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An online brokerage for hands-on investors, a robo-advisor for done-for-you investing, mortgages—and low fees all around. Questrade is popular with newbie and seasoned investors alike. But is it right for you?
For over 20 years, Questrade has provided Canadian investors with its attractive fees on a full range of assets—including stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, initial public offerings (IPOs), bonds, and even gold and silver. If you’re shopping around for a discount brokerage, you’ve likely come across Questrade, especially since it’s among the most popular online brokerages, and competes with Wealthsimple.
Questrade has a few different offerings aimed at different types of investors in Canada. Questwealth Portfolios—its robo-advisor—caters to first-time investors, those with limited experience or those who simply don’t want to actively manage their investments. The brokerage service is meant for do-it-yourself (DIY) investors and traders, and it is best suited to those with more investing knowledge and confidence. Among its latest offerings, Questrade also offers mortgages—making its inroad into another sector of the financial services landscape. Whatever the reason, if you’re not yet familiar with this financial services provider, here’s what you need to know to decide whether it’s the right fit for you.
In 1999, at the dawn of online stock trading, entrepreneur Edward Kholodenko co-founded Questrade with three partners. Based in Toronto, their aim was, to offer DIY investors a low-cost alternative to Canada’s large banks and brokerages. Weathering the dot-com crash that soon followed, Questrade emerged to become the country’s fastest growing online brokerage.
In 2014, the platform entered the robo-advisor market by adding pre-fab portfolios of low-fee investments to its product line—for those who lack the knowledge or inclination to go the self-directed route. Today, Kholodenko (who immigrated to Canada from the Ukraine with his family when he was five) still heads up the company, which has $30 billion in assets under administration, sees about 250,000 new accounts opened each year.
Because Questrade has offerings for self-directed investors as well as hands-off investors who prefer to leave those decisions to a team of experts, it is popular with newbie and seasoned investors alike. The common thread among clients is cost-consciousness, as Questrade’s investment fees are among the lowest in Canada. Its new app—Questrade Edge—is aimed at attracting active traders with a thirst for lots of data, advanced customization and real-time research at their fingertips.
Questrade’s user-friendly trading platforms allow DIY investors to open almost any type of investment account online:
Once you have at least $1,000 in an account, you can start buying, selling and trading investments. For the FHSA, the minimum amount required to fund and activate your account is just $250. Questrade offers trading in stocks, bonds, all North American exchange-traded funds (ETFs), mutual funds (including low-cost Series F funds), guaranteed income certificates (GICs), options, IPOs, and alternative assets, such as precious metals, FX (foreign currency) and CFDs (contract for differences).
If DIYing is not your thing, Questrade’s low-cost robo-advisor, Questwealth Portfolios, might be of interest. After opening your account and funding it with the required $1,000 minimum, instead of choosing your own investments, you’ll be asked a series of questions to determine your risk tolerance, investment goals and overall approach to money. Based on your answers, Questwealth’s algorithm will choose a portfolio for you—aggressive, growth, balanced, income or conservative. Each portfolio is composed of a diversified mix of low-cost ETFs. If you prefer socially responsible investing (SRI), you can get SRI versions of the Questwealth Portfolios. The SRI portfolios hold securities classified as environmentally and socially responsible, including having a positive record regarding human rights and corruption.
The difference between each of portfolios is the asset allocation—the ratio between higher-risk investments such as Canadian, U.S. and international equity ETFs, and lower-risk fixed-income ETFs, which may hold bonds and GICs. An aggressive portfolio would be overweight with riskier investments (which also offer the possibility of greater returns in the long run), while a conservative one would include a higher percentage of lower-risk investments.
What you will pay in Questrade fees depend on the service or product you choose—DIY or pre-fab Questwealth Portfolios—as well as the specific investments that you choose; for example stocks, mutual funds, ETFs and/or options. Regardless of what you go buy, there is no cost to opening or closing an account, and it charges no fees to transfer your account(s) to Questrade from another financial institution. What’s more, Questrade’s commissions and management fees are very competitive—among the lowest in the market, as detailed below:
Traders get access to lower trading fees (known as active trader pricing) on stocks, ETFs and options when they buy a premium data package. More on that below.
As an example, a $50,000 managed portfolio would cost you about $185 to $235 in annual fees, if you’re invested in one of the five core Questrade portfolios. Or you’d pay $205 to $300 for the same amount invested in an SRI portfolio.
To help traders make data-driven decisions, Questrade offers self-directed clients with access to a variety of free and paid data packages. Here’s a basic rundown of what you can expect:
Every account holder gets free snap quotes on options, indexes, stocks and ETFs. This means that Canadian traders get to see real-time bid and ask prices for securities listed on the major North American exchanges. When looking up stock or ETF quotes, all traders have free, immediate access to:
On the Questrade Edge platform—the one that’s built for active traders—you can get real-time streaming data for stocks and ETFs in addition to snap quotes. That means you don’t have to keep clicking refresh to get real-time info. It’s all done automatically for you, which is great for traders who want more granular data.
There are three premium packages to choose from:
The advanced streaming packages also give you access to lower trading fees on stocks, ETFs and options. You can also choose a la carte live streaming data add-ons.
It’s worth noting that the paid market data subscriptions are refundable. And, if your total commissions for the month total $48.95 or more, you’ll receive a $19.95 rebate. Similarly, if you are on the pricier plan (which also provides access to “active trader pricing” that could save you on fees) the full $89.95 fee will be waived once you generate commissions of $399.95 or more.
Questrade was named MoneySense’s best online broker for 2023, and part of that reasoning is its ability to help Canadian investors make more informed decisions.
This research tool, available for free under the market research tab on Questrade’s online trading platform, allows you to search for and analyse mutual funds based on several parameters including historical performance, fees and risk factors. If you want to invest in mutual funds, but aren’t sure which one to pick, you can narrow in on the right one using fund filters such as fund class, fund providers, currency, Morningstar category, and others.
Intraday Trader, also available under the market research tab on the platform, uses pattern recognition (technical analysis) to keep an eye on trading opportunities in Canadian and U.S. equities. The algorithm flags trading ideas and events for you based on your chosen technical patterns, signals or stocks. When one of your target trades is triggered, Intraday Trader will send you notifications with annotated charts and a description of what’s happening and why.
This tool provides information on (and lets you buy) the latest IPOs, secondary offerings and structured products.
All Questrade account holders have access to two daily newsletters:
Let’s look at the pros and cons of using Questrade.
Investors looking for a discount brokerage with a full suite of investment products combined with low fees and an entirely online experience would be well-served by Questrade. Whether DIY or done-for-you, Questrade’s products and services cater to novice and experienced investors and traders alike. As a one-stop shop for your investments, it’s tough to beat on price, easy-of-use and product offerings.
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Requested a withdrawal of funds in July 2019. Still waiting. It’s March 6th 2020. Several attempts have bern made to contact. I get passed to a different person evetytime and receive form letter emails. Nobody will act and they ate holding my money. I can’t even access my account – they closed it, and still have my money. This is not a trustworthy organisation.
I am trying to open account from 1 week. funds are transferred but can’t seem to get hold of anyone anywhere :(. Account is still not activated
It’s been over a week, since I signed up and had funds transferred, but my account still ain’t active. They got my money locked in there. These guys are a joke, I don’t understand how they got good reviews from some sites, even had people vouching for them. I should have just trusted my instinct and opened a trading account with my bank
They’ve had significant outages affecting their client’s ability to trade. There’s also unsettling reports of them aggressively pursuing legal action to anyone who attempts to post negative experiences online. I’d stay away from this one if I were you.
At which account level does one have the ability to customize the charting function with their own formulas for indicators?
It is quite concerning to me after I read these posts on April 25, 2020. I am considering moving my 2 TFSA accounts and other trading accounts to Questrade from other big Canadian banks.
I understand that CoronaVirus is having an impact on day to day operations however, these are my retirement funds I am working with.
every time volatility picks up and the market starts selling off and you need to make a transaction the most urgently, their system freezes up and becomes unusable – this has cost me a lot. I do not recommend questrade for this reason, although there are more reasons I wouldn’t recommend it, that is just a main reason
I’ll second Jordan’s comment below about trading speed and reliability. I switched from TD where my market equity and options trades filled instantly. With quest I sold very liquid Apple and Facebook options at market and the trades took several minutes to go through. In the meantime the prices dropped several percent. My trades were very small and well within the bid/ask volume. With TD this type of trade filled instantly.
I’m having an issue funding my account. They money have been taken from account, but I’m not able see in my Questrade account to trade. Almost one moth after, nothing happens. You can’t trust those people
I recently transferred my assets from Qtrade to Questrade because I trade daily and Qtrade was “taking” a whopping 40% off my trades! On the other hand, I have yet to find out any “holes” in Questrade. The numbers seem to add up and I keep MY profits fair and square. I personally recommend Questrade.
The bad comments regarding the speed of execution and the extended period of time required to see and use funds newly transferred are obviously either fakes that might come from competitors or legit comments from people who have made legit mistakes during the transfer of their funds. As for the execution delays, it’s just false information as the speed of execution is on par with the best brokers out there.
I have been using Questrade actively for the last 2 years. Frankly, I have never experienced any issues with my trades. I am suspicious of the comments above and feel they are deliberately negative about the broker.
For me, Questrade is my broker. Their archaic, clunky and slow interface, whereby by the time you have performed all the steps to make a trade, the opportunity is gone. I use Medved and link it to qt as a data backfill. For some reason, they can’t seem to get the trading interface right. If I had known now embarrassingly pitiful the package is, I would have started out with interactive Brokers. Just my 2 c.
I opened an RRSP and non-registered margin account with Questrade in October 2020 and have not experienced any issues related to trading or funding my accounts. I am a DIY investor and find Questrade’s website easy to use. Typically, when I send money from my RBC account to Questrade, the money appears the next day (e.g., sent money on Monday before 4 p.m. and it was available in my Questrade account Tuesday morning). Sending money from Questrade to RBC can take between two and three business days but this may be as much to do with RBC as it Questrade. Overall, I really like Questrade and recommend it to others who want to be DIY investors.
Whoever wrote this article needs to actually open an account and try interacting with Questrade. Your glowing review is not borne out by my experience.
Because of some issues with my current on-line broker, I opened a trading account with Questrade. I received confirmation, and was soon notified I could begin trading. However, a few days later when I wanted to add my wife to the account, Questrade stopped all of MY activity because her verification documentation was not complete. I then tried to contact Questrade several times over three days. On the “chat line” I was always #99 in line. Whenever I telephoned, a very pleasant sounding recording told me that the wait time was over 2 hours. I had planned to move all six of our investment accounts to Questrade. However, this level of customer service(?) is unacceptable, and under certain circumstances could be very costly. I have instructed Questrade, by E-mail, to close my trading account and return my initial deposit. Let’s see how long that takes!!!!
Worst service in the world. Bought some NWARF shares coz it will go up and make a huge profit but unfortunately the company did reverse split and went under corporate actions so its fair to hold shares for few day but questrade is still holding my shares and its been now 1 and half months and they are still holding my shares and not letting me sell. No answer to calls and no reply to emails. One word for this broker “GARBAGE”. Stay away.
Was going to move to Questrade until I saw these comments. Yea, I’ll be sticking with a bank.
Wanted to transfer my account from a pension plan to a Questrade LIRA, 2 days trying to get hold of someone or anyone from Questrade. First day 1 hour 15 minutes, then I gave up and will try my luck the next day, Second day , started calling early in the morning, 2 hours 10 mins and counting …….we value our time, as much as we value our hard earned money to invest using them as our platform, wondering if they are doing their part to improve their system for better customer care? Should I really use them, if at the get go can’t even get hold of them?
Some of these comments are certainly untrue or the user made a legit mistake. I agree that they’re difficult to get a hold of, which is why I use their “call back” feature so my position in queue stays active and they call me when they’re available, it works everytime. I opened my account in Oct 2020 and now have margin, tfsa and questwealth portfolios, and so far I’m satisfied with the company. RBC was charging a flat $9.99 per trade if I recall correctly and so far I’ve been paying less than $6 with Questrade.
I am moving all my investments from the bank to Questrade. I had an urgent problem with my accounts and “hold” times for the bank stretched to more than two hours. I e mailed the bank on Feb 22, and received an answer on May 15. Also, the bank made a mess of T5008 forms, so bad that for the first time in 50 years I had to hire an accountant to do my taxes. I am still waiting for the bank to get back to me about my T5008 forms, even though I spoke to them about it starting on April 27. Big bank brokerages? I cant get further away from them, and hope it’s fast. Oh, when I went with the bank, I started the process in June and it took till September before my accounts were all transferred. Also, they promised $250 if I transferred to them. I am still waiting for the money
I was totally sold on QTrade based on their Commercial Ads. I was very excited to save money by avoiding the fees I’m currently paying but there are just TOO MANY negative comments in this thread.
The negative comments are all well written and paint a clear picture for me. I can’t risk moving my money.
Their low fee claim is a joke. There are plenty of hidden fees that you end up paying and no way whatsoever to track them. Just try to find a fee listing on your account.
I spent about a year with them then decided to liquidate my assets and withdraw the whole amount to my bank account, all Canadian. Somehow their system would only let me withdraw the entire amount LESS CAD20. So there was CAD20 left in the account after the withdrawal. The next week it was magically down to CAD12 and then poof! everything disappeared. As expected customer service (chat and call) was totally inept. The cherry on the sunday: when I got the transfer in my bank account ONE WEEK LATER it was missing CAD5 and my bank confirmed to me it was taken by Questrade. So all in all a supposedly no-fee withdrawal ended up costing CAD25.
BTW their Python API is a joke. You can only get 15-minutes delayed quotes for free and cannot make any transactions. Avoid Questrade at all costs. I switched to Interactive Brokers.
I followed the advice written above and opened a questrade account. It took longer than expected, multiple interactions with customer service, and website errors. The main disadvantage however is that for trading bonds they require phone calls. For me this is an unacceptable con. They explain this is for compliance reasons. None of the other online brokers I have used e.g. Schwab/IB require phone verification. This is unnecessary and time consuming. Please update your review and if you did include this con my apologies for having missed it.
Questrade is a Total Scam, I bought stock at102uSD and Placed a Stop Lost at 104USD and they sold my stock at 102USD, I got ripped of for approximately 22,000CAD, What a disappointment and betrayal.
Stay the F@&$K away!!!!