RIP Tradefreedom!

These guys are charlatans and thieves of the highest degree. My father signed up with these guys after one of their sales reps met my dad in person and offered *very very competitive* exchange rates for US equities in RSP accounts, and same for margin.

After trading lots and lots of options and stocks over 3 years, the service kept getting worse. Our accounts were shrinking. New fees like the data fee and recently the low activity fee were added.

Then suddenly one day I found out how they were gaming us. They would show how much we earned in a trade but you could NEVER see how much Canadian Dollars they ACTUALLY credited to your account. Both my father, me and my mother’s rsp and margin accounts had HUGE spreads.

On some trades I paid over 400 basis points over the exchange rate. I was furious. So they offered to refund us with preferred rate for this last quarter that ended in june, 2010. I got 400$ back. My father got $2200 + $185 in 2 accounts.

Right now another broker is processing my in-kind full transfer. Tradefreedom should be investigated by the government. The sales rep was a total d…che when the push came to shove.

My father slowly is moving things to another broker for margin and has already made quite a few trades very happily with them. You will regret TF once you’ve lost tons of money to their criminal ways of doing business. If this is slander so be it. I got papers to prove it.

(equities)

150+ trades/quarter
$6.99

30+ trades/quarter or $50,000+ assets
$9.99

others
$19.99 + $0.02/share over 1000 shares

They refer to these values numerous times as “low” and “competitive”. Ha ha, I’ll be shopping around thanks. The transfer-out fee alone will be less than the extra I’d have to pay to sell everything off.

On another note, due to the poor customer service I have closed my accounts at TF (although they were very infrequently used). I continue to use and be very happy with DISNAT Direct for my RSP account and IB for my trading account.

I did however somehow miss the news that they were going to start charging the $29/month fee for their crappy software.

I didn’t notice this until I opened a statement in March of 2010. That was the first time that I saw I had been charged $160 so far for this fee.

I emailed them and demanded that they return the money they stole. I got the standard response that I was ‘notified’ last June.

I agree with everyone above that TF should be boycotted completely. I am also in support of a class action suit as this is outright theft and they are not conducting business in good faith.

What prompted me to find this today is that I just noticed I can’t purchase OTC stock on their crappy platform. One more reason to switch.

>I am at a loss as to why you insist on continuing business as usual with TradeFreedom

No – I don’t. As stated in my posting:
“So the biggest issue right now is not whether to use TF or not, but rather – where do I transfer my account to?”

Let’s do the math – closing the account will cost me a $100. Selling my positions will be around $50 may be. Converting the USD to CAD? Who knows, depends on the current rates, will have losses from lost dividends and finally when I find another broker to reacquire the same positions I hold now will cost me several times their trade fees.
All this said I think you’ll agree that transferring my account is a much better alternative not to mention that some brokers are willing to cover the transfer fee should you choose to switch. The problem is that right now I’m kinda stuck with TF – there simply doesn’t appear to be a better place to go. I’m still looking for a better broker and I’m not putting anymore money in my TF account.
Will research TDWaterhouse for sure, but $100 per year maintenance fee seems kinda pricy. After all – is there much difference whether they charge you for inactivity or for software or whatever name they happen to put on it – either way they cut their share out of your pie, most importantly without any risk or additional service on their side. It may appear to some readers that I’m looking for a discount broker that’ll provide the best service in the world for free with all the bells and whistles but all I really need is the most basic service possible – just place an order and forget about it. Is this too much?

Finally let me disagree with you:
>If you see an abusive relationship towards you in a business entity, break all ties immediately. At any cost!
In game theory what you’re doing here is called punishing – you’re exiting at a loss, just to punish the other guy. This however may or may not be your best strategy. And following your best strategy at any given moment in order to maximize your desired payoffs is called being rational. That’s what I’m trying to do, may be not as successfully as I wish. I’m very cautious now, but I think that my biggest losses from my business with TF are already in the past. Until I find a place to transfer my account to I will most likely remain with TF – this is simply my best /least expensive/ strategy right now.

TL, I am at a loss as to why you insist on continuing business as usual with TradeFreedom. Here you have outlined in great, long detail your history and dissatisfaction with them, yet you not only continue to deal with them, but are actually expanding your account with them (to accommodate options).

I first posted here almost a year ago (post #37). I too had an inactive account, as I had changed by behaviour from trading to investing. I began the process of closing my account just about the time they introduced the inactivity fee and it took me several months to finally get my account closed.

Finally, after my account was confirmed as closed, I posted my last here in #49 as follows: “Please take heed and break ties with this company if your experience proves similarly abusive.”

TL, not to put you on the spot, but you say you came from the former communist bloc. Well, truth be told, so did I. To that end, it takes me but a split second to recognise an abusive relationship by an entity and, once I do, I will break ties with that entity as quickly as possible and at any cost. Isn’t that the reason we ended up on the free shores of the west? To be able to have the choice and freedom to do so? I think so.

I am with TDWaterhouse now. I don’t trade much at all. Maybe just a few transactions a year to realign or add to my positions. Because of the low amount of trades, I do pay high fees. Do I mind? Not for one second! The service at TDW is second to none! I’ve actually had that account since before TradeFreedom. TradeFreedom was going to be my infrequent trader account with no inactivity fees, whereas TDW had a fee of $25 per quarter of inactivity. Again, do I mind now? Not for a second. I am making money by investing. If a small percentage of those gains goes towards fees for exemplary service from a top notch bank, so be it. They can have it with my blessings. (If you are a frequent trader with TDW, the fee per trade is $7, by the way)

I’ll say it again, in departing. If you see an abusive relationship towards you in a business entity, break all ties immediately. At any cost! It’s not a personal relationship like a spouse or a family member which you should work on saving. No, it’s a business. There are a thousand and one other businesses waiting with open arms, if one doesn’t value you enough. That’s a fact! It’s the nature of the market, be it retail, or financial, or whichever.

Remember the movie “Rainmaker” with Matt Damon and Danny DeVito? Remember this scene in the courtroom?

“On seven prior occasions we have denied your claim in writing. We now deny it for the eighth and final time. You must be stupid, stupid, stupid. Sincerely…Everett Lufkin, vice-president of claims.”

Remind you of anything?

Do yourself a favour. Don’t try to change the way an abusive company does business. People waste all this energy on trying to change the direction of a great big ship. Get off the ship and go board another ship. If enough people leave this ship, it will soon enough run aground on its own. Either run aground, or rust out from no one using its cabins and services. THAT is how you change a business.

Good health to you and prosperity.
zander

PART ONE – EDGE platform fees
I have an account with TF for 2-3 years now. I’m a very inactive investor – 1 trade/quarter sometimes less. In the beginning everything was fine, since I was trying to use the service as sparingly as possible. /Now I’m trying not to use it at all/ The troubles began when TF got bought out. At the time it so
happened that I was in Europe and missed one of the statements. I did read the warning in the other statement about the new-coming inactivity fee but I was so sure it would not apply to me that I simply ignored it. After all, I had no trades whatsoever in the past 5-6 months since the market collapse – no trades means I didn’t use their software, right? I bought a new computer as well and didn’t even have the EDGE platform installed on it. 3 months later I
decided to install the software considering entering the market again. Then I remembered about the new fee and decided to contact TF first and ask them whether the fee would apply to me, since I was an old customer – my plan was to use the web platform in case they refuse to waive the fee. Imagine my frustration when the guy on the other side told me that not only the fee applies to me, but my account had already been charged for several months. I couldn’t believe my ears. I was also told in a quite impolite manner that they were not obliged in any way to care about my money and that I should be looking after my portfolio. After this I exchanged several emails with their customer service demanding reimbursement. 90% of the time I received standard form replies, same as most of you must have received. /just copy/paste/ basically stating that there will be no reimbursement and that it was entirely my fault. The story doesn’t end here unfortunately. At that point I decided to discontinue my business relationship with TF. I didn’t want to sell my positions though, so I was looking for a different discount broker to transfer my account to – so far I haven’t found any. In the meantime another statement arrived from TF and guess what – my account is being charged an inactivity fee! My blood boiled at that point – I mean this is nothing less than a fraud – since they
already have my money I couldn’t do anything – they’ll simply take whatever they felt belonged to them. I come from an ex communist east europian country, but even there I’d say such thing couldn’t happen. You don’t get charged for something you DO NOT use, it’s the other way around. And Canada was the last place I expected I’d fall victim of such a scam. After contacting them again via email furious about what had happened they agreed to refund my account for the last fee and haven’t deducted any other fees since then. /I ended up loosing ~120 in total/

PART TWO – Password lockouts
I consider myself an advanced computer user – particularly in network security and related issues, for reasons I won’t discuss here. As mentioned above I try to minimize unnecessary logins to the system, partly because of security reasons – the less you use your account the less likely it’ll be compromised. Not according to the IT guys at TF! Apparently if you don’t login to your account for certain period of time that is considered an account abuse and it gets locked, so your password doesn’t work anymore. This thing happened to me several times and no one could explain to my why – everytime I contacted TF to have my password reset they’d blame it on me, claiming that I must have forgotten my password or I wasn’t typing in right. Then I realized that it could be some sort of a system issue on their side, since I don’t believe someone would bother locking my account on a regular basis. Last time I called TF to have my password reset I asked the guy whether it was possible that my account gets locked because of inactivity and he confirmed, explaining that it was built into their software for security reasons, but failed to explain how it benefits the users and even more surprisingly didn’t know what the inactivity period was.
All my questions thereafter were treated as I was a hacker doing some social engineering. Anyway – in a followup email 15 days later they specified that “loging in at least once weakly should prevent your account getting locked”. Now I try to remember to reset my TF cutoff counter once a week to avoid that phone password reset experience.

PART THREE – OPTIONS and account types
Recently I decided to modify my account to include basic options trading. Not that I really need them, but just in case. I was sent a PDF form to fill and mail them back. So I did. I had this feeling that
something would go wrong and I still wouldn’t be allowed to trade options. I was right. I received an email in which they sent me the exact same form yet again, telling me that I had to convert to margin account first in order to enable options trading. Since the form had 2 separate fields for options trading /which I want/ and for margin account /which I don’t want/ I decided to look at the web site and double check the account types. On
http://www.tradefreedom.com/en/tradingprodfees/accounttypes.asp
it says that
“With a cash account, you can trade equities, options and mutual funds. This is the most common type of account and is meant for investors who intend to pay cash for every purchase.”
I think I may have been somehow blacklisted and they simply don’t want to provide this service to me. In the following letter they explained that their
website was incorrect and that they’ll update it, however I cannot trade options with my cash only account. As of today the web page remains still unchanged.

So the biggest issue right now is not whether to use TF or not, but rather – where do I transfer my account to? Each time I find a new canadian discount broker my research takes me to forums such as this one, where people describe such ridiculous experiences /Scottrade stands out/ that I find it hard to believe this is possible in a country like Canada in the 21st century. Having to pay 30+30 per buy/close trade, maintenance fees, taxes on the profits, exchange fees and commissions – looks like they want to keep people out of the market. The 3-4 discount brokers out there available for canadians seem to offer the same terrible service /or lack thereof/ making it an even worse choice. I’d appreciate any solutions from you guys, I think we have a long enough list of problems already.
I was thinking – since I have a European citizenship, should I consider taking my money to a europian online broker?
Any comments/advice on this?

Thanks in advance

PS> 58. cedricloi, 60. Rich11, 61. Jake, 67. Ryan, 70. kevin and others – I agree 100% and willing to assist in anyway possible to recover that EDGE fee ripoff. Any updates on your stories, guys?

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.