Tag: questrade

Buying US Stocks or ETFs? Save money on US dollar foreign exchange.

RobH5 Comments

I have a lot of US dollar assets in my retirement portfolio. I’m not really convinced it’s a good idea, but it has taught me the ins and outs of USD foreign exchange rates. Here I’m talking about getting access to (or changing from) US funds for the purposes of investing in your brokerage account. Getting access to US funds to buy things is a different1 animal, one that I covered in a previous post.

Here’s a few things I’ve learned.

Google is your friend for real time foreign exchange (FX) rates

“1000 USD in CAD” is a terrific search term to get an instant FX rate. (also: Euro, GBP, THB…). This is as close as you’ll get for the absolute best FX rate and should serve as your target.

For most brokerages, foreign exchange is a profit center

Meaning: They’re making money every time you convert one currency to another, usually on the order of 1.5% a transaction. Some providers seem to go to great lengths to hide what rate they are using on any given transaction. (I’m looking at you, QTrade2).

There are exceptions in the brokerage community, to be sure.

  • Interactive Brokers comes very close to the ideal rate for any sizable transaction3 and is the big winner when it comes to converting currency for investing purposes45
  • Wealthsimple recently introduced a tiered FX rate depending on how much you’re converting6:
    • Under $10k, 1.5%
    • Up to $25k, 1%
    • Up to $100k, 0.5%
    • Over $100k, 0%

The cheapest way to convert at most brokerages is to use Norbert’s Gambit

Norbert’s Gambit, in a nutshell, involves the following steps.

I must say at this point that although the steps are reasonably straightforward, there are usually delays introduced at each step. For example, you probably have to wait a day for the initial trade to settle before making the journaling request. And journaling may not be instantaneous either11.

With no guarantee that any of these are accurate, here are the specific steps to do the Gambit on a number of popular platforms.

  1. For most people. Since I am a CIBC USD savings account client, using Norbert’s Gambit is also a way for me to fund my USD shopping purchases. ↩︎
  2. When attempting to buy a USD ETF from my Canadian account, the only indication I’m about to get fleeced is the warning message “The account funds do not match the market currency. Currency conversion and foreign exchange rates will apply.” No indication of what the exchange rate they are using. ↩︎
  3. Their posted rates are very close to the google ideal, but there is a small (very small) minimum charge of $2 per trade per https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/pricing/commissions-spot-currencies.php ↩︎
  4. It’s not ideal for getting cash access for shopping since they have very long hold periods where you cannot withdraw your money. See https://www.interactivebrokers.com/campus/glossary-terms/withdrawable-cash-subject-to-origination-restriction/ for the details. ↩︎
  5. But that web interface, wow is it ever complicated ↩︎
  6. See https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/legal/fees/trade for the details. You’ll need a Wealthsimple USD account to pull this off, of course, and the only kind of USD account Wealthsimple offers is non-registered. ↩︎
  7. Did this at BMO Investorline since you cannot buy DLR online. Apparently you can buy it if you call in your order. At BMO using RY, I was able to get USD on the same day. ↩︎
  8. HOW to do this will vary considerably depending on who your broker is. Best to Google for specific instructions involving your broker. ↩︎
  9. Possibly for buying and selling the ETF, possibly a fee imposed for journaling, something Questrade is doing starting April 1, 2025. ↩︎
  10. And minus (or plus) any changes in the price of the thing you bought. Depending on your broker, each step in the process may take a day or two. If you do the Gambit often enough, I figure this sort of thing just averages out. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. ↩︎
  11. Per https://www.questrade.com/learning/investment-concepts/dual-listed-securities/journaling-shares it can take five (!) business days. ↩︎

Questrade Bonus Capability: Passiv

RobH5 Comments

**** Update: Per email communication on October 24 2025, as of January 31, 2026, Passiv will not be offered at all by Questrade, as they are planning to launch their own “integrated portfolio monitoring and rebalancing tools”.

**** Update: As of June 1, 2025, Passiv Elite is no longer offered for free for Questrade Clients. It’s now part of a subscription service called Questrade Plus***

As you may have heard, I’m in the middle of a transition between online brokers1. And so I’ve been spending some more time getting to know what Questrade offers to the DIY investor besides free buying and selling of stocks and ETFs.

One thing I looked into lately was Passiv, a service that is offered for free for all Questrade clients.

In brief, Passiv is a 3rd party web application2 that allows you to track your investments from a single screen, no matter if they are found in multiple investment vehicles (e.g. TFSA, RRSP, RRIF) or if they are found across multiple providers (full list of supported brokers is here)3.

What’s more, it also evaluates your portfolio against a model that you define. For example, if you (like me) have an investment portfolio with a target allocation of 5% cash, 15% bonds, 20% Canadian equity, 36% US equity, and 24% international equity, Passiv can assess your current holdings against these targets, and even do the trades to rebalance the portfolio!

Astute readers will note these are a lot of the same benefits I’m a fan of — and one of the big reasons most of my portfolio is invested in all-in-one asset allocation ETFs. (Are these ETFs unfamiliar? You can read about them here.)

I tried to use Passiv to model my own portfolio, but discovered that all-in-one asset allocation ETFs aren’t really supported by the tool4. Once I thought about it some more, it’s clear why — Passiv really markets itself as an ALTERNATIVE to using all-in-ones. Here’s a clear marketing pitch from Passiv that demonstrates its approach: https://passiv.com/feature-posts/model-portfolios-that-cost-less-than-all-in-one-funds-or-robo-advisors.

So to get the full benefit of Passiv, instead of holding XGRO, you would instead hold the constituent components of XGRO, a fund I’ve broken down previously. This would save you some management fees over time. Passiv helpfully does the math to calculate how much here5.

As a certified cheapskate, I’m always interested in saving a bit of money. But there are some downsides I could see in the Passiv approach:

  • You have to actually DO the rebalancing now and then. Not a big deal, but a fund like XGRO does this as part of their offer6.
  • You have to do the rebalancing no matter what. By this I mean that you have to buy when others are selling, and sell when others are buying. You can’t get overly attached to any one segment of your portfolio, because then you start making bad decisions based on “gut instinct”. Humans are notoriously bad at this7.

On the plus side, you will definitely save on management fees, and you could certainly tweak the contents to avoid products you wouldn’t normally buy (e.g. XGRO has some hedged funds, which I don’t like, typically).

An unknown for me is how foreign exchange is handled. That’s always something I consider since a lot of my retirement savings are in USD. Some experiments required 🙂

Anyway, it’s given me something to think about. I’ll have to see how easy it is to use in practice once all my accounts are back in place. Any Passiv users out there? I’m interested in your take — just drop a line to comments@moneyengineer.ca.

  1. And some (not all) of the funds are now showing up in Questrade, about 3 weeks after starting the process. Switching providers is not for the impatient. ↩︎
  2. WARNING: they don’t have an app. But someone named “Pasiv” does, and it looks very similar. ↩︎
  3. Other benefits include tracking of dividends, performance charts, etc. All stuff Questrade is apparently not very good at. ↩︎
  4. One asset class per stock symbol. My home-grown spreadsheet supports dividing symbols by asset class. ↩︎
  5. The calculation doesn’t include Passiv’s fees for the service, which are waived if you are Questrade client. ↩︎
  6. Per BlackRock “XGRO’s portfolio will be monitored relative to the asset class target weights and will be rebalanced back to asset class target weights from time to time at the discretion of BlackRock Canada and/or BTC. Generally, XGRO’s portfolio is not expected to deviate from the asset class target weights by more than one-tenth of the target weight for a given asset class.” [source] ↩︎
  7. If you’re interested in how behavior shapes investing, https://www.looniedoctor.ca/2024/12/13/etf-investor-behavior/ is a very good introduction to the topic. ↩︎

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”. ↩︎

Changing your online broker: a guide

RobH8 Comments

I have succumbed to the offer of free money and am in the process of breaking up with QTrade in favor of Questrade1.

From https://www.questrade.com/about-us/programs-promotions on Feb 28, 2025

I had no illusions about making the switch; I knew it was going to be a bunch of work to get it done. But as a retiree with no other sources of income, I figured I could spare the time2.

Switching DIY brokers, on the face of it, isn’t terribly complicated:

  1. Create a login on the new provider
  2. Open appropriate accounts on the new provider
  3. Fill out transfer forms to move accounts with the former provider to the new provider
  4. Set up ways and means of moving money in/out of your new provider
  5. For RRIFs and TFSAs, make sure the successor/beneficiary information is accurate3.
  6. Wait for step 3 to complete
  7. Resume investing and/or decumulating

Here are the things I needed to complete each of the above tasks as I went through the process of opening ten (yes, 10!) accounts4 on Questrade.

Step 1: Creating the login(s)

You’ll want a unique and strong password to do that, and using a password keeper of some kind is the best way to do that. Most providers also offer (or require) two factor authentication, and they usually require a cell phone number 5that they can text. Do set that up at the same time, this stuff is important to protect as best as you can.

If your spouse is joining in on the fun, you’ll need a second login for that.

Step 2: Opening the accounts

There will be some series of provider-dependent steps you will need to go through to identify what kind of account you want, and who will own it. And in order to do that, you’re going to need to have a full understanding of what kind of accounts are at your old provider — what vehicle (e.g. RRIF, RRSP, TFSA) and what owner (me, my spouse, or joint) ?

The owner(s) of a given account are easy enough to determine if you refer to your (monthly, quarterly, annual) statements: the name of the owner will be right up on top. In the case of a joint account6, both of your names will be visible. I’m not aware of any way to change the ownership of an account in the process of a transfer.

This step will be rather tedious. Lots of repetitive form filling, and depending on the sophistication of your provider (and, I think, your province of residence matters), you may have to print (!) and sign — with a pen — documents. In my case, the amount of printing was minimal at this step because Questrade makes good use of DocuSign. But other providers may make you print/sign/take pictures/upload7 instead.

Step 3: Fill out transfer forms

There is usually some delay — a day or two — between step 2 and step 3 since there’s usually some sort of back-office approval process involved8. This will give you the time to make a list of all the account numbers associated with the existing accounts and their rough market value. You’ll need those for the forms.

For me, this step involved a lot of download/print/sign/take pictures/upload9. So make sure you have a working printer, sufficient paper, a way to get forms back to your computer, and patience.

You will have to make an important choice at this step: whether to move the funds as cash, or whether to move them in-kind. “Cash” means you’re authorizing the receiving institution to sell your stuff at your old provider before moving it10. “In-kind” means you’re wanting to keep exactly what’s in the old account already. You can also choose to do a partial transfer at this step, but that’s not something applicable to me.

I chose in-kind since I hate being in a cash position for any period of time. But if you hold GICs or mutual funds (I do not), you should really check to make sure you are able to move those in-kind; many providers have restrictions on that sort of thing.

After the fact, I discovered that Questrade does not support HISA accounts. I am hoping that this does not create unintended consequences or delays.

Step 4: Set up ways and means to move money in/out of your accounts

Different providers do this differently. In my experience, most support online bill pay to get money into the accounts (like, for example, to make a TFSA or RRSP contribution), and EFT to get money out (like, for example, a RRIF payment, something rather important to me).

To set up an EFT transfer, you’ll need your banking details (institution number, transit number, account number) and a void cheque. Most banks have a way to do this directly online, no need for an actual physical cheque, if anyone still uses those.

An increasing number of providers11 seem to support direct credential connection between their platform and your banking platform using a third party like Plaid. I freely admit this sort of thing gives me serious heebie-jeebies, and will default to using upload of void cheques whenever possible.

Step 5: Make sure successors and beneficiaries are named for RRIF/RRSP/TFSA accounts

This will make the life of your heirs much easier and deny the government some of the $$$ associated with estate administration fees since properly documented successors and beneficiaries are NOT considered part of the estate. Read all about it in my previous post.

Step 6: Wait

The claim I am getting from Questrade is to allow 20 days for assets to move. This seems totally ridiculous on the face of it. I’ll report back on how long it actually takes. 1-2 weeks is more typical in my limited experience.

While waiting, I’ll complete the forms to make sure I have trading authority over my spouse’s accounts. This should allow me to see all the accounts she owns from my login. This is handy, since I’m the one who does most of the mechanics of making this whole “getting paid in retirement” thing work.

Step 7: Resume investing/decumulating

After making sure everything moved from your old provider to your new provider, as expected, of course.

You’ll probably want to ask your new provider to refund you any transfer-out fees charged by the old provider at this step.

Given Questrade doesn’t support HISAs, I’ll have to find an ETF alternative, which, thankfully, are plentiful. Other than that, I’m not anticipating big changes in the portfolio or the approach.

At this point, I’ll also have to (probably) close out the QTrade accounts and figure out how I’ll get my tax slips from them next year.

All this probably took 8 hours over the course of a few days. So not a trivial amount of time, but the promotional bonus will make it worthwhile12.

  1. And while both brokers start with the letter “Q” and are frequently confused with one another, I can assure you they are different. ↩︎
  2. And the resultant hourly rate if all goes well is better than what I made when I was paid a salary… ↩︎
  3. I covered that topic in this post. ↩︎
  4. For me: Investment account, RRIF account, Spousal RRIF account, TFSA. Same for my spouse. And then there’s one more joint firewalled investment account that we use for VPW’s cash cushion. That retirement decumulation strategy was covered in a previous post. And a family RESP. ↩︎
  5. Not the most secure or even convenient option; Questrade also offered using a standalone app like Microsoft Authenticator, which made me happy. ↩︎
  6. Here I hit a bit of a wrinkle: QTrade has joint non-registered accounts, but Questrade only has joint non-registered margin accounts. I am hopeful (but unsure) that I can successfully transmogrify one to the other. ↩︎
  7. My workflow for this: take picture on iPhone, Airdrop to Macbook, convert .HEIC files to pdf (and possibly, re-export to reduce file size), upload. This step alone would defeat many folks. ↩︎
  8. In my case, TFSA/non-registered was almost immediate, but 2 days in, I’m still waiting for the RRIFs to be approved. There are some extra regulations involved with registered accounts, it seems. ↩︎
  9. This is probably dependent on both providers involved as well as the type of account involved. The RESP transfer requires some CRA form to be filled out. ↩︎
  10. Possibly attracting high transaction charges — you may want to liquidate the assets yourself instead. ↩︎
  11. Questrade and Wealthsimple to name two ↩︎
  12. Note to the political class — maybe it’s time to take a look at the regulations here to streamline this process? Eight hours of effort to change a provider does not seem like it’s in the consumer’s best interest ↩︎