Tag: hisa

QTrade versus Questrade unboxing

RobH4 Comments

I’m in the middle of my transition from QTrade to Questrade. With 11 different accounts to migrate, most of my time has been spent with their new account setup screens, but I have already taken note of a few differences that I’ve noticed between the two in my first week of using Questrade.

Trading fees on stocks and ETFs

Questrade recently announced that they were eliminating commissions on the buying and selling of all stocks and ETFs. QTrade has a decent list of free to trade ETFs, but obviously Questrade is the winner here.

Personally, I don’t think this will make a huge difference for me since my retirement portfolio is mostly based on QTrade’s “free” list (most notably XGRO and AOA), but it’s not fully in that camp. I’ll save a few bucks over the course of the year thanks to this.

Support

Those of you who read my mini-review of QTrade will know that I don’t consider their support a strong suit1.

I encountered quite a few snags2 along the way with Questrade’s account opening process, and as a result I have spent some time dealing with their support team.

One big difference you see right away is that they seem to rely exclusively on chat, with very clear (if sometimes disheartening3) queue position metrics. I myself am a fan of chat, especially one that makes it very clear where you are in the queue. Compared with QTrade, no contest — I’ll take keeping a window open on a computer I’m using over having to listen to highly compressed and repetitive hold music any day of the week!

A technical quibble I have with Questrade’s chat is that it is inconsistently persistent as you navigate the Questrade screens4. On more than one occasion I had my chat closed accidentally because I navigated to the “wrong” screen. Compared to other support chat platforms I’ve used (Rogers, for one), it’s decidedly feature-light.

The support I eventually got was uneven. I suppose last week may not have been the best week to attempt calling Questrade5, but all the same, sometimes the answers I got made no sense or were just flat out wrong.

US Dollar Account Support

Both companies are strong in this regard, allowing USD holdings in various accounts. Personally, I hold USD-denominated assets in my RRIF and my non-registered accounts. (I also used to hold USD assets in my TFSA, but because of the non-preferred tax treatment of dividends held in TFSAs, I got rid of those a few years ago).

The big difference that’s obvious immediately is while QTrade keeps the USD and CAD accounts separate — different account numbers, different screens to navigate — Questrade combines CAD and USD assets in one account. This has the pleasant side-effect of reducing the total number of accounts I have.

I haven’t investigated (yet) how values of accounts and portfolios are reported in Questrade6. I’m expecting that they will allow you to see your account and portfolio values in either USD or CAD7.

One of the irritants I had with QTrade is that they never, ever showed the USD/CAD exchange rate they were using to display the overall CAD value of the portfolio. It appeared they were using a rate that was consistently 1.5% below the spot rate.

And another irritant I had with QTrade is that I could not get RRIF payments natively in USD, something I was told was possible before I opened the RRIF in the first place8. Questrade claims they allow this on their public website, so I’m hopeful. More to come at the end of this month, hopefully.

HISA support

High Interest Savings accounts are an important part of my portfolio holdings since my decumulation strategy depends on them. QTrade has an extensive list of free to trade HISAs (I covered them here) but Questrade doesn’t provide access to this class of product. Instead I have to use ETFs. But since all ETFs are free to trade on Questrade, this shouldn’t really make a big deal of difference. In some ways, it’s better because QTrade restricted HISA purchases to a minimum of $1000, whereas most of the cash-oriented ETFs have an entry price of either $50 or $100 per unit.

I find it difficult to get answers to super-specific questions about various platforms, so if you have questions about any of the platforms I use/ have used (namely, BMO Investorline, Interactive Brokers, Wealthsimple, QTrade and Questrade), then feel free to ask away at comments@moneyengineer.ca.

  1. For an example of coherent and attentive customer support, you’d have to look at Wealthsimple ↩︎
  2. Their website appeared to be getting crushed at times…weird sporadic and non-repeatable error messages ↩︎
  3. Last week on one of my calls, I started at position 370 or so. That was a 90 minute wait. But at least I could write blogs while I waited, something that is really irritating to do when you have to listen to hold music. ↩︎
  4. Possibly browser-related, but c’mon, it’s 2025 and I was using OSX Safari! ↩︎
  5. RRSP season, and their generous promo ending… ↩︎
  6. I have accounts, but until the in-kind asset transfer completes, I have no assets. ↩︎
  7. Taking a peek at the mobile app while I write this, I see options for account balances to be reported as “Combined in CAD”, “Combined in USD”, “CAD” and “USD” so it appears my expectations will be met. ↩︎
  8. After two months (!) of back and forth with QTrade, I was told — last week — that this is possible using the exact same method I unsuccessfully attempted in January. ↩︎

ETFs for parking your money safely

RobH21 Comments

Since my new DIY broker (Questrade) does not support the purchase of high interest savings accounts (HISAs), I need to find a free-to-trade alternative. 5% of my retirement portfolio is invested in what is characterized as “cash”, but I expect that money to earn some sort of return with essentially zero risk. (Another 15% of my portfolio is in the bond market, which, as we all learned in the last few years, has its downsides1.)

Questrade (like Wealthsimple) offers free trades of all ETFs. So it makes sense for me to go looking for ETFs that invest in safe havens. Here’s what I turned up for investments in Canadian dollars, based on some Google searches and some reading of similar questions posted in the public domain. Not all of them are what I would call “equivalent” to a HISA.

Fund SymbolFund CompanyWhat it invests inMERCurrent annual yield2Commentary
CASHGlobal X“high-interest deposit accounts with one or more Canadian chartered banks”0.11%2.68%This invests in the HISAs I currently invest in
CBILGlobal X“short-term Government of Canada T-Bills”0.11%2.88%Not a HISA but a safe investment
HISAEvolve“high-interest deposit accounts”0.15%2.71%Equivalent to CASH but with a higher MER
MCADEvolve“Canadian dollar high-quality short term debt securities (with a term to maturity of 365 days or less)”0.20%3.17%Very short term bond fund. 18% of holdings have due dates of less than 30 days
ZMMKBMO“high-quality money market instruments issued by governments and corporations in Canada, including treasury bills, bankers’ acceptances, and commercial paper. 0.13%3.6%Not a HISA but a very short term bond fund3. 31% of holdings have due dates of less than 30 days.
CAD ETF Candidates for investing Canadian dollars

Based on this quick analysis, ZMMK looks pretty attractive — a lot of very short term (and hence safer) debt as compared to MCAD, excellent returns. It is clearly a riskier investment than something like CASH or HISA. Between CASH and HISA I lean to smaller MERs every time, so CASH wins. CBIL might be a sort of happy middle ground…a T-Bill ought to be as good as a bank. All of these ETFs have a pretty stable NAV, either $50 or $100 per unit, so there should be little to worry about in terms of capital gains.

Since I hold a lot of USD, (not convinced this is a good idea), I need to do the same exercise for USD safe havens.

Fund SymbolFund CompanyWhat it invests inMERCurrent Annual Yield4Commentary
HISUEvolve“primarily in high interest US dollar deposit accounts”0.11%4.05%This invests in the HISAs I currently invest in
HSUVGlobal X“primarily in high interest U.S. dollar deposit accounts with Canadian banks…not currently expected to make any regular distributions”0.2%n/aGlobal X “corporate class” ETFs convert interest payments into capital gains. This sort of ETF makes sense in a non-registered account to minimize taxes.
ICSHBlackRock“broad range of short term U.S. dollar-denominated investment-grade fixed- and floating-rate debt securities and money market instruments”0.08%4.31%Not HISA but 46% is invested in debt with less than 30 days maturity
MUSDEvolve“primarily in U.S. dollar-denominated high-quality short term debt securities (with a term to maturity of 365 days or less).”0.20%3.49%Similar in strategy to ICSH, but only 20% in debt with 30 days maturity and only 40 holdings.
UCSHGlobal X“primarily invests in high-interest U.S. dollar deposit accounts, which provide a higher interest rate than a traditional USD savings account.”0.16%4.08%HISA-like, based on term deposits
USD ETF Candidates for investing US dollars

ICSH is the clear winner in terms of return, but, like ZMMK, a little riskier than a simple bank account. It has a nice broad portfolio (363 individual holdings) which makes it feel safer. HISU looks like the straight-up HISA replacement.

What ETFs do you use to park your cash? Let me know at comments@moneyengineer.ca.

  1. Excellent graphic of historical returns available at https://themeasureofaplan.com/investment-returns-by-asset-class/ ↩︎
  2. Take the latest monthly distribution, divide by the unit price, multiply by 12. If BoC holds their interest rates steady for the year, you could expect to achieve this rate for the next year. As of March 3, 2025. ↩︎
  3. “Commerical paper” refers to very short term debts, 30 days average maturity. Like a credit card debt, maybe. ↩︎
  4. US based funds like this one report a “30 day SEC yield”, it represents “interest earned after deducting the fund’s expenses during the most recent 30-day period by the average investor in the fund”. ↩︎

Earn money with your cash: The HISA table February 2025

RobH10 Comments

Summary: High Interest Savings Accounts (HISAs) are a way for cash to earn half-decent, risk-free interest. These “Series F” HISAs are likely available through your online broker, but you may have to ask how to get at them, exactly.

The high interest savings account (HISA1) is a different animal than the bank accounts offered by the likes of Simplii, Tangerine, EQ, or Wealthsimple2. The bank accounts are more intended for very short term savings for day to day use. They frequently offer attractive promotional rates for new clients. And while these are all good ways to earn a few extra bucks on cash in your account, it’s not the focus here.

The HISAs I’m talking about are usually only offered via a broker, and many of the DIY brokers3 allow you to purchase the so-called “Series F” version of these, which do not have any hidden trailer fees. They are “special” bank accounts insured by CDIC4 that pay rates that are tied to the overnight rates. When those change, expect the HISA rates to follow suit.

There was a mini-explosion in ETFs that invested in HISAs: CASH and HISA are two examples5. I never bothered with these since they weren’t free to trade on QTrade and trading costs would be a significant drag on the ROI.

Part of my investment philosophy is to have 5% of my overall holdings in cash (as for the rest, it’s 15% in bonds, 80% in Equity). And so I’m quite motivated to have some sort of real return6 from my cash position since it is a measurable part of my net worth.

So I do pay attention to the ups and downs of the HISA rates. And I figured I’d share them with you:

Current HISA rates for HISAs available via QTrade

There’s also a Google Sheets version with a bit more detail (source links) if you prefer.

Hopefully most of the fields are self-explanatory. The “fund” column shows the identifier you would need to use to actually trade the HISA on your trading platform. How to access it will vary by provider. QTrade hides their HISAs in the “Mutual Fund” tab which is incorrect; these are not mutual funds, but are often modeled that way in the DIY platforms.

For Canadian Dollar HISAs, Scotiabank7 has been usurped! They have long been the highest-paying provider but the title now falls to B2B bank: https://b2bbank.com/advisor-broker-rates/banking-rates.

For those of you who hold US cash in your brokerage accounts, you can benefit from the much higher US interest rates8, and you have multiple choices since multiple providers are paying the same rate.

Before taking the leap and trading in HISAs, I was surprised by how they were handled on QTrade. There were a few differences possibly specific to QTrade, but pay attention to how your provider handles HISA trades:

  • QTrade considers holdings in HISAs part of your cash position for the purposes of buying stocks and ETFs9. If you successfully complete a trade that exceeds your ACTUAL cash position (i.e. cash NOT in the HISA) you will also have to sell the correct amount of your HISA to get rid of the negative cash balance in your account and avoid interest fees
  • HISA trades are not tracked in the “orders” tab of QTrade10 so be careful that you don’t inadvertently trade the same thing twice
  • QTrade limits all HISA purchases to $1000 minimum; there are no restrictions on sales, and there are no fees for either buying or selling HISAs.

Does your DIY broker give you access to other funds? Let me know about them at comments@moneyengineer.ca!

  1. An aside about the image chosen for this post…I pronounce the acronym HISA….and it’s on a TABLE, get it? ↩︎
  2. Looking at these websites, I may have to consider breaking up with CIBC for my day to day banking… ↩︎
  3. QTrade and iTrade definitely allow you to purchase these. Wealthsimple and BMO Investorline do not. Wealthsimple as a matter of course offers pretty competitive rates for any cash floating around in your account, especially if you have over $500k with them. BMO Investorline has high interest savings too, but you access to their product only (BMT104). ↩︎
  4. My personal bias is that I don’t much pay attention to CDIC-insured or not. I figure if major Canadian banks start failing, I had better make like Survivorman, because no insurance is going to save me. Perhaps that’s naive. ↩︎
  5. Great names for both, by the way ↩︎
  6. That’s return above the current inflation rate. Hiding money under a pillow would typically earn a negative real return, equal in magnitude to the current inflation rate. ↩︎
  7. All my cash holdings are in DYN6004 or DYN6005. ↩︎
  8. US Fed has not been as aggressive in cutting interest rates as compared to Bank of Canada. ↩︎
  9. Since I don’t have a margin account, if I try to buy something I don’t have the money for, I’m normally strongly discouraged from doing so with a clear warning. ↩︎
  10. BMO Investorline is the king of confusing handling of cash positions in your account. ↩︎