Quotes of the Day

All of the banks have a brokerage arm-RBC Direct Investing, Scotia iTRADE, BMO InvestorLine and so on. There are a number of non-bank-owned firms with good offerings as well: Questrade, Qtrade and Virtual Brokers, to name a few. The Globe and Mail does a comprehensive review of all the major online brokerage every year, and this is worth searching for online. Most online brokerages waive administrative fees if your account balance (or the sum of all your accounts) is higher than a certain amount (e.g. $25,000). Commission-free trading is an excellent feature. Questrade has long offered free purchases of all ETFs, though you still pay their standard commission when you sell. Qtrade and Scotia iTRADE have a limited menu of ETFs that trade commission-free. National Bank Direct offers commission-free trades on ETFs as long as you purchase at least 100 shares at a time. [2021] - Dan Bortolotti

Hold equal amounts of Canadian, US and overseas stocks. For example, if your overall portfolio target is 60% stocks, you'd hold 20% in Canada, 20% in the US, and 20% in international equities. You can slit that last category into 15% developed markets and 5% emerging markets. (That mix of three-quarters developed and one-quarter emerging is a good rule of thumb.) [2021] - Dan Bortolotti

Successful trading is often about uncovering tendencies in our trading behaviour that originate from the subconscious mind. [2008] - Yeo Keong Hee

96 percent of all businesses fail within 10 years, with 80 percent failing within the first two years. The top reasons for failure include bad customer relations, bad budgeting, lack of staff training, failure to anticipate market trends, and poor and inconsistent marketing. [2007] - Chet Holmes

A successful trader is one who is able to apply proven methods with a success rate of about 70%. In fact, some successful traders are very profitable even with a 60% success rate. [2008] - Yeo Keong Hee