Investment Articles

There are many discount brokers on the internet, all attempting to obtain your business. Most offer free incentives to further entice traders to use them for their buying and selling investment decisions. Along with their low cost per transaction or trade they offer many various free incentives.

Before selecting a broker compare the top discount brokers free incentives to see which one offers the best economical plans, along with free information and market reports. Many will even offer free trades based on how often you trade, how much you initially deposit in your trading account, and the total amount of your buying and selling investments. Consider all the various options offered by each of the top discount brokers to make sure these free incentives will actually benefit your investment decisions.

Other items the top discount brokers will offer are insurance protection. Find out if the discount broker you are planning to use offer protection of your funds in the event of a brokerage meltdown for any reason. In today’s market there are many financial institutions that are having difficulties managing their funds and staying in business. With this increased pressure on financial institutions it is very possible for these institutions or the brokerages firms to collapse or disappear. So make sure your funds are protected if this would actually occur.

Discount brokers do not provide investment advice but some of the top brokers do provide robust platforms and software packages that will help you analyze the market, develop your own trends and strategies based on global markets, news and currencies. These types of tools are invaluable to a trader who does their own strategic planning for investments on various exchanges and markets.

Some of the discount brokers provide these platforms at no charge as long as you have a specific amount in your trading account or you perform a certain number of trades. Others however will charge a fee for using the platform they provide through the internet or on your computer. So make your discount brokerage selection wisely.

For the top discount broker comparisons, reviews and resources visit http://www.yourbrokerguide.com

Investors always look for potential benefits in their investment venture. Some of them are involved in branching out their funds in places with higher growth rate. There many region’s rate, which are not interrelated. That is why an investor is interested in potential and latent finances and funds.

Investors are good at doing business and investment analysis upon particular businesses in order to find the potential benefits of a product or service. They apply some marketing analysis and attempt to explore all of the internal, external, direct and indirect factors that involve a company’s preparation, decision and strategy. This will assist them to understand whether a potential company can produce a product or service and if they produce it, is there a potential market need? Will this product return the investment? If there is a demand, how much should be invested for marketing the product?

In fact an investor does a product marketing investigation due to explore advantages and disadvantages of a potential product.

An investor is interested in business plan, market plan, business comparison and the strength of the product competitors. They have various tools to measure market in short and long term. An investor even measures the potential company’s knowledge and ability in marketing processes. They usually evaluate management, finance and support team and according to this evolution, they decide whether or not to invest on the potential project or move on to the next project.

A good investor apply Political, Economic, Social and Technological analysis in order to investigate national political issues, culture and climate, key macroeconomic conditions, health and indicators. The question is why they are so concerned about a business investment plan? They do not want to lose their funds on investing a product that does not return their investment. It is a difficult task to convince an investor to fund your product since they are equipped with various tools and have their own specialists to do their research the product.

In economic constancy, investors are searching to decide the company’s impending due to remain in trade despite of the financial surroundings. As in the past, this will need probing past income, but in addition will comprise such factors as the possibility to position the similar manufactured goods, working party or ability to or the possible to direct rank of trade and multiple profits lines within the same company. Economic constancy is supported by low cost structures, multiple income streams and multiple goods.

In exploratory the market’s promise, investors are searching to clarify the profundity of knowledge, targeting and take in allocation a certain business. Whilst market pledge may seem like the contrast of financial constancy many businesses with highly embattled advertisement will work their objective business with manifold goods and varied income streams.

The fact is if the investors do not find answers to their investment concern, they will move to the next company and a new product that might have better potential benefits.

http://www.best-marketing-solution.com

Learning how to create an investment plan is one of the most important things that you will need to do if you want to become financially free. Ultimately investing is just the outworking of a plan to get you from one place to another, this is why investments are often called investment vehicles. Without a plan you increase your risk of losing money and decrease your risk of making money, so a solid investment plan is essential to financially success.

Where Do You Want To Be

The first two things you have to do in order to create your investment plan is to work out where you are now financially and where you want to be financially and in what time frame.

A lot of people have the financial goal of having $1,000,000 in their bank account. However, they discover that when they reach their goal they have $1,000,000 but they don’t know what to do with it and they are unable to be financially free.

For a lot of people the ultimate destination is to be financially free. Financial freedom is the ability to cover all your expense without being required to work. In order to do this you need to have assets that generate you income on a regular basis. I believe that no matter what you financial situation is you can become financially free in just 5 years.

Being financially free means your passive income (income you don’t have to work for) is greater than all your expenses. So if your expenses are $2,000 per month your passive income needs to be $2,000 per month of more in order for you to be financially free. If you are currently earning $0 per month in passive income then you have $2,000 per month to go in order to be financially free.

For your investment plan to have any credibility you need to know where you are at financially now and where you want to be in a certain amount of time. Once you know these two things you can begin to formulate a plan to get you from where you are now to where you want to be.

Choosing Your Investment Vehicle

The next step is choosing your investment vehicle. Choosing your investment vehicle is an important decision. If you like the idea of investing in real estate then you might want to choose real estate, if you hate real estate and want to invest in stocks there is no point choosing real estate as your main investment vehicle.

Get Educated

The next step, and one of the most important steps is to get educated. People say investing is risky, but investing isn’t risky, people are risky. If you are financially uneducated then investing will be more like gambling. However, if you are educated in your chosen investment field then you can increase your return on investment and decrease your risks. The more educated you are the more likely you are to reach you investment goal sooner.

What Do You Need?

So you have already worked out that you need a certain amount of money per month to be financially free (say $2,000) and you want to achieve this is 5 years. Now what do you need to get there? Let’s say you have chosen real estate as your investment vehicle. If I can earn $100 per month from every rental real estate property I buy then I will need approximately 20 properties to reach my goal of $2,000 per month. I have 5 years to do this so I need to buy an average of 4 properties per year to achieve this. Now that you know specifically what you need you are better positioned to go out and become successful financially.

Most people struggle financially because they don’t know where they are currently at financially, they don’t know where they want to go, they haven’t chosen an investment vehicle and gotten educated and they haven’t worked out specifically what they need in order to achieve their goals. Because of this people tend to float around in the investment world always looking for the next ‘Hot Tip’ that will help them get rich quick.

If you have a plan then the latest hot tip from your cab driver won’t matter, because you have a goal and a way of getting there. So if you want to be a success financially then it is important that you learn how to create an investment plan.

Becoming financially free in just 5 years is possible for anyone. It doesn’t matter what your current financial situation is, you can become rich and never have to work again in just 5 short years. You don’t need a high paying job or a get rich quick scheme, you just need real training on creating real strategies for getting rich.

Go to http://www.richacademy.com and sign up now to start you free training on “How To Get Rich Without Making More Money”. Don’t waste any time, start training yourself to be rich today by signing up for your free teaching.

Recently we have been faced with a very interesting question, in the midst of the global economical rollercoaster. Can you buy Pleasure yachts as investments?

And the answer to this question is far less complex than people would think. It is not that simple as well. But the answer is YES! As a matter of fact, brokers and agents around the world have been investing a lot of money in buying big boats (which I would say are around the size ranging from 40ft to 100ft) as investment.

Like buying houses, you can get mortgage for buying boats. With far less friendlier terms. Meaning that you will have to make a full pay back in 5 years, and maximum 12 years, if you are lucky to find a bank that accepts it. The interest rates are usually not the best. Especially with private financing firms. But nevertheless it is possible to get finance on new or new-ish boats.

Banks and some big financial firms will not give loans for old boats, unless you have a great relationship with the particular financer. The reason is simply because Banks cannot understand the valuation of a boat. The valuation of boats and used boats generally has too much variation, from size of its engines, to where the boat is built and the style, size of the boat, condition in particular for used boats, and materials used in building that boat. So I would say, if you are looking to invest in boats, then you better have some spare cash and a lot of love. Similar to marriage. People do say, having a boat is like having another marriage, I disagree, because boats are far more faithful than humans.

Back to our topic on boats as investments. So yes, Recently in some cases it has become a good investment. Especially in Hong Kong (China) and Asia. Hong Kong is better in particular because maintenance of boats is a easy thing to do here. Compared to other parts of Asia. There are 10 reasons why you can actually get more money for a boat, after its few years older than when you bought it.

1) Exchange rate to buy that particular boat as “New” from its original country has increased.
2) The original price of the “New” boat of the same model has increased (This happens surely, as prices of new boats only increase year by year due to high labor costs and inflation)
3) You have a rare brand and model (This hardly happens, because there are good custom design boats available around the world)
4) You have bought a boat for a good price, well under market value. (Every buyer’s wish)
5) You have bought a rundown boat and done good job in renovating and repairing it, and bringing it up to a quality standard.
6) You have bought a new very well custom designed boat for a good price and of a good quality, from Taiwan or China, (or similarly priced countries).
7) You have bought a boat from a new brand or upcoming manufacturer, who has good prospects of popularity in the future because of his yacht building quality and design. You bought a great boat from overseas, while the exchange rate was at its best.
9) You traded-in your old boat for a good value to get a new boat.
10) Rare but not impossible, You bought a boat for good price because it is considered as unlucky, due to accident or death in the boat or other unfortunate event that happened to its owner. (A sad thing to make money on, as I can understand this from owner’s point of view)

One other main talent that will help you is, to understand the movement of the markets, and if you can speculate that a particular country will have its demand increased for boats. For example, A few years ago, Russia had a great demand, due to its economical and some political changes. South Korea had a slight increase in its demands around 6 years ago due to its economy and also an extra holiday per week was announced by the government.

Australian markets are always favorable, because they particularly like buying boats that can take the beating, rather than fancy looking boats. So good quality boats for a good price almost always has a market in Australia. Unless a economical gloom is facing the country like the recent global downturn. However, no economical downturn is ever permanent and like the human spirit it always arises no matter how much beating it takes.

A good agent and importantly honest agent, is a valuable asset. A proper agent will not only tell you the prices and notify you of new listings and market values. But will also let you know how to negotiate for a particular deal. Should you be aggressive or should you wait and watch.

For now,
Enjoy Cruising
Baggy Sartape
for more information on boats in Asia http://www.asia-boating.com

While many people put their money into stocks and bonds, one way to enjoy growing your wealth is to get in on the alternative investments of art and antiques. Not only do you get to have fun of hunting for hidden gems, if you know what you are looking for, you can almost certainly sell your finds for a profit.

It’s all about timing – Investing in art and antiques sounds like it would require some elite knowledge, but this alternative investment isn’t that hard to get into. There are a variety of places to find these pieces. You can find them in auctions and antique shops, but if you purchase art and antiques this way, you may be paying a premium. How quickly are you hoping to make a profit? If you intend to hold onto the items for a decade and enjoy them in the meantime, you may be able to make a return on your investment. If you are hoping to sell them as soon as possible, however, it is very likely that you will only break even or even lose money on the deal.

Finding merchandise – Knowing where to look makes a huge difference in the alternative investments of art and antiques. If you have the time and the passion, start scanning flea markets and garage sales. It’s amazing what sorts of items appear in these venues for next to nothing. If you find a quality item, you can hold onto it or sell it immediately for a profit. Purchasing in this manner, however, requires a good deal of base knowledge. It may be best to specialize in one subsection of the market (such as furniture or pottery, for example), so that you can spot reproductions and damage in a specific type of item. Garage sales generally sell their items as-is, and while the seller may be on the up and up, they also may not know if their item is a fake.

Investing in modern art – Purchasing from known reputable sellers is a great idea, but again, you’re likely to pay top dollar for the item. One possible way to make a tremendous return is by investing in art. Finding modern art to purchase can be very risky. It’s hard to know what items will increase in value, how much, or when, but if you find the right artist, you can make a tremendous return on your money. If you have the cash and the desire to risk it, however, investing in modern art may be for you – especially if you’d like to enjoy the paintings in the meantime.

Finding alternative investments such as art and antiques can be a sound way to invest your money. By thinking through how much time and research it will take, as well as how quickly you can turn the investment around, you can find the best method for you. While many people enjoy the risk of investing, you can also add the pleasure of finding beautiful objects at a great price, making investing as much of a pleasure as a necessity.

Questions? Email me at wesley@thewandwgroup.com and visit our website at http://www.thewandwgroup.com. New Money Talk is a weekly article focusing on retirement, personal finance, and estate planning. Comments and questions are welcome, but because of the volume of email, personal responses are not always possible.

Do you know the common misconception most people carry about investing is that it is a term used to describe what you do with your money instead of having it sit in a savings account as another long term alternative for appreciation? And yet it can very well be a short term endeavor and in fact there are ways to make more of a return on your capital in shorter periods of time in more consistent methods than the traditional sit and wait approach.

Investing today carries many connotations with it and it can be applied to a great array of industries. From Real Estate Investing to stock market investing to running your own business or even selling startup businesses. These and many other types of activities fall into the category of investing and yet many of these avenues greatly resemble running a business.

That is what smart entrepreneurs are doing. They are running investing businesses. Investing itself is their business and within that category an entire world of opportunity is available to them. It is the goal of the investor to put their money to work for them. The investor becomes a researcher deciding where their money will flow next. All the while picking up new skills and exploring more possibilities within the investing arena.

If you are in a standard employment job do not feel that you are stuck there. There are ways to begin investing now that require very little capital and that can produce substantial returns. With practice you can reach a point where your dollars begin pulling in more and more profit for you. The goal is to reach auto-pilot, where your money is doing all the work for you and as if they were employees in the business of you, you as the manager simply instruct them where to go and what to work on next.

By investing in high performing vehicles you can develop an investing career that can one day surpass your standard employment and allow you to retire to the world of investing where your money will be doing as it should be and that is doing all the work for you.

To take part in a free educational newsletter that will teach you all about the various types of investing and provide you with educational and venture opportunities please register at: http://investorsinvitation.com.

Mark Twain said “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” His point was that through the judicious selection of data, statistics can be manipulated to prove just about any point a person wants to make. If this is true (and I wouldn’t want to argue with Mark Twain), investment performance falls firmly into the same category.

Timing the Market vs. Time In the Market

Arguments for and against the loosely-defined “market timing” is an area that takes the most liberties when it comes to quoting investment performance numbers. The most common case for a buy-and-hold strategy is that pulling money out of the market could cause an investor to miss a big market day. A quick search on Google reveals a long list of websites and articles that follow this general theme: If you had invested $10,000 at such and such a date and kept it invested, you could now retire early and send your kids and grandkids to Harvard. But if you missed the [10 best months/best month each year/5 best days each month/etc/etc], your investment would now be practically worthless. Obviously, Time In the Market is better than trying to Time the Market.

Standard & Poor’s Financial Library contains a chart that is often used in web articles to prove the case against market timing. The chart, titled “The Effect of Staying Invested vs. Missing Top Performance Days, 1997 to 2006″, shows the result of investing $10,000 and staying invested over 10 years, compared to missing the best 5, 10, 15, …, 30 days of the market. A buy-and-hold approach results in the investment growing to $22,451. Missing the best 30 days over that 10 year period results in the investment shrinking to $6,921. The conclusion stated on the chart, as well as most articles that use the chart, is that “missing the market’s top-performing days can prove costly.” Duh. Now let’s apply a little logic.

If your market timing system is so bad that it only misses the best days in the market, then a buy-and-hold approach is clearly the way to go. However, if a case can be made based on something as ridiculous as missing ONLY the 30 best days over 10 years, then it seems there would be an equal chance of missing only the 30 worst days. What happens in that case? Well, if you invested the same $10,000 and happened to miss only the 30 worst days (also clearly ridiculous), your investment would have grown to $69,879. Clearly, Timing the Market is much better than Time-In-the-Market. Both data points are hogwash, but only one of them tends to be used in what masquerades as a serious argument.

Historical Return Of the Stock Market is X%

Now let’s take a look at another way historical performance is often misused. The superior long-term performance (or lack of performance) of stocks is often used to justify portfolio allocations, indexing, actively-managed mutual funds, etc. After all, U.S. stocks have returned an average of 10.3% per year. Or they have been flat for over 4 decades when adjusted for inflation and excluding dividends. Or they have underperformed bonds. All of these statements are true in the right context and with enough disclosure. The long-term performance of stocks is a wonderful and dangerous tool because there are so many degrees of freedom with which to play. If I want a good long-term number, I can start my performance analysis in 1908 and end it in 2007. However, if I start in 1929 and end in 2008, I get a very different (and much worse) number. Going back to using stock performance to justify the buy-and-hold argument, the DJIA has had a couple of periods that work very well to support buy-and-hold. From 1943 to 1962, the DJIA had an average return of about 8.2%, and from 1982 to 2000 the return was around 12.9%. However, 1900-1943 (2.3% annual return), 1962-1982 (2.4% per year), and 1996 to 2009 (0%) didn’t work out so well, and could all be used to argue the exact opposite point. I recently saw a chart of the DJIA adjusted for inflation and excluding dividends. When looking at the market this way, the market is currently at about the same level it was in 1966. Even more interesting was that you could draw a straight line on the chart between 1929 and 1992. This data could be used to justify market timing, or a bond portfolio, or real estate investing…you name it. Many may argue that you can’t disregard dividends, and that the definition of inflation is up for interpretation, but however we massage the data, it can still be used to justify practically any argument…just like statistics.

How Should Performance Be Used?

The only data we have to go on is past performance, so obviously we shouldn’t throw out the data just because it can be easily manipulated. However, an awareness that data can be selectively chosen to justify our own biases is important, especially since this can be done subconsciously. In severe bear markets, it is easy to point back to the latest bull market and convince ourselves that things will quickly get back to “normal” if we just hang on a little longer. If normal is defined as consistent 10.3% returns, there are long periods in the market that don’t support this. Another thing to keep in mind is that it is just as easy to use the most recent market performance to justify the newest investing fad as it is to ignore recent market data in order to argue that traditional investing ideas will always work. U.S. and world economies evolve, and just because a strategy would have worked over the last 80 years does not mean it will work over the next 20. The key thing is to maintain a good dose of skepticism whenever performance data is used to justify an argument, and always ask “does this make sense”. Ignoring the best market performance days but including the worst days to “prove” a point should raise some red flags, and would certainly make Mark Twain think twice.

Jerry Verseput is Certified Financial Planner and Registered Investment Advisor in El Dorado Hills, CA. More information can be found at http://www.veripax.net

Oil prices have increased dramatically over the past few months and Goldman Sachs Group GS is now calling for $200 oil again. If that isn’t a huge reality check than I don’t know what is. Last time Goldman Sachs had an analyst made a prediction like that the peak of the oil market occurred and prices tumbled off a cliff.

The problem I am having with a$200 oil prediction is exactly what fundamentals are providing for such a scenario?

First, even if the US economy recovers from recession it will not demand the same amount of oil energy as before the recession began. People’s mentalities have changed and with that their habits have been forever altered. Why put yourself on the line to buy a new SUV that sucks back gas when gas prices may again go through the roof? The notion is still on the tongues of consumers in America and caution will keep them from suffering the next oil price shock in the near term. Even if the demand did come back that would through the United States back into an inflation spiral that leads back to recession, lowered demand again and so on.

Second, where has all that oil supply gone over the past 8 months? Just 2 months ago all that was heard in the media was ‘all the oil tankers have been leased up to store all the excess capacity.’ On which spreadsheet can you see where all that supply is stored? It’s definitely not shown on the US weekly oil storage supply reports. This oil is just sitting there.

Supply is still fundamentally way out of whack and demand still weak, so why have prices increased so dramatically? I think it all boils down to greed and this is producing an oil bubble that I think will burst before the end of the year. So if you are thinking about buying Suncor (SU), Exxon Mobile (XOM), Chevron (CVX), Beyond Petroleum (LON:BP), or even Royal Dutch Shell (LON:RDSA) think very carefully.

Whether you own any of these stocks or you think oil will be back in the dumps anytime soon there is a very easy way to leverage and contain your risk to make a potential windfall. To do this I have a simple strategy, Buy Put options on levered Energy Bull ETF out of the money some time after Christmas.

Why Put options on the Levered Energy Bull ETF you might ask?

1) A Direxion Daily Energy Bull 3x Shares (ERX) because it is levered 300%. Levered means this exchange traded fund is paying interest costs for a loan and this will subtract from the funds performance whether good or bad.

2) The Direxion Daily Energy Bull 3x Shares (ERX) is very well diversified. The Top 10 Holdings include: XOM Exxon Mobile, CVX Chevron, COP Conoco Phillips, SLB Shlumberger, OXY Occidental Petroleum, APA Apache, DVN Devon Energy, APC Anadarko Petroleum, XTO XTO Energy, and MRO Marathon Oil.

3) Buying puts that are out of the money because then your total dollar risk is low while a significant correction in oil will produce a win fall profit.

Stuart McConnachie invites you to read more personal investment advice articles at his blog http://www.investingincanada.info. If you enjoy the content consider signing up for the free news feed so that new articles are sent directly to your email account via Google’s Feedreader ‘Feedburner’.

Investing money is not of great interest to many people unless, that is, they make money in the process. Consistency is the key to investing money successfully, and in order to achieve this you must avoid major investing mistakes. Plus, you’ll need an investment strategy.

In 2008 few investors had a good year investing. The truth is that even if you had a sound investment strategy, 2008 was a bear. You will not make money every year investing money in securities like stocks, bonds and mutual funds; or in real estate, either. But you can greatly improve your consistency by avoiding major investing mistakes.

If you can avoid ever taking a big loss, odds are that you will make money as an investor. The year 2008 (and into early 2009) was probably the toughest time to make money in most of our lifetimes. So, don’t get discouraged. Let’s look at why it was so rough out there, and how we can avoid making the investing mistakes many folks made.

Big losses were taken in both the stock market and in real estate. At the same time, safe investments like bank accounts and money market funds were paying peanuts. Since interest rates were near historical lows many people were attracted to good old stocks and real estate to earn higher returns.

Many of them knew not what they were doing and had invested more in these two areas than they normally would have. Let’s start with real estate. For several years leading up to late 2007, real estate values had been soaring. Real estate stocks and funds that invest money in them had performed well and had been consistently good performers. In other words, real estate was overvalued and the market was ripe for a correction … any bad news could send prices tumbling.

The stock market had been up since late 2002, without a major correction. Most investors had once again learned to be comfortable investing money in stocks. When really bad economic and financial news hits, stocks take a dive. In 2008 the bad news was the worst since the great depression. Stocks tumbled and fell until early March of 2009.

There’s a lesson to be learned here. A sound investment strategy requires that you invest money in all 4 asset classes: stocks, bonds, alternative investments and safe interest-paying investments. Do not over-invest in stocks or other growth investments (including real estate) and do not ignore safe investments like CDs just because interest rates are low.

To make money consistently you need to diversify and invest money across the asset classes. In this way you won’t take major losses when times are bad. For example, investing money in bonds and gold would have helped offset other losses in 2008; and money in the bank is safe.

A retired financial planner, James Leitz has an MBA (finance) and 35 years of investing experience. For 20 years he advised individual investors, working directly with them helping them to reach their financial goals.

Jim is the author of a complete investor guide, Invest Informed, designed for average investors or would-be investors of all levels of financial background and experience. To learn more about investments and investing and his new financial guide go to http://www.investinformed.com

I have written about the best online broker in Canada to use before and come to a different conclusion than the one I currently hold to be true; previously, I had made my decision based on reading the Globe and Mail’s survey of online brokers. Their survey is great for the average investor-an investor who knows very little about the stock market and needs to have his or her hand held when walking down Bay Street or Wall Street. I myself was very inexperienced with the ways of online brokers only a short time ago, but what I have learned over the past couple of years, by using a couple of the well know online brokers, is that price point, and execution are by far the most important criteria to differentiate the top of the pack from the bottom.

Let me be more specific by providing my experiences and then my decision for the top online broker in Canada.

My first experience with online brokers came via Qtrade. According to the Globe and Mail they were and still are the best online broker in Canada. I have to admit at first they did seem like a great online broker: my trading costs were much lower, the research platform is very good, and the customer service was very good.

Did I just say their customer service is very good? What I meant to say was their customer service is very good unless you need to dip below the $1000 minimum account balance. I ran into a bit of a shocker when I asked to dip about $200 below the minimum account balance to pay a bill before my pay cheque came in the next day. Because they would not let me move below the minimum balance in my account for a single day I decided to close all 3 of my accounts and look for a better online broker.

This time I did my own research. I reviewed a number of online brokers: Qtrade Investor, E*Trade Canada, TD Waterhouse, BMO InvestorLine, Credential Direct, RBC Direct Investing, ScotiaMcLeod Direct Investing, Questrade, Trade Freedom, Disnat, CIBC Investor’s Edge, National Bank Direct Investing, HSBC Invest Direct, eNorthern. Just in case you didn’t guess it, this is the 2009 list from the Globe and Mail from top to bottom of the online brokers in Canada.

You have to start somewhere right. I did my research on each myself, but don’t worry I won’t bore you with the gruesome details here. What I decided in the end was that #8 on the list of 14 was the best for me.

#8 is Questrade. By a long shot Questrade has the lowest fees of all the online brokers and has the best sign up process-all documents can be filled out online and then all you need is an online banking transfer and an email of your Driver’s License and SIN Card. The process was seamless. The trading tools are identical to the other online brokers; they all use the same software and just reorganize a little. Also, they have a 10/10 in customer satisfaction.

Trade Costs: $4.95 minimum to a $9.95 maximum no matter how many shares you trade. It’s based on $0.01 per share up to the maximum. So If I trade 100, 200, 300, or 400 shares I pay $4.95. At 500 I pay $5, at 700 – $7, at 1,200,000 shares I pay $9.95 flat.

So where are they lacking? Let’s be honest here and just say, there research sucks. They don’t give you the keys to an onslaught of analyst reports like many of the other brokers; however, if you are at all serious about investing then you should be able to find this info very easily through the web since there are tons of sites that give that info away for free.

I have used Questrade’s protrader platform with streaming live quotes and their webtrader addition. I now use the web trader without streaming live quotes because they are extra unless you make over 20 trades a month. As I am now considering myself more of a long term trader, the webtrader system seems very fine indeed.

Don’t just take my word for it though. Just remember most of the online brokers are begging for your business so try and get something out of them. Questrade offers a $50 credit in free trades if you are referred and gives the referee $100 in free trades. The catch though is that you must use the credit within 3 months or it vanishes. Unless the person referring you trades a lot there is no way they are going to use their credit. If you don’t know anyone that is currently trading with Questrade and you want a referral, post a comment with your name and email and I will send you a referral and not post the comment.

Stuart McConnachie invites you to read more personal investment advice articles at his blog http://www.investingincanada.info. If you enjoy the content consider signing up for the free news feed so that new articles are sent directly to your email account via Google’s Feedreader ‘Feedburner’.