I just use a Waterhouse account, there are cheaper brokers, but I like having it attached to my accounts on EasyWeb.
I sold off my stock I bought on Friday just this morning, I was heavily invested in Suncor over the weekend <img src='
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Stocks are a funny thing, you can approach trading either has a long term investor.. short term investor or basically as a day trader; each also had a varying degree of risk depending on what kind of yields you are looking for.
I have tried most of them, I did ok on long term... but anytime a world event (Osama, OPEC, Hurricanes, Greece, new Trust legislation) comes along it wipes out your gains. I did terrible on basically day trading... after a few good guesses I missed one and lost, it is basically educated gamboling. Too much stress, too much risk for that kid of trading.
Now I stick to moderate trading over a couple weeks time to make reasonable 3-6% gains. It isn't as exciting, but it seems to work like clockwork and at the end of each year if you are making 3-6% every 6 weeks it adds up a lot. I basically buy into one of my favorite stocks that I know really well (Suncor, Connacher Oil, Aberdeen Pacific, TD Canadatrust, BMO, ect) when I feel they are going down a lot. Then wait... and eventually they correct and when things look great on the market I sell them off. The trick is not to get attached, don't hold out for more money if you make your target... the thing that kills people is that it is emotionally hard to sell if you still see the graph going up.
first thing is you need to have enough investment to offset your cost. With your bank broker it is about 30$ buying in and 30$ selling for fees... so for moderate gains on non-risky stocks you need a lot... if you are betting it all on a wild gold stock then you don't need that much, lol.
As an example with the low risk trading I do now my average investment is about 8,000$ to 20,000$ per stock.... keep in mind 3% of 8000$ is only like 240$... minus 60$ in fees is 180$. But... if you make 180$ every 6 weeks that is 1560$, which is 19.5% annual return on 8000$. This beats the hell out of GIC's or mutual funds and it is not that risky because this method is done with blue chip stocks and you are always on top of your stocks all the time... by investing when "world events" happen you negate the risk a lot as well... unless two world events happen back to back, which would suck.
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buy high sell low less tax to pay
