hey guys it's Adrian here the Canadian in a t-shirt and today
i'll be breaking down how to actually start investing for canadians
using Questrade i'll provide a step-by-step walkthrough
on how to open a Questrade investing account and how to transfer money into
your Questrade account. Investing in the stock market
is easier than most people realize you do not need a stock broker on wall
street and you don't have to rely on banks and their mutual funds for their
expertise anyone can invest in the stock market by themselves
and from the comfort of their own home using an online broker like Questrade
i've already talked about why i love Questrade in past videos
in fact this video is chapter 4 of my Questrade guide playlist so click the
pop-up at the top right to check out those videos as well
in those videos i've gone over the benefits of Questrade the fees to
expect a step-by-step walkthrough on how to buy
stocks i've talked about how to invest in the us market as a Canadian
and the cheapest way to convert Canadian dollars into us dollars using Norbert's
Gambit so make sure you check those out as well
in this video i want to start at the very beginning
how to actually open a Questrade account before we get to that
i want to give you a quick overview of why Questrade is my favorite online
broker all the major banks td scotiabank BMO
RBC they all have their own versions of
online brokers and those are great platforms but they are expensive with
those brokers every time you buy or sell a stock or an
ETF you'll have to pay $10 in commission fees
those fees can really add up with Questrade you pay half as much in
commissions compared to the big banks when you buy or sell stocks with
Questrade they'll only charge you five dollars in commissions and even
better when you buy ETFs they'll charge you
no commission at all this makes a huge difference especially for beginners who
are just starting out with small sums of money
Questrade's commission is priced at one cent per share with a minimum of $4.95
and a maximum of $9.95 when you buy stocks
buying ETFs is free to simplify if you buy
500 shares or less you'll only pay five dollars
if you buy 1000 shares or more you'll pay $10
between 500 and 1,000 shares you'll probably pay around seven dollars
for most people you'll only ever be charged five dollar commissions on
stocks it's very unusual to purchase more than
500 shares in one single trade unless you're
investing in tens of thousands of dollars at once
so for most people it'll only cost you five dollars another huge benefit over
other brokers like wealthsimple trade is that Questrade allows you to hold
Canadian dollars and US dollars with wealthsimple you
can only hold canadian dollars so whenever you buy or sell a US stock
it's automatically converted back into canadian dollars and you pay a 1.5%
currency conversion fee every single time with Questrade your us
investments remain in u.s dollars and your canadian investments remain in
canadian dollars this saves you a ton of money in the
long run and if you need to convert canadian dollars
into us dollars you can use norbert's gambit with Questrade to make this
conversion for free you won't be charged a
conversion fee like you would if you walked into a bank
or if you used another broker like wealthsimple click the pop-up at the top
right to check out my step-by-step guide on Norbert's gambit it can save you
hundreds or thousands of dollars in fees i'll be making a whole video comparing
Questrade and wealthsimple trade very soon
as well as a review of other brokers in canada so stay tuned for those to open
up a Questrade account you'll need to put in at least
one thousand dollars you're not losing this money this one thousand dollars is
still yours to invest in stocks or ETFs but
Questrade does require a one thousand dollar minimum balance to
open an account the good news is that once you put in
this one thousand dollars Questrade will never charge you a monthly
fee or a maintenance fee or anything like that as long as you
have at least one thousand dollars in your account
this is another advantage over other brokers which do charge you an annoying
monthly or quarterly fee even if you don't make
any trades or investments during that time
the last thing i want to bring up before the tutorial is ECN fees
sometimes when you buy stock in questrade instead of paying exactly five
dollars in commission fees you might be charged five dollars and
one cent or five dollars and three cents those extra few pennies are due to ECN
fees these ECN fees come to 0.35
cents per share they're tiny so you'll probably never notice them
unless you're buying thousands of shares at once they'll only ever cost you a few
pennies for the majority of people so don't worry it's still much better
than paying ten dollars in commission fees with another broker
so that's a quick summary of why Questrade is my favorite online broker
and a breakdown of its fees now let's jump into a step-by-step walkthrough
on how to open and fund a Questrade investing account
to open an account click the referral link in the box below and you'll get
fifty dollars in commission free trade rebates for the first 30 days
when you sign up that basically means that your first 10 stock trades will be
commission free that saves you $50 plus i'll get a small
referral bonus as well and here's how you do it
in all of my Questrade videos i include a referral link so to do that
scroll down to the description box click show more
and you'll see the Questrade referral section where you'll find the link
so click on that link it'll take you to the Questrade homepage and you click
open an account so now you choose which type of account to open
here are the three main account types which are available to all canadians
margin TFSA and RRSP the margin account is a non-registered account so there are
no limits but you will be taxed on all dividends
and capital gains you earn in this account the TFSA and RRSP are
registered tax sheltered accounts and i've already covered these extensively
in past videos so click the pop-up to check those out
there are also more specialized account types so to access those click on see
more account types and if you go to the retirement section
you can see LIRA, spousal RRSP and a RIF and in the
education section you can find the RESP which i talked about in my last video
you can either open up an individual RESP or a family RESP
but in this video i'm going to be opening up a margin account i already
have a TFSA and RRSP account so i'll be opening up a margin account
but the same steps apply for opening any of these account types
so i click margin account and you'll see that my referral code automatically
populates and you can see that offers me a $50
trade commission rebate so i click on accept the terms and open
now so first step is to create a user ID
so enter your contact info so name email and phone number
enter a username and password enter your security questions in case
you forget your password so now you have to build your profile it
guides you through the process so start with personal info
here just enter more personal information so name date of birth
marital status residential address and then move on to the employment
section start by entering your employment status so if you're a student
retired employed and if you're employed enter your
employer's contact information now some yes or no questions are you a
securities dealer basically means are you a stock broker or do you work for a
bank as a financial planner or a financial advisor
if so then there are some limitations but for the vast majority of people the
answer will be no next are you a major shareholder of a
company basically means are you capable of committing insider trading
if yes you probably aren't watching this video so the answer's probably gonna be
no and the last question is basically do
you have significant political power the answer is probably no now your
financials make sure you enter everything here in canadian dollars
so first enter your annual income then enter your liquid assets so that's cash
stocks bonds basically anything that you could sell right away
fixed assets are things that are much more difficult to sell so things like
your house or your car and then liabilities are the debts you
owe so your mortgage credit card debt student loans that kind of thing enter
these three numbers and it will calculate your overall net worth
so now enter your citizenship information and now for the united
states they have special rules so you have to tell them
were you born in the u.s and do you live in the u.s
so no for both and now enter your social insurance number or SIN
this is the most important piece of information that you have to enter
this is how the government identifies you so make sure you enter it correctly
finally are you a tax resident of anywhere other than canada or the us
great so now our profile is complete now we have to set up the account itself
remember the new account i'm creating is a margin account so i click on
set up the account i have to follow these three steps so we'll start with
the account details do you want to trade options i
personally don't trade options but if you select yes
in the training platform you'll have an extra section where you can buy or sell
options now the purpose of the account investing purposes retirement education
personal use business purpose set the ones
appropriate and now the initial deposit this is how much money you're going to
initially put in on day one you have to put at least one thousand
dollars to open an account that's the minimum so i'm gonna put one
thousand dollars and now consent and communication this
is where you set your preferences on how you want to receive information and
materials whether you want to receive them in
physical mail format or electronic format
as well as things like voting rights financial statements that kind of thing
persons with financial interest so this is something like a spouse or someone
who has interest in the account or shares the
account with you for me it's just myself so i've selected no
the agreements make sure you read them all and accept i won't show them this
video so i'm just going to skip ahead
okay now we've answered all the questions for setting up the account now
we just have to electronically sign the documents
so make sure you read through this document and sign where it asks you to
next is the upload government issued photo id so take a picture or scan your
passport or driver's license and upload that image i've already done
that and now the final step is to fund the
account remember you have to put at least one thousand dollars to open the
account so that's how we open the account now we
actually have to put money into it there are a few options to do this but
the easiest way is through online banking
i do this every time i open a new account and every time i put money into
my investing accounts this doesn't cost anything at all and it
only takes one business day for the money to arrive if you have cash
in your bank's chequing account you simply transfer money into your
Questrade account as if you were making a bill payment you add Questrade as a
payee you include your Questrade account
number and you simply pay yourself into this investing account as if you
were paying your phone bill or credit card bill
this is how i always do it but remember you have to have cash available in a
chequing account if you have money tied up in investments
or money in a registered tax sheltered account like a TFSA
or an RRSP this won't work you'll have to request a transfer
and i'll be making a whole video on how to do that in this example
i have cash sitting in my chequing account ready to go so let's see how i
do it so here's where i left off i click on
the fund button and it shows me a variety of options
i'm going to choose online banking here they spell out the same steps that
i just talked about you log into your bank's checking account
you add a payee you enter Questrade as the payee
and you enter your account number and then you just send money as if you were
making a bill payment here you can see all my Questrade
accounts including the new margin account that i just created
and i need to copy this account number now you can log into your bank account
directly or you can select your bank from the
drop down list so i'll choose Toronto dominion bank TD bank
it takes me right to the login page of my td bank account i log in
and you can see all my accounts here you can see i have a checking account with
fifteen hundred dollars sitting there i'm going to take one thousand dollars
out of this and put it into my new Questrade account
to do that i go to pay bills and as you can see here i have two
payees for each of my existing Questrade accounts
my TFSA and RRSP account so whenever i want to send money to my TFSA or RRSP
account i just make a bill payment to either one of these two payees
but to add money to my new account i have to add a new payee so i scroll down
and click the add payee button for the payee name i search Questrade
and i select Questrade online brokerage now i have to enter my account number so
i go back to Questrade and i copy and paste the account number
of this new margin account you can choose to give this payee a
nickname i'm going to call it non-registered so that i know it's my
margin account to distinguish it from the TFSA and RRSP
that's good so i hit next i confirm these details the account number
and then i click finish okay so i've set up this payee
now i want to send the initial $1000 deposit to this new Questrade account so
i click pay this payee so i have $1500
in my checking account i'm only going to send one thousand dollars into my Questrade
non-registered or margin account that's gonna be a one-time payment and
i'm gonna send it today i click next now let's confirm the
details i'm sending a thousand dollars to my Questrade non-registered account
at this account number let's double check to make sure this account number
is correct yes it is okay and i click finish
and here's the confirmation window i sent a thousand dollars into my new
Questrade margin account make sure you record every time you
contribute money into your investing accounts
especially if it's a tax sheltered registered account like a TFSA or RRSP
because you have limited contribution room you never ever want to exceed the
contribution room so make a habit of recording every
single time you put money in let's go back to the payees so click pay
bills and scroll down and now you'll see that i have three different Questrade
payee accounts the RRSP the TFSA and the brand new
non-registered or margin account that i just created
the money takes one business date to arrive in Questrade today is a friday
so on monday morning i'll have that one thousand dollars
sitting in my brand new margin investing account
it's now monday morning and now when i log into Questrade i should see that one
thousand dollars sitting in my new margin account on the
home page i see that i now have three investing accounts
including the margin account that i just created however i don't see any money in
there but don't worry the home page balances
are always delayed by one day if i click on the green trade button
you'll see that my money is there at the top right i can select the different
account types and now you can see i have three accounts to choose from i'll
select the margin account as expected i have one thousand dollars
in cash sitting there and waiting to be invested now that i have a thousand
dollars in cash i can start buying stocks and ETFs right away
for a step-by-step guide on how to buy stocks and etfs using this cash
click the pop-up at the top right to check out my previous Questrade tutorial
so there you have it that's how you open a Questrade investing account and how
to transfer money into it to start investing
different brokers will have a very similar process but i definitely
recommend Questrade for their super low fees
those fees can really add up over time again if you want to get started with
Questrade follow the steps in the video click my
referral link in the box below and you'll get $50
in commission free trade rebates for the first 30 days when you sign up plus i'll
get a small referral bonus as well so you'll be helping to support my
channel thanks for watching guys and be sure to
like comment and subscribe if you found this video helpful every thumbs up and
comment really does help me build this channel on youtube
and hit that bell icon to be notified of my new videos every thursday
and hit the playlist buttons at the very end to watch my millennial investing
guide and my canadian tax guide videos and if
you'd like to follow me on instagram or facebook
@CanadianTShirt click the link in the box below or click the links on my home
page be sure to tune in to my next video
where i'll be breaking down some more of my favorite Canadian dividend stocks
to hold in your TFSA or other tax sheltered accounts especially during
this market crash thanks everyone and i'll see you guys on
the next episode of the canadian in a t-shirt
bye guys