# Best Brokerage for Trading on the TSX Venture?



## timothius (Jun 7, 2010)

Hello everyone,

I'm just curious as to what you guys think is the best brokerage in terms of fees for trading on the TSXV. A lot of the companies traded on that exchange are worth less than $1.00 per share. Currently, I get charged a *minimum *of 1% on each trade with Qtrade, which can add up to a lot over time, and makes it harder to turn profits on market movement.

I think TradeFreedom might be the best from what I've seen, but I have to call them to see if their fee structure will hold up once they merge with iTrade. 

Thanks!


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## timothius (Jun 7, 2010)

Ok, scratch that... TradeFreedom doesn't accept new clients. They are now iTrade.

In terms of fees, I'm trying to decide between iTrade and Questrade? Anyone have opinions one way or the other?


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## Kirkx (Dec 21, 2009)

Unfortunately Interactive Brokers is completely useless for low priced stocks (high commissions), too bad because their trading platform is absolutely the best.

In that case you are left with Questrade (account minimum is very low, $1000, if I remember well), Virtual Brokers (acc. min. $25,000) or Scotia iTrade (acc. min. $50,000 to get decent commissions). You can also check Disnat or TD Waterhouse. All those brokers offer AxisPro trading platform (sometimes marketed under different nicknames), once you try the real direct access platform you will never come back to trading from browser web page.

TradeFreedom is in the process of merging with Scotia iTrade.


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## timothius (Jun 7, 2010)

After several lengthy talks with Questrade, there may be additional exchange and ECN fees that get charged when trading on Canadian equities. These fees can range from .0009/share to .0037/share and when you are buying or selling stock.

They said these fees get charged if you place (1 a Market order, (2 an order that gets filled within the first 5 minutes of trading (including overnight orders), or if you place a limit order that is either higher than is being asked, or lower than is being bid (and fills like a market order). Any of these scenarios will tack on huge fees if you are dealing with, say 50K-100K shares at .10-15 cents per share. I eventually decided against going with them. Their web interface isn't the best I've seen either.

Thanks for the info about InteractiveBrokers as well. I was going to look into them, but I think I've decided on my brokerage for the future. (iTrade) I'm hoping to maintain at least 50K in the account which will result in pretty much unconditional $10 trades. (No ECN or Exchanges fees charged on top of that)

Thanks for the help.


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## Kirkx (Dec 21, 2009)

If you are happy trading from the web then there are no ECN fees, I think they only apply if you use direct access platform, in iTrade's case they call it Scotia iTrade Pro. I could never really figure out when those ECN fees are charged. When I was using iTrade's Pro platform there were usually no ECN charges. It all depends on your trading style, what kind of orders you use. The fees will show in the Account section of the platform together with commissions as soon as the order gets filled, so you can see them right away and then you can decide if they are a problem or not.

TD Waterhouse used to offer their AxisPro platform (nicknamed Active Trader) with no ECN fees, I'm not sure if this deal is still in place.


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## Scotia_iTRADE (Jun 15, 2010)

You are a liquidity remover if you hit someone else’s order. 

If you are trying to purchase a stock and you place a market order or a limit order at the offer or higher, you are removing liquidity from the order book. If you are trying to sell a stock and you place a market order, or a limit order at the bid price or lower, you are removing liquidity. A market order to buy/sell is always a liquidity removing order. It should be noted that ECN fees are in place by different market networks and it is best to refer to their fee structures and definitions as well. 

Below, you will find our platform fee structure including Market and ECN fees for all Scotia iTRADE Pro platform users.

Market and ECN fees:[ https://www.scotiaitrade.com/splash/profees.shtml ]

Feel free to send me an e-mail [[email protected]] if you have any questions about ECN charges and I will have our Customer Service team contact you back. Hope this information helps.

Thank you,

-Nabil


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