Hello. Back in 2001 the Cdn. SEC decided that American online brokerages can't do business in the provinces anymore, leaving us with only Canadian overpriced brokers. E-trade is the cheapest that I can find, charging $10/ trade with a min. account balance of $1000. But all I hear is bad reviews of them. Credential Direct has no minimum deposit, but they charge $25/ trade. IB serves Canadians, but I don't have $2000 to open an account. I'd go with e-trade were it not for their bad rep. Does anyone know of any other options for me? It seems like all the brokers in Canada really suck.
Please don't take offense, if you don't have $2k to trade or better yet lose possibly, do yourself a favor don't trade, just don't. $2k is nothing to win or lose in trading, ask around this forum.
No offense taken. Perhaps you could answer another question for me though. Why is the objective amount of money more important than the education and skill of the individual trader? For me, learning is more important than actually turning a profit. I've been studying TA, and I'd much rather get my feet wet with real money than paper trading. I'm willing to take losses, but not ones I can't afford yet. If $2000 is nothing to you while $500 is a lot to me, what bearing does that have on my education as a trader, when that education is such a subjective thing?
I hate to speak for dandxg, but you're not going to get a lot of education with $500. Commissions will wipe you out alone.
It's not more important. You need to be more specific though. Are you buying a few shares or penny stocks, maybe you can do that with under 2k or buy a few options. It's just you have such limited buying power, your account could be closed in as little as 1-3 days depending on what you do and how many losses you incur or don't. Believe I know a fair amount about TA, but when you put your real $$$ on the line you will respond differently than if it were on paper or simulator. Good luck.
The reason is simple as the way you went to University, you need a minimum amount for tuition fee otherwise you aren't equipped to study efficiently. For the broker, I think IB is the best for Canadian retail trader for two reasons low cost and paper trading since sometimes you might need to test your new strategy.
save your $ and go learn about patience and risk managment playing some online poker. THEN when you have more cash try trading.
I think I've learned all I need to on a general level, since I've been investing in HYIPs and autosurfs for about a year, and have made more money than I lost there (which is quite rare for that industry). I feel like I've mastered that industry and the stock market is the next logical step. I also feel like it's my destiny to be a trader. My initial portfolio will be almost exclusively penny stocks. I'm currently unemployed and have enough money to live on for a few months, so I can devote 16 hours a day to this. I believe that I can compensate the high risk with lots of work. If however I keep losing at it by the Fall, I'll quit and do something else. My idea of "high risk" isn't the amount of money I'll be investing, just the kind of stocks. It's my nature to invest basically as little money as possible as I learn, and increase that amount only when and if such time as I've learned to make it grow. Hence, more profit= more money invested; more loss= less invested. If I'm stuck throwing away $50 here and there until I've convinced myself I'll never learn, so be it. Starting with thousands of dollars isn't a requirement for this strategy. It's like when I bought my first car- I didn't know anything about cars, so I bought one for $500, reasoning that if it turned out to be junk, then I've wasted only $500 instead of $5000. Ameritrade was bought by TD waterhouse, which is a good brokerage with ridiclious rates. I'll probably go with Credential Direct, until I have enough to go with IB. The $25/trade is exorbitant, but like I say it's my nature to want to plan carefully and examine each and every trade in detail in all its triviality.
I suppose the argument I'm making here is one of depth vs. bredth. You can learn much more from studying many stocks than you can from poring over just a few, but I'm not yet convinced that you need to have money in them all to learn as much from them (as opposed to choosing what you think is the best and just investing sporadically).