Qtrade fees explained

When it comes to brokerage fees Qtrade shows a mixed picture: some fees are high but some are low. First you need to figure out your approach or you should use our questionnaire to be able to tell whether Qtrade fees are an advantage for you. Continue reading about Qtrade fees and charges to see if this is the right brokerage for you or a similar broker like RBC Direct Investing or Questrade is better for you.

Here's a high level overview of Qtrade's fees

Online brokerages in general charge much lower brokerage fees than traditional brokerages do - this is largely due to the fact that online brokerages' businesses can be much better scaled: From a purely technical standpoint it doesn't make that much of a difference for them if they have 100 or 5000 clients.

This is not to say however that they don't have any fees at all. They make money by charging you at various events for various rates. Usually you need to keep an eye on these 3 types of fees:

• Trading fees - these are brokerage fees that you pay when you actually do a trade, i.e. buying an Apple stock or an ETF. What you pay is either a commission, a spread or financing rate. Some brokers apply all of these.
  • A commission is either based on the traded volume or it is fixed.
  • A spread is the difference between the buy price and the sell price
  • Financing rate or overnight rate is charged when you hold your leveraged positions for more than one day.
• Non-trading fees. These occur related to some operations you make in your account, i.e. depositing money to your account, withdrawing money from it or not trading for an extended amount of time.

We compare Qtrade fees with its closest competitors, RBC Direct Investing and Questrade.

Qtrade's trading fees are mid-tier which means you need to pay special attention to asset classes with high trading fees.

Let's break down the trading fees into the different asset classes available at Qtrade.

Trading fees

Qtrade's trading fees are average.

Stock fees and ETF fees

Qtrade has low stock trading fees.

Fund fees

Qtrade fund fees are low.

Bond fees

Qtrade has low bond fees.

Options fees

Qtrade's options fees are high.

Financing rates

Qtrade financing rates are .

If you want to trade on margin and prefer to hold your positions long, financing costs can be significant.

Currency conversion fee

Qtrade will charge a Currency Conversion Fee for all trades on instruments denominated in a currency different to the currency of your account. The fee is charged as the following: 0.9% mark-up for positions under CAD 9,999.

When it comes to looking at all the non-trading fees Qtrade is an average broker. This means that some of the non-trading fees are high, but the others are low or not charged at all.

Non-trading fees include various brokerage fees and charges at Qtrade that you pay not related to buying and selling assets. Among some others, typical non trading fees are withdrawal fee, deposit fee, inactivity fee and account fee.

Deposit fees are applied when you send money to your trading account from your bank account. Usually brokers don't charge money for that and Qtrade is not different: you will see the exact same amount on your brokerage account that you sent by any of the deposit methods Qtrade offers.

Unlike the majority of the online brokers we have reviewed Qtrade does not charge a withdrawal fee. This means that you'll see the same amount of money on your bank account that you transferred from your brokerage account.

Qtrade does apply an inactivity fee and it is Charged as account fee, if you fail to make a minimum number of trades or deposits during a quarter. This means that you need to be strategic about your trading activity to avoid getting charged after a longer time of no trade. The fact that Qtrade charges an inactivity fee makes it less ideal for you if you are a buy and hold investor.

Qtrade has low inactivity fee.

Read more about Qtrade inactivity fee on their own site.