Frequently Asked Questions About Questrade Commissions

Get answers to some of the common questions about our $0 Commission Pricing

What does $0 commission trading mean for me?

It means that you don’t pay any commission fees when you buy or sell Canadian or U.S. listed stocks or ETFs online with Questrade. You can trade options with no ticket charge and just 99¢/contract. Keep more of your money with you—where it belongs.

There has never been a better time to be a Questrade customer. Click to open an account today. And good news, you can transfer for free¹.

Do I need to do anything to get $0?

Nope! $0 commission trading is the new normal at Questrade. You get it standard.

Is this a limited-time offer?

Great news, this is not a limited time offer! This is the new normal at Questrade. You have access to $0 commission trading with any of your self-directed Questrade accounts.

Which securities are eligible for $0 commission trading?

Canadian and U.S. listed stocks and ETFs are eligible securities for $0 commission trading. The price for options contracts is now 99¢/contract. However, commissions or other fees may apply to other securities such as international (non-U.S.-listed) stocks, bonds, IPOs, GICs, precious metals, etc. For a full list, see here.

If I have more than one account, do the $0 commissions apply to all my accounts?

Yes, $0 pricing is applied to all self-directed accounts, including joint and corporate accounts.

Foreign Exchange (FX) and Contracts for Difference (CFD) trading accounts have no change to their current pricing structure.

How do I make sure I am getting the $0 commissions?

The next time you make a trade, on the order entry screen, you’ll see $0.00 next to commissions. You can also see this on your trade confirmation report.

Will I be charged ECN fees?

For most stocks, options and ETFs, ECN fees will not apply. However, for certain types of trades such as Direct Market Access (DMA) orders and select Over-the-Counter (OTC) securities ECN fees may still apply.

You can learn more about Electronic Communication Networks (ECNs) here.

What other fees may apply?

While there are no commission fees for online trades of Canadian or U.S. listed stocks and ETFs, other fees may still apply like options contract fees, currency conversion fees or interest if you’re borrowing on margin. The price of options contracts is now 99¢/contract. Our fee schedule is available here.

What about options contract pricing?

You can trade options with no ticket charge and just 99¢/contract.

Our base options pricing used to be: $9.95 + $1/contract

Now it’s: $0 + 99¢/contract

A fee schedule is available here.

What happens if I have open orders?

Any eligible existing open orders you have will automatically be executed at our new commission-free price. Any new Canadian or U.S. stock or ETF order you place after February 9 will also be commission-free. For options trading, there is still a small options contract fee of 99¢/contract.

What happens if I have partial open order(s)?

If you have any eligible partial open orders they will automatically be executed commission-free. When the markets open on February 10, any new Canadian or U.S. listed stock or ETF orders that you place online will also be commission-free.

For example: You have an open order for 1,000 shares. If 250 shares were executed before February 9 you would be charged a commission for that portion. If the remaining 750 shares are purchased after February 10, they would be executed commission-free.

Do I need a special account to get $0 commission trading?

All Questrade self-directed accounts are automatically eligible for $0 commission online trading of Canadian and U.S. listed stocks and ETFs.

Are there any minimum deposit or account balance requirements?

Great news! We have no minimum account balance for our Questrade self-directed accounts.

What happens to my trade rebates with my Active Trader Market data pricing?

You no longer need to worry about meeting the minimum volumes to receive our trade rebates with our new commission-free pricing on stocks and ETFs! Now that commissions are $0, enroll in an active trader package, and you’ll automatically take advantage of our low options contract pricing of 75¢.

If I am an authorized trader on someone else’s account, how does this work?

Nothing changes if you are an authorized trader. Zero commission trade pricing will still apply.

Does this offer apply to my Questwealth Portfolios account(s)?

Questwealth Portfolios do not get charged commissions at all! You will still pay your regular management fee of 0.25% or less depending in part on the amount you have invested. To learn more about Questwealth Portfolios, click here.

Don’t have an account with Questrade? Sign up here.

The post Questrade Commission-Free Trading appeared first on Phantasmix.com.

The post Fidelity’s Danoff appeared first on Phantasmix.com.

Click to enlarge

Oh and [[SPY]] has a baddish candle today. I will generously give it another week, then it has to correct (for future reference, closed at $184.91).

The post Stock Market Returns appeared first on Phantasmix.com.

Investors have heard many decry the decade of the 2000s as the “lost decade.” A dollar invested in the S&P 500 on the first trading day of 1999 saw it worth just 65 cents a decade later (3/31/09 is our cutoff point). This “underperformance” is seen by many as a failure of the U.S. economic engine.

If we look at the Top 20 performers of the S&P 500 during that same time period, we see a vastly different story. Instead of a 35% loss during that time, the Top 20 earned an average 426% return in stock price, excluding dividends. What accounted for this differential performance during this “lost decade?”

The rest is kind of TLDR, but if you’re curious, the source:
Lessons from S&P Recession Survivors [PDF]

The post $SPX $SPY $$ A Lost Decade? Not With 426% Return It’s Not appeared first on Phantasmix.com.

From Motley Fool

The post Institutional Stock Ownership appeared first on Phantasmix.com.

Ex-div date is today.
ERX, FAS, BGU, TNA, EDC, DZK, TYH, MWJ

The post Direxion Triple Bull ETFs Dividend Schedule appeared first on Phantasmix.com.

For your lazier readers

Avoiding Black Swans

A very comprehensive study of the Dow Jones Industrials caught my eye recently and I want to share some thoughts and conclusions based on the data in the study. The data I will be referring to is from a study encompassing more than 100 years of daily data on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. (Black Swans and Market Timing: How Not To Generate Alpha, by Javier Estrada, International Graduate School of Management, Barcelona, Spain) The data presented in this study begins on December 31, 1899 and ends on December 31, 2006. In total the study encompasses 29,190 trading days. I have highlighted the data about the worst days because it is usually ignored.

1) A $100 investment at the beginning of 1900 turned into $25,746 by the end 2006, and delivered a mean annual compound return of 5.3%.

2) Missing the best 10 days reduced the terminal wealth by 65% to $9,008, and the mean annual compound return one percentage point to 4.3%. But avoiding the worst 10 days increased the terminal wealth by 206% to $78,781, and the mean annual compound return by more than one percentage point to 6.4%.

3) Missing the best 20 days reduced the terminal wealth by 83.2% to $4,313, and the mean annual compound return to 3.6%. But avoiding the worst 20 days increased the terminal wealth by 531.5% to $162,588, and the mean annual compound return to 7.2%.

4) Missing the best 100 days reduced the terminal wealth by 99.7% to just $83 ($17 less than the initial capital invested), and reduced the mean annual compound return to ?0.2%. But avoiding the worst 100 days increased the terminal wealth by a staggering 43,396.8% to $11,198,734, and more than doubled the mean annual compound return to 11.5%.

The author of this study concludes that these outlier days in either direction (the Black Swans) are so rare that it would be impossible for market timers to capture or avoid them.
I strongly disagree.

First let’s look at what it is we want to do with market timing….

First let’s look at what it is we want to do with market timing. Do we want to capture the positive Black Swans or simply avoid the negative Black Swans? It would seem obvious that we would want to do both but if we had to choose only one course of action it is clear that we can derive the most benefit from avoiding the negative Black Swans so let’s start with that. Let’s see if we can avoid big declines using market timing.

As director of quantitative analytics at SmartStops.net I recently directed a ten-year study of the stocks in the S&P500 Index. The study was intended to measure the various peak-to-valley drawdowns of each of the 500 stocks. Any drawdown of 15% or more was identified and measured. Since this article is focused on big drawdowns (the Black Swans) we will only look at peak-to-valley declines of 60% or more. Here is the data:

1) Of the 500 stocks 267 of them had experienced a drawdown of 60% or more.
2) 175 of them had experienced a drawdown of 70% or more.
3) 105 of them had experienced a drawdown of 80% or more
4) And 51 of them had experienced a drawdown of 90% or more.
5) The average of the largest drawdown of the 500 stocks was 61.67%

Those numbers might seem high at first glance but they are actually understated by quite a bit. The drawdown study ended in May of 2008 and we all know that the market has gone down a great deal since the study so the magnitude of the drawdowns would be even greater if the same study were conducted today. Also, as in any long-term study of a group of stocks, the results are skewed by “survivorship bias”. There were a lot of stocks that might have been in the S&P;500 ten years ago but for one reason or another they are no longer in the current index. Some of those stocks have declined to zero and are not included in the study.

Having looked at the nature of the problem let’s get back to the task at hand. Can market timing help us to avoid these drawdowns? Yes, it definitely can. A logical application of trailing stops would have avoided most of the big declines. Here are the results using the SmartStops trailing exits that are available for free on our web site.

1) Of the 500 stocks only 4 of them had declines of 60% or more.
2) There were no stocks that had declines of 70%, 80% or 90%.
3) The average of the largest drawdown of the 500 stocks was 22.58%

Now I must admit that I think that our SmartStops trailing exits are more sophisticated and effective than most trailing exits because the SmartStops are adjusted daily for trend direction and changes in volatility. However any serious effort at limiting the drawdowns with conventional trailing stops would certainly have had a very positive effect in reducing the magnitude of these declines. As the quoted Black Swan study clearly shows the avoidance of big declines improves performance very significantly. Here is a reminder of how that works:

1) It takes a gain of 150% to recover from a 60% decline.
2) It takes a gain of 333% to recover from a 70% decline.
3) It takes a gain of 500% to recover from an 80% decline.
4) It takes a gain of 900% to recover from a 90% decline.
5) It takes a government bailout to recover from any decline greater than 90%

Skeptics of market timing usually argue that efforts to avoid big down moves will result in missing the biggest up moves. However I have never seen a study that shows any evidence to support that preposterous assumption. If you limit your losses and are willing to enter on strength you will not miss any major up trends. With a little planning and effort you can capture the Black Swans on the up side and avoid the Black Swans on the down side.

Chuck LeBeau is director of quantitative analytics at SmartStops.net and co-author of Computer Analysis of the Futures Markets (McGraw-Hill). For more of Chuck’s commentary, visit http://www.smartstops.net.

//My very brief thoughts are that the original study by Estrada looked over 100 years of data. That would have included the panic of 07, 29, the 70’s, the 87 panic & the 2000 crash along with all of the other bumps along the way. Lebeau’s paper only covered the last decade and only the tech crash of 00 – 02. I’m not sure how significant that is, if at all//

The post Avoiding Black Swans appeared first on Phantasmix.com.

At the 21 Club, a longtime redoubt of corporate chieftains and big names, alcohol sales are up 9 per cent from last year, and businessmen can be seen drinking $14-a-glass cocktails as early as 3pm on a weekday.

If you believe that alcohol is a recession-proof business, take a look at Corby Distilleries (CDL.A on TSX), or [[DEO]] Diageo, the largest multinational beer, wine and spirits company in the world.

[[MO]] Altria (Philip Morris) also goes well with these. Where there’s drinking, there’s smoking.

The post Wall Street Drowns Its Sorrows appeared first on Phantasmix.com.

If you remove the 10 ten biggest one-day moves for the U.S. Stock market over the past 50 years, your returns are cut in half. Half the gains in the stock market are directly due to events that the mathematical models we rely on assume will never happen.

Edited to add (see comments for more info and source):

“…by missing the 10 worst days along with missing the 10 best days increased your terminal worth by 200%. Missing the worst 100 days & 100 best days increased your terminal wealth by an astounding 40,000+%”

The post Here’s Why “Buy and Hold” appeared first on Phantasmix.com.

The list is shocking. Why listen to any “guru’s” investing advice ever again?

http://www.gurufocus.com/score_board.php

Warren Buffett, George Soros, Edward Lampert, John Rogers, Bruce Berkowitz, Michael Prince, Mohnish Pabrai, David Einhorn and more

The post Investing Guru Scoreboard appeared first on Phantasmix.com.