What "Online Trading Platform" do I use?

If you have ants in your pants to jump in and get an investment account opened but have not yet been through my program I’ll share with you who I use and why.

There are so many choices today and making a bad decision can cause a bit of stress. I know as I have been through a bad, long drawn out process trying to get an account opened with an online trading platform years ago. If I didn’t know better from being in the industry I would have possibly given up trying to get an account opened.

Students that have stayed with their bank’s online trading platform – thought it would be easier because it was the same bank.  

Here is what I have seen:

There is no time saved in less information having to be inputted to open an account or faster times to deposit cash into your investment account from your bank account. 

You will still need to do all the steps to open the account from scratch and transfer money over from your bank account to your same bank owned online trading platform – exactly the same way you would with an online trading platform that was not your bank.

The amount of time you think would be saved is not because the bank branches and their online trading platforms do not allow this information to be transferred over to help save time.

My personal experience:

When researching where to open an account to do my own online trading I started out with a platform that had low fees. But then I found out that they also had bad customer service.

This second point was only known to me after trying to get an account opened and because I was a wealth advisor I knew what documents were needed to open the account but the person on the other side did not.

Low fees are not the be all. Staff need to be trained and competent too.

I didn’t even get my money in the account and it was months. I was so unhappy with the mistakes made because of a lack of knowledge to get account set-up, plus lost account documentation in their head office.

How frustrating!

What online trading platform did I end up loving?

Questrade is the platform I use now and I am happy with them for the following reasons:

1.     Competent Staff to help with getting account opened

2.     No commissions to buy ETFs

3.     Very low commissions to sell ETFs (max $9.95)

4.     Technology and tools to open account and conduct trades is very easy to use

5.     Account fees are very competitive

Costs of trades or commissions are very low and competitive with the majority of online trading platforms that I am not concerned with the costs of trades. 

My main concerns are about the ease of use with getting account opened and making a trade – technology and tools. Then, after this would be competent staff; if I have a question regarding any admin issue on my account, I want it to be dealt with properly and in a timely manner.

Hope this helps you when deciding who to go with for your investment journey.

X0$,

Dollar Dame

P.S. Here is a link to the Questrade website to see how easy they lay everything out for account opening.

It is also an affiliate link and I personally use them.

Photo by margot pandone on Unsplash