I'm a Canadian looking to travel a bit and may move to Colombia, Brazil or Uruguay I'm not sure yet. As a trader how will I get access to US markets in a cheap and reasonable way? I already have a Questrade account but it is Canadian only. I recently opened an Interactive Brokers account but the trading fees are too high. I paid $27.50 to buy 6000 shares of TNXP yesterday($5500 worth), and another $27.50 to sell today. Such a trade would only cost $10 each way with Questrade, or even less with a discount US broker such as Just2Trade or Sogotrade. After a bit of research Schwab, Fidelity and E-trade come up as good options. But Schwab requires 25k minimum which is a bit too high for me right now. I was hoping to find an interational broker with reasonable fees and minimum balance.
Reasonabel fees!…that sounds like an oxymoron I use Royal for both my CDN and U.S. accounts, and everything seems to be in line. I think you need a minimum $50,000 if you're day trading, but that's it. Where I find brokerages take advantage is the manipulation of the bid ask spread with no oversight. You have to be a big fish in the pond, like Bernie Madoff, to get SEC to do anything. Yea if I sound cranky and senseless, it's boiling hot in Toronto …good luck anyway.
Hmm... I though IB was one of the cheapest ones... Are you sure you weren't routed to a more expensive exchange @trader112255 ?
Yeah unfortunately that min balance is too high for me. Thanks anyway No I mean I am currently trading from within Canada, and am planning in the future to leave. So I'm asking if I will still be able to find a good broker when I live in some other random country. It is... for some things. Here is a rough list of my recent trades from interactive brokers. BUY ADPT quantity: 155 price: $53 commission fee: $1.00 BLIN quantity: 6800 price: $0.82 commission fee: $34.00 GCO quantity: 105 price: $51 commission fee: $1.00 PVCT quantity: 40500 price: $0.127 commission fee: $32.50 SHLO quantity: 785 price: $7.15 commission fee: $3.15 TNXP quantity: 6050 price: $0.90 commission fee: $27.50 As you can see, the smaller priced stocks are ridiculously expensive to buy, and I frequently buy them. At a penny a share I frequently hit the 0.5% of trade balance max value limit with the higher share trades.
To the OP, Keep checking back from time to time on a brokerage called Robinhood. They're not in Canada yet, but they charge no transaction fees. I don't know if they allow one to trade from outside of the country from where the account has been obtained (currently, they are also in China and soon to be in Australia).