The recent 2025 Qtrade Promo Offer Code is one of the main reasons we have them at the top of Best Canadian Online Broker rankings. Every year the DIY brokerages put their best foot forward during the first few months of the year because they know it’s when Canadians pay the most attention to their finances. This is the first year I’ve seen an offer quite this good. (Last’s year’s Qtrade promo was also solid - but this one tops it for the folks with under $250,000 to invest.) To lock ...| Million Dollar Journey
What is RBC Direct Investing? The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) was one of the first banks in the country to pioneer DIY investing for the everyday investor. With RBC Direct Investing, you can trade Canadian and US stocks, ETFs, mutual funds and bonds. You can fund and manage your registered investment accounts (TFSA, RRSP, RRIF, RESP and more) and access a variety of investing tools to help you make informed decisions. If you already have an account with RBC, then opening an RBC Direct Investin...| Million Dollar Journey
Options are one of the best ways to capitalize on market trends and enhance profitability - if you get your prediction right. While buying options has a limited downside on a per contract basis, it is also one of the “best” ways to lose your money in the market - or as WSJ put it “More Men are Addicted to the Crack Cocaine of the Stock Market”. Options trading is not for the faint of heart, and shouldn’t be used by novice traders. Honestly, the average Canadian investor has no need ...| Million Dollar Journey
What is Wealthsimple Trade? Wealthsimple Trade is an online brokerage platform that allows you to build and manage your own investment portfolio. It’s one part of Wealthsimple, a company with 1.5 million customers and $8.4 billion in assets under management. Wealthsimple has been around since 2014 and Wealthsimple Trade launched in 2019. Unlike Wealthsimple Invest and robo-advisors like it, Wealthsimple Trade is a 100% active investing platform. Investors with Wealthsimple Trade research, c...| Million Dollar Journey
What is TD Direct Investing Brokerage? The TD Directing Investing online brokerage is a solid option, even though it doesn’t quite make it to the top of my list of Canada’s best online discount brokerages. As Canada’s second biggest bank (and one of our largest companies, period) it’s probably not a surprise that the TD trading platform has evolved over the years and consistently gotten better. The problem (and it’s a problem not unique to TD Direct Investing, as the other Big Bank ...| Million Dollar Journey
NBDB has made changes over the last two years to make their fee structure competitive among other discount brokers, and have now dropped their commission fees altogether for those trading on their online platform. It seems as though they have taken customer feedback to heart and made improvements to make those customers want to stay as well as attract new ones. In 2019 they were ranked dead last, 8 out of 8, by J.D. Power, but merely one year later in 2020, they moved up considerably to 4th o...| Million Dollar Journey
Once the new disruptive force on the online discount brokerage scene, Robinhood’s “gamification” of commission-free stock trading changed the way millions of young people thought about the stock market. Robinhood’s commission-free trades, as well as their sleek and easy-to-use interface, appealed to first-time investors. However, the company has been vilified since it went public, perhaps most notably the star-laden film “Dumb Money” in 2023. Unfortunately for Robinhood investor...| Million Dollar Journey
What is Wealthsimple? Wealthsimple was founded back in 2014 by Michael Katchen, Brett Huneycutt and Rudy Adler. I gotta say that I really liked the company more in its first few years than in its current iteration. For the first five years of its existence, Wealthsimple was solely focused on the product that is now known as Wealthsimple Managed Investing. Some people called this a “robo advisor,” others called it a “automated wealth manager” – whatever you wanted to call it, Wealths...| Million Dollar Journey
The best stock trading apps in Canada have really improved since I started Million Dollar Journey seventeen years ago. New fintech companies have really pushed the old school banks to lower their fees, improve their usability, get more efficient at bringing on new customers, and just creating a better mobile stock investing experience. While I’m still a big advocate of using a desktop for DIY investing, (hence my focus on that platform for my best online brokers in Canada comparison) I have...| Million Dollar Journey
Canada’s best robo advisors are an excellent investing solution for the many folks who are intimidated by the thought of buying and selling shares on their own - but who don’t want to pay the outrageous mutual fund fees that come with the traditional investments recommended by banks and credit unions. There is incredible value in automatically taking a piece of your paycheque every month and automatically turning it into a diversified investment portfolio. Way too many of us hesitate to g...| Million Dollar Journey
The best free stock trading apps in Canada can help you cut fees to the bone, and DIY invest yourself to a substantial nest egg. That said, there is no such thing as a truly free stock trading in Canada. We’ll go into detail about what “free” really means when it comes to investing in Canada, and how to compare the various DIY investing platforms in Canada. Since trading apps like Robinhood came onto the scene, DIY investment has given investors control over how they invest, and how m...| Million Dollar Journey
Canada’s all-in-one ETFs (also called portfolio ETFs) have been the single most important investment product innovation since I’ve started writing about this stuff nearly two decades ago. The Vanguard, iShares, and BMO all-in-one ETFs are the perfect marriage of index investing strategy, convenience, asset allocation math, and behavioural safeguards. These ETFs - which are actually a collection of smaller ETFs - are so diverse that they actually include several of the Best ETFs in Canada,...| Million Dollar Journey
What is Desjardins Online Broker? When it comes to Canadian online brokers, Desjardins Online Brokerage isn’t typically one of the first names that comes to mind. That being said, in the spirit of providing a full selection of broker reviews, our MDJ editorial team looked under the hood of one of Canada’s original discount brokerages. Desjardins is best-known among those living in Quebec and Ontario; however, it’s also active in western Canada as well. It often goes by the name “Disna...| Million Dollar Journey
Is BMO Investorline Safe and Trusted? In a word, YES. As one of Canada’s oldest and most trusted companies (founded in 1817) the Bank of Montreal is as safe, trusted, and legit as you can get. InvestorLine has been around longer than the internet - BMO introduced self-directed trading way back in 1988 before moving online in 2000. That’s an impressive history! BMO InvestorLine is IIROC regulated and CIPF insured. They use 128-bit encryption and multi-factor user authentication to keep y...| Million Dollar Journey
When I first launched Million Dollar Journey in 2006 and started writing about Canadian online brokers, the Qtrade vs. Questrade rivalry was already heating up. Fast forward nearly two decades, and not only has the rivalry intensified, but these two platforms have also solidified their positions as the leaders of Canada’s brokerage scene (leaving the big bank brokerages even further behind). As a DIY investor for the last 20 years, I’ve had firsthand experience with over a dozen brokerage...| Million Dollar Journey
Is Questrade Safe & Secure? One of the most common questions that I have gotten in the comments below is: Is investing my money through a Questrade online brokerage account safe? Is Questrade as safe as RBC, TD, CIBC, ScotiaBank, and BMO?- MDJ reader The answer: Yes! Questrade is fully regulated by two key financial oversight bodies in Canada: the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) and the Canadian Investor Protection Fund (CIPF). These aren’t just formalities - they’re fu...| Million Dollar Journey
Current Qtrade New Customer Promotion Qtrade currently has the best cash-back offer on the market in an effort to get you to try their platform. In brief - they want to pay you $150 to open an account with them. Details: Amount in New Qtrade AccountCash Back$1,000-$9,999$50$10,000-$24,999$100$25,000+$150 In order to get your cash back, the minimum you have to invest is $1,000. The good news though is that your amount of “new net assets” can be spread out amongst multiple accounts. In o...| Million Dollar Journey
Picking the best Canadian Dividend Stocks for 2025 isn’t an easy task! After such a stellar year in North American equities in 2025, there is much more room to move down than up. That said, my dividend stocks portfolio is all about long-term cash-flowing companies with large financial moats to protect them. Each month I take a look at the stocks that I highlighted at the beginning of the year, and I focus on the following key dividend stock comparison points: Dividend Yield Dividend Growth ...| Million Dollar Journey