Today we’re going to discuss our first impressions as users of the trading platform WealthSimple Trade. We’ll go over the pros and cons we’ve found so far as well as whether or not we’d recommend their services to our readers.
For FAQ’s swing over to their trade help page here.
First off, why did we move our funds to WealthSimple Trade? In short, because we got tired of paying commissions. We were sick and tired of losing $9.99 per trade in our previous brokerage account, especially when we very rarely (if ever) used any of the support functions associated with the accounts.
We also were tired of justifying the commission cost by making a larger purchase than we sometimes would have liked ie. opening a position of $3,000+ into a position instead of dollar cost averaging in at a slower more methodical pace.
So let’s start with the positives:
The Pros:
1. The first positive to WealthSimple Trade is obviously the commission free nature of the platform. This will allow us to at least get a starting position in all of the stocks we wish to hold long term without having to wait for pricing that we’re comfortable jumping in with both feet into.
2. The second pro to using this platform was the overall ease of transferring our funds from our previous brokerage account over the WealthSimple Trade. The overall transfer took roughly 4 business days but all of the shares and money showed up as they were.
For those wondering, yes they will transfer “in kind” so all of your shares transfer over without needing to be sold and re-bought.
3. The third pro is that the platform has performed as advertised for us so far. We’ve only been with them for a couple weeks now but as stated above the transfers went through as expected, funding has worked as expected and we’ve now executed a couple trades that have gone through in a timely manner – so no complaints on that front.
Now let’s look at the downsides that we’ve encountered:
The Cons:
1. Inconsistent read-back in your accounts. This one may sound a little weird, and it is, but what I mean by this is your account balance can sometimes veer off and do its own thing from time to time even though none of the holdings have changed.
I need to make very clear that this is purely a cosmetic issue as it can show minor variances to your balances but there have been no actual changes to the number of shares etc. that you’re holding so as long as you’re okay with this you shouldn’t be too bothered.
An example of what I mean is that I’ve had two different scenarios, one where a few thousand dollars “disappeared” from my account even though all of my holdings were there and it ultimately corrected after a few minutes. Another was when our account showed us as “down $500” for the day when looking at our holdings they were all clearly in the green – this again eventually did correct itself and wasn’t a big deal as it doesn’t have any actual impact on your holdings but could bother some people.
2. The second con to the platform has been the time it takes to deposit money. With our previous brokerage it was instantaneous to transfer from our checking account into our brokerage accounts, where as with WealthSimple Trade it seems to take about 4 business days to deposit funds.
If you’re a forward thinking investor who has some sort of routine investing plan in place you shouldn’t even notice this you’ll just have to plan ahead but for myself I know that sometimes a feeling takes over where I want to make a bad decision and I want to make it RIGHT NOW! – I can definitely be an impulsive buyer from time to time and this “con” may actual be beneficial for me personally. Some people will have a hard time dealing with this though.
3. No USD accounts. What this means is you will be charged a conversion fee of roughly 1.5% on your US purchases as a Canadian. This is more or less in line with what the big banks charge as well if you’re buying on US exchanges using your CAD$ to do so.
Would we recommend?
In short. Yes! we would absolutely recommend WealthSimple Trade to pretty much any investor out there in Canada. We feel like the commission free trades outweigh what the other brokerages in Canada have to offer for the time being and we’re able to do all of our research for our holdings on Seeking Alpha , Yahoo Finance , and TMXMoney.
Because of the ability to do all other research, charting and spreadsheets that we use to track our holdings we don’t find any need at all for any advanced tools that other brokerages may have so we’re strictly looking for a place to simply buy, sell and hold our shares and for that WealthSimple Trade provides exactly what we need.
Have any of you tried WealthSimple trade? If so what are your thoughts on the platform? Do you suggest any others ahead of them? Let us know below or over on Instagram @FindependenceCanada
Thanks for stopping by,
FIC.