Maumaj: I now use Disnat only for my RSP account with a small Margin account for active trading to keep my $5 trade pricing. Disnat includes free access to STOCKSCORES education and tools which is a key reason why I will keep an account with them… the handful of times that I needed customer service they have been very easy to deal with and I received immediate answers. When I was doing my active trading with Disnat, I was using Thinkorswim for all of my charting as this is lacking with the Nexatech platforms. The Thinkorswim platform will be available through TD Waterhouse shortly (within a few months) as a result of the TD Ameritrade purchase of TOS a while back. This should allow Canadians to hold CDN $ accounts with TOS as currently a Canadian can only hold US $ with TOS.

In regards to pricing for the active trader, InteractiveBrokers can’t be beat (for Canadians) with their low price per share trading. However, if you trade large volume per trade (2000 share and up) then you should look else where as their pricing gets more expensive than nearly everyone else in Canada. If you are an active trader and consistently trade 2000 share per trade or more than TD is actually the cheapest at $7 per trade. Disnat is only cheaper if you trade only US shares and less than 1000 shares per trade.

Ninjatrader is a good little piece of software for the price ($1000 lifetime lisence or free for charting) although not everything works with IB’s data. Of the issues I am having so far, IB Level 2 data does not show all the ECN’s at each price level in the NinjaTrader API which is a big problem for how I trade. For the moment, I am using NT’s free lisence and using IB’s level 2 window with IB’s booktrader to actually place my trades. As I really would prefer to place my trades directly on the NT platform, I will likely use eSignal for data with NT and IB.

Hope there is some useful info here.

Disnat sounds good as long as you keep active. It looks like it is same kind of platform I am familiar with from TF. I could not confirm cost of live feed but that is easy to check with one phone call.

Finally somebody indicated existence of Mac platform!! I am just not sure how can you use platform from Thinkorswim with Disnat?? How that works?

I am also hooked into gas trades, HNU.TO and HND.TO. Now I am in big minus sitting in wrong side of trade with HNU.TO. Is there place with more discussions about those two ETFs?

Zack

At Disnat the first 25 trades are free then they will start you at $5 a trade. You keep that rate if you trade a minimum of 10 trades a month. Free real time data feed with those 10 trades with the web based platform. You can download it for a free trial period. Very basic but you at least have real time data, essential to time your entry and exit with limit price orders. I never trade market orders since I don’t appreciate paying a premium when I buy and being robbed when I sell, which happened the few times I tried that. If you trade more often, you can use one of their two other better performing platforms. To get free data feeds with platform Xtra you will need more than 31 trades a month and for the Plus platform 41/month. No Mac versions though.

If you don’t maintain those 10 trades they will charge you $20 a trade the following month until you do at least 10 in a calendar month. It would be cheaper to churn out a few trades at $5 (10 X 5 = $50) rather than have to pay 10 @ $20 = $200. Another way of looking at it would be to say it will cost you $50/month in trading fees which is a lot better than what I was paying at Scotia at the beginning ($30 X 10 = $300).

You can get a free platform from Think or Swim, available for download on their web site. Also have a version for Mac. Excellent charting platform. Real time data on the charts for free. The Watchlist prices are delayed 20 minutes. Only US products though but that’s alright since you can most always find a surogate product to do your charts. I use Natural Gas Futures (/NG) when I want to trade GAS.TO or HNU.TO. I can use EWC when I want to chart TSE.TO. /YG for Gold, WTIC for oil, AUY for YRI.TO, etc….

I want Ninja and will eventually open a US$ account with Interactive Brokers since their data feed can be used with Ninja. Ninja is one of the few platforms that offers DeMark indicators and D-Wave charting which I find essential in my trading. TOS has a poor version of DeMark which is better than nothing till I get Ninja. The best DeMark charting is with Bloomberg but that will cost you close to $2,000/month so forget that unless you are an institutional trader.

Check out http://trading-to-win.blogspot.com for a free blog with incredible traders and great learning tools and educational products. No other blog (and I’ve tried dozens) can compare to this group of genuinely decent people. Say that Maumaj sent you. You can lurk at first but I encourage you to post and let them know you are there. They will welcome you with open arms. This is a group of American traders (from all over: New York, mid-west, west coast, Hawai, etc…) but we are at least half a dozen Canadians, a few British, a few Australians and one in Shanghai to my knowledge. There is even a small group of Forex traders who are there part of the night as well.

1. Have RRSP accounts (besides regular ones)
2. Low trading fees (7-10 bucks a trade)
3. Good platform with no or low fees for level 2 feed
4. Charting is must
5. No low activity fees
6. Low exchange fees
7. Correct accounting

Most of above is clear enough. Is there a such brokerage or what I am asking is science fiction? I want to switch but it must be to sure better thing not another crap like TF.

I must say that Edge is only platform I ever used and I got used of it. It is Nexus or something like that and TD and others are using it as well under other names. I like live chart and it is good enough for me.

Whole this list of posts makes me think that similar thing to cell phone market should happen here. Some fresh, no frills new broker, something like Virgin in cell phone world with no strings attached could sweep the market and people would sign up in masses, I think. It should not be impossible to create company like that.

I read a bit about OptionsExpress and they are rather expensive @ $14. They only seem to have a web based platform and the real time data only seems to apply to quotes. I’ve sent an email asking about that and will post once I get an answer from them.

I follow a blog in the US, Trading-to-Win which I find most knowledgeable. It would be nice to have such a blog in Canada. It’s a collection of traders who like to help each other out using different techniques of technical analysis. Lots of trading ideas but of course, all US based. It’s still possible to use some of the ideas with canadian ETFs. If anyone knows of a similar canadian group or would like to participate in a canadian version, let it be known that I am interested.

I use basic technical analysis indicators but especially appreciate Tom Demark’s sequential indicators. Others are Elliot Wave types or use their own proprietary indicators that they freely share with others. The group is quite large and hundreds of posts are done everyday. Some trade stocks, others ETFs, others options, others Forex, others commodities, etc…. Something for everyone. I share an interest in Natural Gas with a trader in Hawai. Another trader is in Asia, I believe one is in Great Britain and there are half a dozen canadians.

I have been looking for a decent broker for months now. Could this be it?

Please give me feedback if you have experience with them. Thanks.

I’ve got the ThinkorSwim (TOS) software with real time data but can’t transfer to TDAmeritrade because they only accepts US$ accounts, no RRSP, just like IB.

Also TOS only has data on US equities so I use Stockcharts for canadian equities. Way too many programs working at the same time. I would surely like to simplify my life with one supplier.

Canada is really archaic compared to the USA, Britain, Europe and Asia. Regulators seem more interested in protecting their fat bank clients than helping the citizens and opening the market to real competition.

Does anyone know of a data feed supplier in Canada that can be linked to Ninja Trader software?

Also has anyone had any experience with Disnat brokerage?

Thanks for the feedback on Trade Freedom. I will avoid them for sure.

I’m considering QT for trading, but what data is included free? Trade Freedom web software is worse than a Geocities homepage from 1994. What companies offer atleast streaming Level 1 + charts CDN/US stocks on a free platform?? On less than 100k in assets as well otherwise I know TD is the place to go. I also need a place with dual currency accounts stay away from exchange fees.

I will now be closing my account.

********** WARNING to every tradefreedom account holder. **********

In the November account statement there is a notice hidden at the end about another new fee they just created to screw people over. Basically if you have less than $10,000 in your account and don’t have a registered account you will be charged a $100 new annual fee that they just invented. Go check out your November statement for the details. They will be charging the fee in January.

Suggestion: Close your account immediately to avoid being charged the fee.

Kevin:

I suggest you move to Questrade for the following reasons:

-They don’t change their fee structure every month to screw you over
-They have a low commission fee going from 4.95 to 9.95 per trade
-They are registered with the BBB, Tradefreedom is not. So that if something goes wrong they will be more willing to make you happy to not affect their status at the BBB
-You can make withdrawals on their web site, while with tradefreedom you have to call
- You can exchange currencies on their web site, while with tradefreedom you have to call
- You get 30 free trades for the first month with their current promotion
- They pay your transfer out if you have more than $25,000 in your account

It has been three months and I still check my account on a weekly basis, just in case. Yes, I can still log into my account, even though it was reportedly closed. I will keep checking the account for as long as I can, because I simply do not trust this company (TradeFreedom) for one second. They have proved to be arrogantly unscrupulous in their actions, as has been witnessed by everyone’s dealings with them here.

Please take heed and break ties with this company if your experience proves similarly abusive.

I called to complain about this fee and they told me on the phone that they can charge me whatever they want whenever they want, as long as they mail me a letter ahead of time. The problem is that their letters are in code. They make the information as misleading as possible. I rarely know if it even applies to my account. But, then again, they also don’t even use $ signs on their correspondence, so perhaps my $10,000 investment is actually only worth 10,000 “it’s not our problems”.

It seems like overall, this company’s business plan is to maximize profits by deceiving customers. Every correspondence I’ve had with TradeFreedom has demonstrated poor customer service and no assistance whatsoever. They always blame customers for everything. It’s probably my fault that they don’t use $ signs on their statements. Sorry.

Anyway, when they refused to refund me the $100 that they stole from my account, I told them that I plan on selling all of my shares and closing my account. They said “go right ahead”. So I did. Now I just need to wait for them to actually close it. It could take a few business days, or perhaps they’ll wait for another quarter so they can charge me an inactivity fee again.

Overall advice: Stay as far away from TradeFreedom as you possibly can!!!