Questrade Review 2023: What matters to Canadian investors

Questrade offer 10 different ways to fund your account, each with different processing times. Depending on the currency of the deposit and how quickly you want the money in your account, choose the method that works the best for you. It may take an additional 1–2 business days to activate new accounts. Bank transfer is one of the more popular methods offered although they are lacking in online payment processor options. I think they could improve by adding some support for digital wallets. I find this to be one of the most convenient ways for me to move funds around between my broker accounts.

Developers interested in writing their own applications or using tools from other third-party vendors can rejoice because Questrade has their own application programming interface (API). It’s free to use and can execute, modify, and cancel stock & option orders on Canadian and U.S. exchanges; retrieve balances, and positions as far back as sixteen months; and fetch delayed and real-time market data. Their SDK with sample code is available for download in C++ and C#/Active X.

Questrade vs Wealthsimple Trade

Create personalized lists of investments you want to keep track of. Create multiple lists and customize them by industry, geography, size and more. Create your custom layout and workspace with linking windows and hot keys so you’re always ready to jump on an opportunity. The IPO centre can provide you with the latest initial public offering opportunities sent directly to your inbox. The intraday trade can help to identify potential investment opportunities throughout the day and match them up with your watchlist.

When coming up to retirement, should your investments move with you. Questrade, as a whole, is a member of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) and the Canadian Investor Protection Fund (CIPF). These two organizations operate similarly to the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation (CDIC).

Market Data Packages

ETF’s can be a mix of stocks, bonds and other investments. Although similar to a mutual fund, the primary difference is that ETFs can be bought and traded like a stock. North American-listed ETF’s can be bought commission-free through Questrade, with no maximum amount or minimum requirement. Get fast and easy access to global markets on 15+ international exchanges and high leverage with an award-winning web-based FX and CFD platform.

I found they vigilantly kept re-balancing assets to stay within my risk tolerance without any daily involvement on my part, which was nice. Once invested, however, you will want to maintain a minimum balance of $750 to keep your account invested. And lastly, a special appreciation goes out to the ability to https://forex-reviews.org/trade99/ set up a personal identification number (PIN) from your customer profile page. This PIN is optional, but is used to make it quicker to identify you when phoning in. You still have to provide other information about yourself when speaking to a representative, but the verification process is much quicker.

Trading Platforms

Stock search loads in a new page, asks me to select search options and market in addition to providing my search term. You better know the stock symbol you want to trade vs using BMO’s symbol search page unless you like loading multiple pages and using cut & paste. There’s a Direct Investing login available within its banking app.

Upon signing up, customers need to distinguish which account or accounts they would like to open before investing. Below is a brief summary of each investing account the discount brokerage offers upon sign up. In terms of fees, BMO Investorline charges the usual bank-owned brokerage rate of $9.95. I went with my bank’s brokerage myself when I opened my first brokerage account in 2011. I bank with Desjardins and opened an account with Disnat to buy Apple stocks. I never bought any other stock at Disnat, I quickly went searching for a better brokerage and better user interface and moved to Questrade.

Customer Service

Wealthsimple Trade will even reimburse an outgoing administrative transfer fee of up to $150 on investment account transfers valued at more than $5,000. I did uncover a nominal annual management fee, however, which varies based on your existing total account asset value. This fee only gets charged when you have at least $1,000 in savings within your managed account. If it does apply then it’s broken up and charged proportionally on a quarterly basis. Relative to other brokerages and banks, this management fee is by far the lowest I’ve seen. Questrade’s margin and registered accounts are comprised of two sub-accounts — one that holds Canadian funds, and the other for holding U.S. funds.

Impressively, this web-based trading platform has almost all the features found in IQ Edge, its bigger brother in this family. Notable differences include the lack of multiple workspaces, heat maps, and surprisingly, the inability to change color themes — you’re stuck with that white look, unlike IQ Edge which has selectable themes. So, if you feel you may need one or more of these missing features then I’d recommend you use their desktop-based IQ Edge platform instead. This free platform is a surprisingly very powerful, very capable mobile trading platform. Operating anywhere at any time, this app is available for iOS and Android devices from their respective app stores. The visual layout and organization of features is very well thought out — I can navigate and use the app with intuitive ease.

It is as expensive as big-bank owned brokerages plus you get worst trading apps. Virtual Brokers recently lowered their fees a lot, they went back to their former fee structure. They can’t compete with app quality so they might as well try to beat the competition with lower fees. We did not experience it ourselves, but according to most online reviews, Qtrade beats Questrade on customer service and market data. I have always been happy with my interactions with Questrade’s support desk (and live chat) but I guess it’s always possible to do better. Affiliate Disclaimer – Even though we receive referral fees from companies mentioned on this website, we try to make our reviews unbiased and backed by our own experience and social proof.

Questrade have a great selection of sophisticated tools to help you evaluate investment ideas, monitor the market and track your investments. I want my trading app to be easy to use, easy to navigate, have a nice and modern user interface and make it fun for me to buy or sell stocks. Many brokerages, especially the big bank-owned brokerages, have incredibly outdated apps. Most investors gravitate to Questrade because of their unbeatable low-cost fees. It is not a brokerage and does not offer a trading app to buy & sell stocks but it could be viewed as a no fee and no minimum account size alternative to opening a brokerage account.

ETF Portfolios

This is all backed by solid customer support who are on hand to assist you as and when needed. The Questrade mobile app allows clients to trade and manage their account whilst on the go. Users can easily place trades in real time with access to your investment details and withdraw or transfer between Questrade accounts. Make trades, research stocks and ETFs, get helpful tips and definitions, all from one easy-to-use investing app.

• And lastly, a special appreciation goes out to the ability to set up a personal identification number (PIN) from your customer profile page.
• It does not have Touch ID for signing and it looks like it’s at least 5 years old.
• It’s not possible to switch between the Account Management and Trading App without re-authenticating.
• Once you find the good login link, you need to choose between live or paper trading, authenticate with a special IB-only app (IBKey) and then you finally get to the trading app.
• Inline search allows you to quickly find a stock within the buy & sell page.
• You can link your bank account from other banks or credit unions (like Desjardins).