As always our government is shooting itself in the foot pandering to these crooks who run our banks and brokerage houses.
Our rules dictate a flow of capital out of Canada into the US.
Lower commissions, faster execution and better trading software is available to US traders. When we trade US stocks, we are at a profound disadvantage to the US traders who we actually compete against in the open market.
With each trade there is a winner and a loser. The canucks lose money to US traders and money flows south.
Knowing this makes us trade less frequently actually reducing the commissions earned by canuck brokerages (banks)
Proof of this is shown by the sales of Schwab Canada to Scotiabank, and the recent withdrawal of Merril Lynch from this country.
Canadian stocks are not as attractive to trade as US stocks for both the daytrader and less frequent traders. We just don't have many quality companies up here anymore.
So in all I'd say that the banks/brokerage houses up here are playing a zero sum game and will eventually milk us dry.
Then what will they do? In their greed, they probably don't even realize this. It's just too easy to steal what is left of the trading capital in this country.
As far as the TSE going public, that is at least providing me with some humor. They will never survive.
I used to work for the computer company that serviced their hardware across Canada including what they had installed at the brokerage houses. They had a tiny amount of spares available to keep costs down, and it was an almost impossible task to service them adequately. Thank god I was in sales not service.
Last I checked, their website was so slow as to be an embarrassment, but then why would they care. Their culture is similar to that of our banks, and they just will not be able to compete.
The SEDI site, and the sites of all the online brokerages owned by the banks are a complete joke when compared to US ones. Again no chance to compete.
I have yet to find a viable alternative to Schwab Canada up here. If you know one, I'd appreciate the info by reply or PM. Please don't say Etrade!
If you trade a lot, get a US corporation setup for yourself and trade through a US online broker. I believe if you get 10 partners, you will not have to pay canuck tax on the appreciation in the account as long as the money stays in it. Am doing more research into this and would appreciate any feedback as I would rather live here for now.
If this gets any worse up here, I am out of here as I trade for a living now. Can live in the US or Europe with my birthplace being the UK. Better hours trading the US markets from say Ireland and better golf and beer too.
Congrats to our government as they accelerate both the brain drain and outflow of capital.
Don't even get me started on the protection that Jean Chretien offers the banks as they rape us with those amazing credit card interest rates.
To top it all off our government "leaders" are all setup with offshore tax havens. Just read the book on Bruce Verchere, Brian Mulroney's tax lawyer (well ex in more ways than one; he put a shotgun in his mouth in the bathroom of his Montreal home after robbing his wife blind and going broke) to get an idea of how they act in their positions of power.
The hiding of which brokers who execute the trades is frankly farkin unbelievable.
I am waiting for NT to go Enron, and waiting for the banking dirt from Enron et al, to hit our banks, that in conjunction with their exposure to bad foreign debt should be the start of some real reforms up here too.
The US traders I talk to just laugh at any suggestion of playing ANY canuck stocks because of the quality of our exchanges and enforcement, and their rules down there make buying canuck stocks difficult anyway.
It all makes you wonder if ANY of our politicians or bankers passed ANY of their finance and economics courses at all. Did they even take any?
Disclosure: all just my not so humble opinion.
aj |
