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After the kind of year stocks had in 2019, it’s hard to get too worked up about money spent on online trading commissions.

But minimizing the cost of buying and selling stocks through an online broker is a basic way of reducing costs and thereby increasing returns over the longer term.

If you place 24 trades in a year at $10 a crack on a $100,000 portfolio, your total commissions would slice 0.24 of a percentage point off your returns. Not huge, but worth caring about. Didn’t you get into DIY investing to squeeze costs to the bare minimum?

Most of the bank-owned online brokerage firms charge a tick under $10 flat for trades. One way to save on commissions would be to switch to a cheaper broker:

  • CIBC Investor’s Edge charges a flat $6.95;
  • Questrade charges 1 cent a share with a $4.95 minimum and $9.95 maximum (electronic communications-network fees may apply as well);
  • Virtual Brokers charges 1 cent a share with a $1.99 minimum and $7.99 maximum;
  • Interactive Brokers charges 1 cent per share with a $1 minimum for Canadian stocks, and 0.5 US cents a share for U.S. stocks with a US$1 minimum.

Another way to lower your trading costs is to call your brokerage firm and ask whether, based on your trading volumes and account size, you qualify for a commission discount. A reader recently reported some success doing this. If your broker won’t play ball, try some competitors. A high six-figure account would probably be required to get a broker’s attention.

Another way to lower trading costs applies to investors who use exchange-traded funds. National Bank Direct Brokerage has no buy or sell commissions on ETFs if you trade a minimum trade of 100 shares. Virtual Brokers and Questrade let you buy ETFs at no cost, but regular commissions apply on a sale. Finally, Scotia iTrade and Qtrade have a limited menu of commission-free ETFs.

One final thought on cutting commissions: Take a look at balanced ETFs, a fully diversified portfolio packaged into a single fund. You just need to pick the balanced ETF that meets your needs. Each purchase will be divided by the ETF issuer into a predefined mix of stock and bond funds. One trade and you have a complete portfolio.

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