Author: RobH

Review: Questrade

RobH3 Comments

I switched online brokers a few months ago to take advantage of Questrade’s bonus offer. The amount of money to switch was sufficiently attractive to tackle the not-insignificant hassle of going through with it1.

Shortly after getting started, I posted a short “unboxing” review, but now that I’ve been using Questrade for a few months I can provide a bit more detail.

It’s probably worth stating that my needs for an online broker are pretty simple and straightforward.

  • I hate paying fees.
  • I’m a buy-and-hold investor: I buy pretty much only what’s on my ETF all-stars list.
  • I hold USD denominated ETFs.
  • I need to easily (and preferably quickly) move money to and from my bank account. My “how I get paid in retirement” scheme necessitates at least monthly money moves.
  • I need a way to cheaply convert USD to CAD. Because I have a fair bit of retirement holdings in USD.
  • I need to be able to easily manage accounts that are held in my spouse’s name
  • I have a bunch of different accounts (RRIFs, Spousal RRIFs, TFSAs, non-registered accounts) and being able to quickly see which is which is highly desirable.
  • I’d like the ability to use a mobile app to do the tasks I need to do.

The TL/DR here is that Questrade meets my needs, but there is certainly a lot of room for improvement, especially in the domain of managing accounts for which you have been granted trading authority.

With that in mind, let’s see how Questrade stacks up.

Platform General Thoughts

I spend about half my time using the web interface2, and half using the mobile app. I have not bothered with the “desktop” app3 because I move from computer to Chromebook too frequently for that to be useful.

Questrade serves two rather different market niches. Investors like me are one, and high-frequency traders are another. There are two different web interfaces for these two audiences, called “My Portal” and “Edge Web”, respectively. I’d be happy to stick with “My Portal” (it’s the prettier interface) but am forced to use Edge Web in order to access accounts in my spouse’s name. The integration of the two is very clunky. Useable, but not pretty.

I’ve experienced a few issues with the web platform, and I don’t seem to be the only one:

  • There are random, reasonably frequent logouts (or partial logouts, where you can’t see any of your accounts)
  • Saving banking information for EFT deposit/withdrawal gets broken pretty frequently

The mobile app is more polished, but only offers a subset of the features of the web interface. Whether this impacts you or not will generally only be discovered when you want to do something and can’t find it in the mobile app. (e.g. currency conversion, accessing accounts your spouse owns). In my experience, lots of development time and effort goes into improving mobile apps, so shortcomings reported here may be gone by the time you try them out.

A quick word about security. Questrade offers the option to do 2FA using an authenticator app4 which I appreciate. Phone discussions with agents also rely on 2FA, but here you need to have access to your mobile phone since they only do SMS.

Fees: Excellent

Questrade charges no fees to buy or sell any stocks or ETFs. This is most excellent. They do charge a $9.95 journaling fee which is required in order to pull off a Norbert’s gambit but since this is not something I do frequently, it’s a small annoyance. It’s still way cheaper than converting USD to CAD using Questrade’s “Exchange” feature.

One quirk that I found annoying is that Questrade charges $25 if you want to donate shares to a charity. Seems a little mean-spirited, and discourages smallish donations, something I had been wanting to do.

And the other quirk is that there is no way to buy HISAs without paying a transaction fee. Of course there are substitute ETFs you can buy instead (e.g. CASH, HISA) but they skim off MER fees. That’s the main reason ZMMK and ICSH are now in my portfolio.

Trading interface: Meh

It works well enough, but it feels like I have to click around a lot to get things done. And there are some annoyances:

  • Good: The web interface allows you to automatically set a limit price equal to either the Bid or the Ask price, which is a nice touch. That’s not offered in the mobile app.
  • Bad: The interface won’t calculate the max number of shares of your chosen ETF you can buy with cash on hand5.
  • Bad: For margin accounts6 the interface favours displaying “buying power” over “cash on hand” which of course encourages margin trades. I suppose this is understandable, but not what I want to see.
  • Meh: for all the web space Questrade dedicates to fractional trading, none of the ETFs I routinely buy and sell are eligible for fractional trading7. This isn’t a big deal to me but figured I’d mention it since Questrade likes to promote this capability so heavily.

CAD/USD support: Good

Questrade’s accounts (e.g. TFSA, RRIF) allow you to hold both CAD and USD assets simultaneously. The interface is very flexible on how your assets are displayed in your accounts:

  • You can show JUST CAD assets by selecting “CAD” (and this hides the USD ones)
  • You can show JUST USD assets by selecting “USD” (and this hides the CAD ones)
  • You can show ALL your assets in CAD or USD by selecting “”combined in CAD” or “combined in USD”

Two things I have not tried

Moving Money: Good

Moving money between accounts and moving money to my USD and CAD bank accounts is easy with EFTs. I use Bill Pay from my bank account for TFSA contributions. All seem to work quite well, as long as the interface doesn’t “forget” your already linked bank account, which is a problem that’s cropped up a few times in the past few months.

Using trading authority: Terrible

Setting up trading authority in Questrade was a royal PITA…forms to fill out and upload, and then special enablement links, secret passwords…very labour-intensive. And then? From the web interface, you are forced to use the Edge Web platform if you want to trade on your spouse’s accounts. This interface hides the carefully crafted nicknames you’ve chosen in the “My Portal” view of things, so this is just barely usable.

You are also not able to move money involving your spouse’s accounts, even if the bank account is jointly held. This isn’t how my former provider (QTrade) handled things, and this feels like a significant downgrade.

If you use Passiv, it’s actually a much better view of you/your spouse’s combined accounts. Passiv Elite is moving behind the paywall of Questrade Plus, so you won’t be able to trade using Passiv unless you pony up for the subscription fee. But the combined view is nice, something you can’t get with Questrade’s own platform.

Forms: Meh

Although most of the forms are now done with (trading authority were the last ones I had to deal with), there are still forms for day to day management. RESP withdrawals for instance require a form. Searching for forms you need is reasonably straightforward but auto-population of form fields that Questrade knows (e.g. like account number, sometimes names/addresses) isn’t a thing. So it’s just busywork.

What’s nice is you can see the status of submitted forms from the web interface (not mobile) and you get prompt notification when forms are processed via email.

One big annoyance with the account setup process is that the automated emails generated by the document workflow do not reference the account number. So if you’re submitting multiple forms for multiple accounts, there’s no way of knowing which one is having a problem unless you log in to the web, and even then you are generally given a one liner description of the problem that may or may not be meaningful to you.

And you cannot submit forms on behalf of your spouse.

Support: Meh

Although I was initially excited about a support feature based on chat, the day to day use of it has been less than stellar. I always feel that the agents staffing chat are less knowledgeable. So now I rely on the phone when I need to talk to somebody.

Questrade Reserve exists if you have a larger balance and trade frequently which gives you access to a “better” support team. Although I don’t qualify since I don’t trade enough, I think I’ve somehow been included in this service. (It might be temporary, part of the transition time as Questrade Plus rolls out. I covered that here).

During their promo it was downright painful, to get a hold of someone, but in “normal” times it’s generally pretty easy to get a hold of someone who can help. Perhaps avoid calling during busy times of the year (promos, RRSP deadline, end of year).

Reporting: Meh

The Questrade built-in reporting is pretty basic, but it’s fine. I don’t really rely on it. The included access to Passiv is a much better tool for visualising your portfolio across multiple accounts. QTrade (my former broker) had much better tools in this domain.

All in all, the money involved with making the switch more than outweighs the new annoyances I have to deal with. I have found the Questrade subreddit a good place to keep tabs on what’s going on at Questrade. Questions? Your thoughts? Let me know at comments@moneyengineer.ca.

  1. As a retired person, I don’t pull in a traditional salary so I look at form-filling for cash as a way to contribute to our household’s net income. ↩︎
  2. Various browsers, various platforms with no real discernible difference in user experience. There are actually TWO web interfaces that are jerry-rigged together — the pretty one (Portal) and the “powerful” one (Edge). ↩︎
  3. AKA “Edge Desktop” per https://www.questrade.com/self-directed-investing/active-trader#advanced-platforms-and-tools ↩︎
  4. Including MS Authenticator, Google Authenticator, Apple’s Passwords ↩︎
  5. Unlike Wealthsimple. ↩︎
  6. And I had to open margin accounts in order to get a joint non-registered account with Questrade. On my to-do list is to see whether I can convert them to non-margin joint accounts or not. ↩︎
  7. Unlike Wealthsimple, if you’re keeping score ↩︎
  8. And it looks like you CANNOT convert between USD and CAD from the mobile app. Annoying. ↩︎

News: Webinar Roundup

RobHLeave a comment

Global X: “Beyond Borders: Why International Equity is Capturing Attention”

This webinar (registration link) takes place on July 28 at 11:30am EDT. I don’t myself make bets on any particular segment of the market, choosing instead to maintain my geographic splits consistent, including international equity (see my latest report on that). But maybe you don’t have any exposure to international Equity at all; this might be worth checking out in that case.

Global X is the newish name of Horizons, a company I’ve been dealing with for a long time thanks to their innovative swap-based ETFs, namely HXT (Canadian Equity), HXS (US Equity) and HXDM (International Equity)1 . They are useful funds to hold in non-registered accounts because they pay no dividends of any kind; this allows you to defer tax until you need the money and sell them2.

Wealthsimple: Five Costly Retirement Spending Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

I listened to the recording of this webinar, and you can too by registering here. Fair warning: this webinar is at least partly a sales pitch for Wealthsimple’s managed portfolios3, and you can expect a follow-up if you do register.

Sales pitch aside, I thought the presenters did a decent job in explaining the common errors associated with

  • Asset mix
    • Getting the asset mix wrong based on your needs. I talk about the concept of asset mix here.
  • Order of withdrawal (RRIF versus TFSA versus non-registered)
    • This was something my fee-based financial advisor helped me with. Even a DIY investor can benefit from a bit of oversight as you make the preparations for retirement.
  • Age to start CPP/OAS
    • Lots of Canadians take the money as soon as they’re eligible (age 60 for CPP, 65 for OAS) but that’s not always the best choice. I used the CPP calculator to figure out what my best option was.
  • Underspending
  • Ignoring Estate and Final Tax costs
    • These can be significant. In the case of my mother’s estate, Final Tax (and not Probate) was the expensive one4. The easiest way to reduce Final Tax is to give away your money while alive.

  1. Full disclosure, I own all three in my non-registered accounts. ↩︎
  2. At which point you will have to pay tax on capital gains, naturally. ↩︎
  3. And although I like and am more than capable of doing a DIY retirement, I need a plan B in the event I lose the capability to do this sort of thing myself. And so I pay attention to service offerings out there. Wealthsimple’s fees seem less onerous so that’s a vote in their favor. I hate fees of all kinds. ↩︎
  4. They would have been horrified at the tax bill and probably would have more aggressively donated their wealth had they known. ↩︎

Mini-Review: Optiml.ca

RobH2 Comments

My fellow DIYing neighbour gave me a heads-up about this made-in-Canada retirement app and so I set up an account an gave it a whirl.

Optiml.ca helps you to “build and customize your financial strategy, stress-test different ‘What-if’ scenarios, or simply confirm you’re on the right track.”

Setting up an account was very easy since it supports integration with Google credentials. And they offer a fully-enabled trial for 14 days without requiring a credit card, which makes things even easier. I chose their most popular plan, the Pro Plan, which is $199 a year1.

The interface is clean and easy to navigate. I was able to get started right away without bothering with the offered tutorials.

I chose to set up the parameters of my current retirement savings manually, but it wasn’t difficult. You could instead choose to link with Wealthica and populate this sort of information automatically. I don’t use Wealthica myself, but perhaps I’ll give that a look in a future post.

Once your data is entered, you can run a “standard” scenario which is what a retirement planner would generate. This is table stakes for any tool, including some of the ones I mention in Tools I Use.

But it looks like Optiml goes much, much further in its analysis. You can ask it to auto-generate scenarios based on historical returns and different inflation rates to see how likely your plan would succeed, and you can choose other objectives, like maximizing spend or maximizing your estate value. You can also ask it to model the three phases of retirement where spending varies as you get older (aka go-go, slow-go, no-go23). You can ask it to play with CPP/OAS start dates, and so on. It seems quite comprehensive and well thought out. And what I really like about it is that it has pre-canned scenarios so you don’t have to think about (and overthink about) each and every input into the model.

And you can save your analysis on the tool itself, which is handy for comparing outcomes and trying different “what if” scenarios.

I encountered what I thought were some bugs in the system, but online support quickly set me straight with prompt, detailed, specific and accurate answers, which is highly unusual in the Canadian financial services space 😉

All this to say, I’m pretty impressed with what I see here. At this point in my retirement, I don’t see the need for it myself4, but for others who are still looking for a tool to help guide retirement spending, this looks like a winner.

  1. Given what this tool can do, this seems a more-than-fair price to me; the cost of a fee-based advisor (who is likely using a similar tool to generate the output) is a lot more than that. ↩︎
  2. This model, according to Google, is attributed to Michael Stein, author of “The Prosperous Retirement” ↩︎
  3. …and while intuitively this is something that makes a lot of sense, it’s the first time I’ve seen it called out so explicitly ↩︎
  4. In other words, I’ve passed the analysis phase and am just trying to enjoy retirement 🙂 ↩︎

HISA Table for July 2025

RobH3 Comments

HISAs, for those in the know, are “High Interest Savings Accounts” and offer a nearly zero risk way to earn some interest on your cash holdings. Read all about them here. “Class F” funds are usually available via your online broker, often bought and sold in the same module as mutual funds, although they are NOT mutual funds.

The table hasn’t changed since May1, but I’m going to start adding HISA-alternative ETFs to the table just for comparison purposes. CASH and HISA are frequently-used Canadian ETFs that buy HISAs exclusively. I instead use ZMMK, which does not invest in HISAs at all, but instead uses very short term bonds to generate income. This is admittedly a bit riskier than the alternatives but as long as it pays me a bit of a premium, I’m ok with that. I did a market overview of cash and cash-like ETFs back in March, if you’re interested.

ProviderFundLinkRate SheetRate
RBCRBF2011, RBF2021, RBF2031, RBF2041RBCLink2.55%
ScotiabankDYN6004, DYN5004, DYN3065, DYN3055, DYN3075ScotiabankLink2.70%
Equitable BankEQB1001, ETR1001Equitable Bankn/a2.55%
TDTDB8151, TDB8156, TDB8158, TDB8160TDn/a2.55%
RenaissanceATL5071Renaissancen/a2.55%
Home TrustHOM101,
HOM201		Home TrustLink2.65%
B2BBTB101B2B Bankn/a2.75%
ManulifeMIP610, MIP810Manulifen/a2.40%
National BankNBC200, NBC6200, NBC8200NBI Altamira CashPerformern/a2.55%
Global XCASHCASH Fact Sheetn/a2.55%2
EvolveHISAHISA Fact Sheetn/a2.46%3
BMOZMMKZMMK Fact Sheetn/a2.88%4
Canadian HISA rates, last updated July 11, 2025

Since I hold a substantial amount of USD-denominated ETFs, I also track US interest rates.

ProviderFundLinkRate SheetRate
RBCRBF2015RBCLink4.15%
ScotiabankDYN6005,
DYN5005		ScotiabankLink4.15%
Equitable BankEQB1101,
ETR1101		Equitable Bankn/a3.80%
TDTDB8153TDn/a4.15%
RenaissanceATL5075Renaissancen/a4.15%
ManulifeMIP611Manulifen/a3.30%
National BankNBC201NBI Altamira CashPerformern/a4.15%
Global XUCSHUCSH Fact Sheetn/a4.07%5
EvolveHISUHISU Fact Sheetn/a4.02%6
iSharesICSHICSH Fact Sheetn/a4.70%7
USA HISA rates, last updated July 11, 2025

UCSH and HISU invest in HISAs exclusively; I instead use ICSH which is a rough equivalent of ZMMK in terms of portfolio makeup. Like ZMMK, I enjoy a slight premium in yield as a reward for taking a bit more risk.

  1. The next possible change to Canadian interest rates will be on July 30. The next possible change to US interest rates will be on July 29 or 30, so next month’s table may have some changes, most likely downward. ↩︎
  2. Calculated by dividing most recent distribution (June 30, 2025) by NAV price and multiplying by 12. What the providers show on their ETF fact sheet seems a bit random. ↩︎
  3. Based on June 26 distribution. ↩︎
  4. Based on June 27 distribution ↩︎
  5. Based on June 30 distribution ↩︎
  6. Based on June 26 distribution. ↩︎
  7. Based on July 1 distribution. The 30 Day SEC Yield as of July 2, 2025 shows 4.73% which is in the right ballpark. The SEC Yield appears to be a US effort to provide the investor with apples-to-apples comparisons of current yield. ↩︎

Happy Retirement, Mr. Carrick

RobH1 Comment

Someone to whom I am greatly indebted is Rob Carrick, a personal finance columnist for the Globe and Mail. His insightful columns helped guide me over the course of many years as a DIY investor.

He recently announced his retirement, and I wanted to take this space to wish him well, and to thank him for his help over the course of his career. You made a difference, sir!

Things he has helped me with, just off the top of my head1:

In the course of writing this article, I stumbled across Rob’s guide to ETFs, a new-to-me resource which looks pretty awesome. And even better, it’s not paywalled: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/files/editorial/ebooks/Guide_to_ETFs_-_The_Globe.pdf

Once again, thanks so much Mr. Carrick, and I wish you a long, healthy and income-stable retirement!

  1. All of these are paywalled articles; you can probably get them online through your local library (the OPL link is here). As a subscriber, I have a few free articles I can share monthly, hit me up if interested. ↩︎