After all of inescapable deal making drama in Washington this past week, it appears that stock markets had already placed their bets that events would unfold with a deal being struck.  Rather than a disastrous crash, The S&P 500 hit an all-time high and Canadian traders also shrugged off their Thanksgiving turkey hangovers to push […]

For Canada’s discount brokerages, fall not only means a busier season with investors, but for many of them it is also the time of year they either dread or cheer. The stretch of time between September and January is typically when a number of Canadian discount brokerage rankings get published – something that could be […]

This October the deal wheels keep on turning.    Overall, it looks like competition at Canadian discount brokerages is heating up with 6 discount brokerages currently offering some kind of promotion. To help make sense of the deals, this month we’re rolling out Deal Analytics (explained below) which will help provide support to individuals trying to […]

After a long vacancy on the RBC Direct Investing website, the free educational seminars section looks like it has finally come back to life. For quite some time, the investor education seminars section has been more or less dormant and was pointing visitors to set up one-on-one sessions with its reps at investor centres. Recently, […]

Welcome to the Friday the 13th edition of the discount broker weekly roundup.  It’s been an exciting week in the markets as news of the widely anticipated Twitter IPO became official.  This week, I’ll provide some highlights of fee drops and deal announcements that took place, followed up by a couple of interesting forum on […]

The swelling costs of funding higher education are on the minds of a lot of folks lately.  With the speed and magnitude at which fees for post-secondary tuition are growing, simply putting money aside for “junior’s” education may not be enough.  It seems like even the savings have to go out and find a second […]

With the end of the first week in September, there was certainly lots of news around the globe and in the markets to keep investors on the edge of their seats.  Within the discount broker space, there were some noteworthy deal extensions that showed up late into week one of September.  From the investor side […]

Updated Sept. 20/13 September is here, and with it comes a number of deal extensions from Canadian discount brokerages.  Going into the home stretch of the calendar year, several factors might be at play that explain why there are more ‘extensions’ of deals than new deals appearing just yet. First, a number of financial firms […]

If Yoda were watching the discount broker activity this past week, he’d probably say: ‘a slow news week this was not’.  Going into the long weekend there’s quite a bit of activity to report from Canadian discount brokers. In this week’s discount broker roundup we look at the big news coming out of a major […]

National Bank Direct Brokerage announced yesterday that their offer for commission-free ETF trading has been extended out until the end of October of 2013.  The commission-free ETF offer was first mentioned back in April where it was explained in detail. Some strings attached To recap, there are a few conditions attached to this offer (full […]

As September draws nearer, Canadian discount brokers are polishing up their websites and marketing campaigns to get ready for the increased activity in the stock markets that tends to happen at the end of the year.  This past week, there have been some notable updates in the homepages and advertising campaigns of a couple of […]

As we officially cross through the halfway mark of August, interest in the markets is picking up on the forums and the discount brokerages are busy planning their September promotions. In this week’s roundup, I recap the most recent addition to the mobile trading platform reviews; I look at a couple of brokerages gearing up […]

August Discount Brokerage Deals Overview The discount brokerage deals activity remains largely in a holding pattern as we move into August.  While there were a couple of noteworthy deals that expired in July, the bigger news last month was Questrade’s announcement that they would be re-introducing their unlimited trading offer.  Currently Questrade is offering the […]

It’s hard to believe but July is almost coming to an end.  As it rounds out though, there seemed to be a spike in the interest by self-directed investors in asking about discount brokerages.  With US stock indices such as the S&P 500 and Dow Jones continuing to push all-time highs, it seems like Canadian […]

With the summertime weather in full effect from coast to coast, it’s no wonder things have quieted down on the forums, markets and with discount brokers.  Not everyone is away on vacation though as we’ll see in this week’s roundup.  We’ll look into the discount brokerage earnings that were released this past week, some new […]

In the final part of our series on commission-free ETF trading at Canadian discount brokerages, we look at the offers from Virtual Brokers and Questrade and conclude the series with some lessons learned from researching commission-free ETF offers.  If you missed the earlier parts of the series, click here for part 1, here for part […]

In this week’s discount broker roundup, we highlight an article launch, how hard it is for discount brokers to be really, really popular and the beginning of what looks to be a busy promotional battle between discount brokerages for self-directed investors’ new business. More commission-free ETF info Earlier this week, part 3 of the series […]

In the first two parts of this series we touched on the different types of commission-free ETF trading being offered by discount brokerages and provided several tips for investors to keep in mind when considering these types of offers. (Click here to read part one or here to read part two) In part three of […]

Even though we roll into July on a short trading week, the discount brokerage space managed to toss along several newsworthy items. In this week’s roundup, we look at the US discount brokerages pointing to signs of improved investor enthusiasm, some fine tuning of ETF offers at Canadian discount brokerages, and some extra summertime heat […]

[Updated July 2nd] For the most part, many of July’s discount brokerage deals and promotions look to be mostly similar to last month’s offering.   First, I’ll recap of the deals that expired at the end of June and then launch into the deals that got extended and round out with the newest offerings. Expired Deals […]