Now that there is no more limitation to buy foreign stocks in a Canadian RSP account, you would want to load most of your RSP account with US stocks. However, most brokers charge a 1~2% currency conversion spread every time you buy or sell, which makes it very difficult if possible to buy US stocks. And most of the time they do not tell you until you learned it yourself after losing a lot of money that way. Can any one recommend a broker that charge much less?
Good luck. Not likely.... Questrade is still your best bet due to low trade fees. You'll get hit with the exchange fees anyway. I traded shitloads of options this year and generated many many generous dollors of commissions for my broker. you don't even want to know how much. Unfortunately, canadian rules say the rrsp has to be denominated in CDN funds, but still can trade us instruments.
Actually, foreign cash CAN now be held in an RRSP account, only no Canadian brokers has the system to allow that.
I think it is because no broker wants to give up the easy money. For a 10K transaction, the spread would be around 150, which is much larger than the commission.