Canadian Traders

A

Abyss

Just wanted to say hi to everyone here. I'm new and over the last 3 weeks I've looked at all the threads on this forum, which came close to 4 thousand posts. :) This is a great community!

My quick first question would be to fellow canadian traders. Which broker do you use and which quote/news feed do you recommend?

I currently use TD Waterhouse (for swing trading.. not for day trading). I trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange only. For quotes I use quote.com with Medved Quote tracker... no streaming source for news yet but bloomberg.com radio comes in handy sometimes. $29.95 CDN TD Waterhouse comissions are kind of steep and I'm thinking of switching to another broker. I looked at Interactive Brokers Canada and they seem to be what a lot of people would recommend.

The only problem I have is that they don't offer Canadian exchanges so I won' t be able to trade on TSE anymore. If i go with IB I'll have to trade on Nasdaq / Nyse and i am curious whether my chances of getting killed there are higher or not.

If you are trading from Canada, I'd appreciate if you let me know what you think and what setup you have for quotes, news, choice of brokerage firms, and whether you prefer trading on TSE or NASDAQ / NYSE.
 
I use IB, and currently trade Eminis. Used to trade Nasdaq stocks.
I use QCharts for market data (US$89/mo), StockWatchPro for backtesting (US$39/mo) and Briefing for news ($10/mo). For more details you can read my post at
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=13012

Paying $30/trade is a major rip-off, when you can pay only 1c/share with IB. Think about it, you have to make $30 just to break even! Besides, Nasdaq and NYSE are much more liquid than the TSE and the news coverage is far superior. I didn't even consider trading the TSE because of the ridiculous commissions.

Hope this helps.
vorzo
 
Basically ditto what the last poster wrote. It is a lot easier to stay solvent when your break-even / small loss trades don't cost you a small fortune in commissions.
Re: the TSE, I never traded it much, but I'm sure once you go NYSE (another specialist type system) you'll be reluctant to go back.
Best of luck.
 
In the past (until 3 years ago), I have trade the TSE and the CNDX, now I keep it only for my RRSP until the gov. relax the limitation rule. Mainly, I trade NASDAQ with IB, the fill are a far better because the volume is there, you have a more complete information and tools on US market. Until the TSE could give a similar product, I will not comeback on the TSE. No comparaison for a trader.
 
Hi Abyss,
Welcome to ET ! There are lots of crazy cannucks lurking here and there on this board :p

I used to trade with CIBC Investors' Edge, then switch to TD, and now use it only for my RRSP. For 'active' trading, I also use IB, and I know that they don't offer canadian stocks. However, depending on how you trade, if you use technical analysis, it doesn't matter much, be they canadian or US stocks, as long as they move and people buy/sell, you'll always have your signals. Beside, the volume of US stocks is much higher the the canadian ones.
... and if you trade options, forget about canadian option market.

Cheers !!:)
 
You can trade some Canadian stocks in the US Markets. One ETF that comes to mind is EWC but has low volume.
 
Quote from TM_Direct:

check out tradefreedom...they use or will start using Tradestream and they have TSE on their platform
More...

TM Direct,
what is exactly Tradestream?

Regards
NP
 
May i ask why you rather trade Canadian Stocks, rather than the US ones? (i am an active Canadian trader too, but just can't stand the boring Canadian markets)

Is so much more liquid, and ----------> it moves.
 
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