Have any traders developed a strategy to open a RRSP account (Cdn) to trade US Stocks with US Commissions (such as .01 or less per share)? For some inscrutable reason IB Can does not have this type of account and Cdn brokers operating from Can charge huge commissions. I suspect someone has found a way around this. Fujiwara
Considering the huge amount of money in RRSP accounts, I would be surprised if Bright didn't offer such an account in their Canadian operations. Check with them. It will take an Amercian to break into this market, Canadian brokerage firms are much too fat. Also, have they passed the law allowing RSPs to go international?
Good Thread. IB please work on getting RRSP accounts up and running. (edit personally I no longer care about my RRSP but for my dad's sake it really matters) TD burn in hell I want my xxxK in commissions back from 2003-2004. ozzy
IB says they have no plans to offer them. Bright would never offer them, not the same business at all. From the checking I've done, Questrade seemed like the best deal. Commissions are per ticket, not per share, but comparable to IB Canada's rates. Now that there is no limit on foreign content, it makes sense to do my short term swing trades inside a self-directed RSP. The long trades anyway, still can't go short in that kind of account.
I've seen it done. Something like this. Using RSP accounts, you and some friends (not relatives) buy into a small business so that all are at arms length. It has main activity in Canada, but it also owns a sub in the US. The sub is simply a trading acct with a US broker. The Sub makes money which is transferred to the parent. The parent makes money from the sub. It is a long way around to trade US stocks in a RRSP, and is now made obsolete with new foreign content rules. plus its tough to find an eligible business. However, a similar strategy is very logical to avoid taxes outside a RSP, but not so swell for a RSP for other complicated reasons I'm too lazy to explain. Forget the RRSP, from a tax saving point of view, this same set-up is used, and you as an idividual acquire a Canaidan co with a loss, and if you know how to trade, then you can create a profitable US trading sub of the Canadian loser, and shelter Cdn losses against US profit. Done everyday. Net result, tax free earnings. By way of explanation, a RSP is basically a Canadian version of an IRA Hope that made sense. Peter
Another important thing to consider would be your currency conversion costs, since the self-directed RRSP account needs to be denominated in Canadian dollars. This isn't such a huge deal if you are looking to buy and hold for longer timeframes, but good luck trying to profitably daytrade this type of account. It's also probably worth mentioning that I don't think someone should be daytrading their retirement assets (perhaps swing trading would be fine in some cases)...