RBC Direct Investing fees explained

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

RBC Direct Investing'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 RBC Direct Investing.

Trading fees

RBC Direct Investing's trading fees are average.

Stock fees and ETF fees

RBC Direct Investing has low stock trading fees.

Fund fees

RBC Direct Investing fund fees are low.

Bond fees

RBC Direct Investing has low bond fees.

Options fees

RBC Direct Investing's options fees are high.

Financing rates

RBC Direct Investing financing rates are .

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

Leverage is a double-edged sword and can dramatically amplify your profits. It can also just as dramatically amplify your losses. Trading foreign exchange/CFDs with any level of leverage may not be suitable for all investors.

Currency conversion fee

RBC Direct Investing 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: 2% mark-up.

When it comes to looking at all the non-trading fees RBC Direct Investing is a cheap broker. This means that they don't charge you a lot for non-trading related activities on your trading account, like withdrawal fee.

Non-trading fees include various brokerage fees and charges at RBC Direct Investing 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 RBC Direct Investing is not different: you will see the exact same amount on your brokerage account that you sent by any of the deposit methods RBC Direct Investing offers.

Unlike some online brokers we have reviewed RBC Direct Investing 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.

RBC Direct Investing does not apply an inactivity fee which is great because your account will not be charged even if you do not trade for a longer time period (months or years).