IB vs Questrade

[Fed]

I am a Canadian just starting out in investing. I am mostly interested in buy and hold, including preferred shares. I currently use TD Waterhouse, but am finding the fees rather high for the low volume trades I am starting out with. I have searched the field of discount brokers, and have narrowed my choice to IB and Questrade.

Although IB offers lower prices, I am leaning towards Questrade for a number of reasons. IB seems to have a rather aggressive agreement. I am in the process of reading it, and am finding many issues I don't like. Questrade's agreement seems much more understandable to me. Since Questrade is Canadian, I figure I would likely run into less issues with them over IB.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[k p]

I have both, although my experience is quite limited. If all you will ever do is buy and hold shares, then I see now reason not to go with Questrade. When I opened my account, I believe they were also the only game in town where you could hold US securities in US funds in your TFSA account, but I'm sure by now more brokers have caught on.

I would consider IB to be more geared towards being a serious trading broker. With Questrade, you can only use their platform, and with IB, the options are endless.

I'm not sure what problems you have with the agreements. IB is quite reputable, and given that they have a Canadian branch, you are protected by IIROC (I think this is what its called), so your assets are insured up to 1 million, just like with Questrade. For the longest time I don't think Questrade could even do OCO orders, but once again, for a buy and hold strategy, you probably only need a stop in place.

Anyway, I've had no problems with either, but for your purposes, Questrade certainly seems to fit the bill better.