

Grr... Even Scotia iTrade screw's you with ECN fee's in the fine print. TD only covers you for 1000 shares at $29 then its an additional 3 cents/share or 1.5% of principal trade for stocks under $1.  I'm not entirely sure what that means?  Although I would assume its restrictive. All of these fee's seem to be limiting my initial options.  I was going to go with scotia but now it seems my only choice will be CIBC for the time being.  At least until I can accumulate enough asset's to bring down the trading costs.

[Dr PennyStock]

Why you don't send an email to those brokers with all your questions to clarify your doubts?

You can give example, like tell them how much you need to pay for buying 700,000 shares of a penny stock trading at .0010, they will respond and you will have sure, Trelly said the maximum you will pay is $27 no matter what you trade, and, I assume also any order size.

[elliotmah]

Thank's for the advice.  I did just that actually.  I hope to hear back from them soon.  It doesn't really matter who I choose at the end of the day.  I'm just whining because I don't have a ton of cash and I'm very new to all of this so dumping a bunch of money paying for fee's seems like a big deal to me.  I'm hoping however that I can earn more than I lose. :-) 

[Dr PennyStock]

Even if you have a ton of cash, chose a good broker that has no restrictions to trade the kind of stocks you want to trade, is very important, and also have sure about how much you will pay for any order size, that is very important, in your place, I would do the same thing.