Questrade now offers forex trading. Also, they will now be charging a fee to exchange currencies, something that Penson (their clearing agent) did for virtually nothing. Rate seems to be about 1.5%, so very close to what my bank used to gouge me for. This is a Canadian broker. Those Canadian QT customers who trade US markets are now forced to keep their money in a depreciating (relative to the Canadian dollars) currency, or, if they want their account kept in CAD, they have to pay the exchange rate after US trades. This would seem to hit moderately active traders, who may want to 'rest' their account periodically, hardest, since they likely will not want to leave their accounts in US dollars right now. IMO this is a really dirty way to bleed their customers.
Their new commission rates are pretty nice though, $5/trade for 500 shares is pretty darn good for a Canadian brokerage... I'm personally just happy to finally start seeing commissions come down in Canada, after years of $30/trade being charged by all the major brokerages.
Maybe so, but that $375 charge to move your 25k account from USD to CAD, and the same to go back, is going to start hurting pretty quickly. Anyway, isn't that what IB has always charged? QT was really only cheaper if you tend to do cheaper stocks and more shares per trade. Of course, if you bite the bullet, and you decide to keep your money in USD (probably lose less doing that than converting repeatedly), if you decide to liquidate your account, you'll be paying that anyway at least once to get your money out. I'll just start praying for the US dollar, I guess...and when the time is right, move on over to IB. Last I saw, they don't do this to their customers.