Canada’s recurring binary options problem

Approximately seven months ago the Canadian financial regulatory authorities enacted a ban on brokers offering binary options to all retail traders. Unfortunately, these actions seemed to have had little to no results on certain brokers that have implemented new tactics in order to gather money from unsuspecting investors.
On April 12th the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, more commonly referred to the IIROC cautioned Canadian traders not to be duped by fraudulent online trading brokers attempting to unlawfully sell binary options under the pretense of legitimate brokers regulated by the IIROC.

Binary options scams still exist

Recently the ombudsman has been made aware of at least two brokers that misleadingly state that they are regulated by IIROC:
​

• CFDtradeoption.com – run by Westrade Holdings, Inc;
• Globaloptionsmarket.net.

Binary options cannot be offered or sold to retail traders in Canada and the regulator has issued plenty of warnings, imploring Canadian citizens not to invest in these fraudulent companies. Under no circumstances are IIROC regulated entities authorized to sell binary options to retail investors in Canada.
This troubling tendency is bringing up concerns about how effective a blanket ban on offering of such toxic products as binaries to stop scams. ESMA, the European Securities and Markets Authority has recently put in rules that prohibit regulated brokers from offering binary options to retail investors. However, these recent developments in Canada call into question on whether a ban in Europe would, in fact, produce the wanted effect.

Opposition to the binary options ban

It should be noted that when the Canadian regulatory authorities first suggested to ban binary options, the proposal encountered stern opposition. The Investment Industry Association of Canada (IIAC), which represents 130 Dealer Member firms regulated by IIROC, asserted that the injunction should only include binary options scams offered by unregulated binary options brokers. The IIAC further maintained that its members should be allowed to offer binary options to retail traders.
Interestingly enough there have been proposals to allow trading binary options on an exchange, as this is allowed in the United States. However, opposed to that line of thinking are organizations such as the Canadian Advocacy Council for Canadian CFA Institute Societies (CAC), which heavily supported the binary options ban proposal and even went beyond it by questioning the status of OTC (Over the Counter) or more commonly known as retail Forex trading. The council questioned whether the sale of similar financial instruments to retail investors should additionally be restricted.

Get help now

If you have fallen victim to a cryptocurrency scam, send a complaint to at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), and we will do our very best to get into contact with you as soon as we can to initiate your funds recovery process.

Canada’s recurring binary options problem

Approximately seven months ago the Canadian financial regulatory authorities enacted a ban on brokers offering binary options to all retail traders. Unfortunately, these actions seemed to have had little to no results on certain brokers that have implemented new tactics in order to gather money from unsuspecting investors.
On April 12th the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, more commonly referred to the IIROC cautioned Canadian traders not to be duped by fraudulent online trading brokers attempting to unlawfully sell binary options under the pretense of legitimate brokers regulated by the IIROC.

Binary options scams still exist

Recently the ombudsman has been made aware of at least two brokers that misleadingly state that they are regulated by IIROC:

• CFDtradeoption.com – run by Westrade Holdings, Inc;
• Globaloptionsmarket.net.

Binary options cannot be offered or sold to retail traders in Canada and the regulator has issued plenty of warnings, imploring Canadian citizens not to invest in these fraudulent companies. Under no circumstances are IIROC regulated entities authorized to sell binary options to retail investors in Canada.
This troubling tendency is bringing up concerns about how effective a blanket ban on offering of such toxic products as binaries to stop scams. ESMA, the European Securities and Markets Authority has recently put in rules that prohibit regulated brokers from offering binary options to retail investors. However, these recent developments in Canada call into question on whether a ban in Europe would, in fact, produce the wanted effect.

Opposition to the binary options ban

It should be noted that when the Canadian regulatory authorities first suggested to ban binary options, the proposal encountered stern opposition. The Investment Industry Association of Canada (IIAC), which represents 130 Dealer Member firms regulated by IIROC, asserted that the injunction should only include binary options scams offered by unregulated binary options brokers. The IIAC further maintained that its members should be allowed to offer binary options to retail traders.
Interestingly enough there have been proposals to allow trading binary options on an exchange, as this is allowed in the United States. However, opposed to that line of thinking are organizations such as the Canadian Advocacy Council for Canadian CFA Institute Societies (CAC), which heavily supported the binary options ban proposal and even went beyond it by questioning the status of OTC (Over the Counter) or more commonly known as retail Forex trading. The council questioned whether the sale of similar financial instruments to retail investors should additionally be restricted.

Get help now

If you are the victim of an HBC Broker scam be sure to send your complaint to [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), and we will do our very best to get into contact with you as soon as we can to initiate your funds recovery process.

Looking for a decent broker for forex scalping and came across fusion markets. I'm a canadian and these guys look interesting. I don't see that many reviews or general discussion on them online so I'm wondering if they are safe at all?

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So here it is, three more days and October begins, which marks one year of trading for me. I figured I would contribute to the forum and share some of my experience, a little about me, and what I've learned so far. Whoever wants to listen, that's great. This might get long so buckle up..
Three years ago, I was visiting Toronto. I don't get out much, but my roommate at the time travels there occasionally. He asked everyone at our place if we wanted to come along for a weekend. My roommate has an uncle that lives there and we didn't have to worry about a hotel because his uncle owns a small house that's unlived in which we could stay at. I was the only one to go with. Anyways, we walk around the city, seeing the sights and whatnot.
My friend says to me "where next?"
"I don't know, you're the tour guide"
"We can go check out Bay Street"
"what's 'Bay Street?'"
"It's like the Canadian Wall street! If you haven't seen it you gotta see it!"
Walking along Bay, I admire all the nice buildings and architecture, everything seems larger than life to me. I love things like that. The huge granite facades with intricate designs and towering pillars to make you think, How the fuck did they make that? My attention pivots to a man walking on the sidewalk opposite us. His gait stood out among everyone, he walked with such a purpose.. He laughed into the cell phone to his ear. In the elbow-shoving city environment, he moved with a stride that exuded a power which not only commanded respect, but assumed it. I bet HE can get a text back, hell he's probably got girls waiting on him. This dude was dressed to kill, a navy suit that you could just tell from across the street was way out of my budget, it was a nice fucking suit. I want that. His life, across the street, seemed a world a way from my own. I've worn a suit maybe twice in my life. For my first communion, it was too big for me, I was eleven or whatever so who gives a shit, right? I'm positive I looked ridiculous. The other time? I can't remember.
I want that. I want the suit. I want the wealth, the independence. I want the respect and power, and I don't give a shit what anyone thinks about it.
Cue self doubt.
Well, He's probably some rich banker's son. That's a world you're born into. I don't know shit about it. \sigh* keep walking..*
​
A year later, I'm visiting my parents at their house, they live an hour away from my place. My dad is back from Tennessee, his engineering job was laying people off and he got canned... Or he saw the end was near and just left... I don't know, hard to pay attention to the guy honestly because he kind of just drones on and on. ("Wait, so your mom lives in Michigan, but your dad moved to Tennessee... for a job?" Yea man, I don't fucking know, not going to touch on that one.) The whole project was a shit show that was doomed to never get done, the way he tells it. And he's obviously jaded from multiple similar experiences at other life-sucking engineer jobs. My mom is a retired nurse practitioner who no longer works because of her illness. I ask him what he's doing for work now and he tells me he trades stocks from home. I didn't even know you could do that. I didn't know "trading" was a thing. I thought you just invest and hope for the best.
"Oh that's cool, how much money do you need to do that?"
"Ehh, most say you need at least $25,000 as a minimum"
"Oh... guess I can't do that..."
Six months later, I get a call and it's my dad. We talk a little about whatever. Off topic, he starts asking if I'm happy doing what I'm doing (I was a painter, commercial and residential) I tell him yes but it's kind of a pain in the ass and I don't see it as a long term thing. Then he gets around to asking if I'd like to come work with him. He basically pitches it to me. I'm not one to be sold on something, I'm always skeptical. So I ask all the questions that any rational person would ask and he just swats them away with reassuring phrases. He was real confident about it. But basically he says for this to work, I have to quit my job and move back home so he can teach me how to trade and be by my side so I don't do anything stupid. "My Name , you can make so much money." I say that I can't raise the $25,000 because I'm not far above just living paycheck to paycheck. "I can help you out with that." Wow, okay, well... let me think about it.
My "maybe" very soon turned into a "definitely." So over the next six months, I continue to work my day job painting, and I try to save up what I could for the transition (it wasn't a whole lot, I sucked at saving. I was great at spending though!). My dad gives me a book on day trading (which I will mention later) and I teach myself what I can about the stock market using Investopedia. Also in the meantime, my dad sends me encouraging emails. He tells me to think of an annual income I would like to make as a trader, and used "more than $100,000 but less than a million" as a guideline. He tells me about stocks that he traded that day or just ones that moved and describes the basic price action and the prices to buy and sell at. Basically saying "if you bought X amount of shares here and sold it at X price here, you could make a quick 500 bucks!" I then use a trading sim to trade those symbols and try to emulate what he says. Piece of cake. ;)
Wow, that's way more than what I make in a day.
He tells me not to tell anyone about my trading because most people just think it's gambling. "Don't tell your Mom either." He says most people who try this fail because they don't know how to stop out and take a loss. He talks about how every day he was in a popular chatroom, some noob would say something like, "Hey guys, I bought at X price (high of day or thereabout), my account is down 80% .. uhh I'm waiting for it to come back to my entry price.. what do I do??"
Well shit, I'm not that fucking dumb. If that's all it takes to make it is to buy low, sell high, and always respect a stop then I'll be fantastic.
By the end of September, I was very determined. I had been looking forward everyday to quitting my painting job because while it used to be something I loved, it was just sucking the life out of me at this point. Especially working commercial, you just get worked like a dog. I wasn't living up to my potential with that job and I felt awful for it every minute of every day. I knew that I needed a job where I could use my brain instead of slaving my body to fulfill someone else's dream. "Someone's gotta put gas in the boss's boat" That's a line my buddy once said that he probably doesn't know sticks with me to this day.
It ain't me.
So now it was October 2018, and I'm back living with Mom n' Pops. I was so determined that on my last day of work I gave away all of my painting tools to my buddy like, "here, I don't need this shit." Moving out of my rental was easy because I don't own much, 'can't take it with ya.' Excited for the future I now spend my days bundled up in winter wear in the cold air of our hoarder-like basement with a space heater at my feet. My laptop connected to a TV monitor, I'm looking at stocks next to my dad and his screens in his cluttered corner. Our Trading Dungeon. I don't trade any money, (I wasn't aware of any real-time sim programs) I just watch and learn from my dad. Now you've got to keep in mind, and look at a chart of the S&P, this is right at the beginning of Oct '18, I came in right at the market top. Right at the start of the shit-show. For the next three or four weeks, I watch my dad pretty much scratch on every trade, taking small loss after small loss, and cursing under his breath at the screen.
Click.
"dammit."
Click.
"shit."
Click. Click.
"you fuck."
Click.
This gets really fucking annoying as time goes on, for weeks, and I get this attitude like ugh, just let me do it. I'll make us some fucking money. So I convince him to let me start trading live. I didn't know anything about brokers so I set up an account using his broker, which was Fidelity. It was a pain and I had to jump through a lot of hoops to be able to day trade with this broker. I actually had to make a joint account with my dad as I couldn't get approved for margin because my credit score is shit (never owned a credit card) and my net worth, not much. Anyways, they straight up discourage day trading and I get all kinds of warning messages with big red letters that made me shit myself like oooaaahhh what the fuck did I do now. Did I forget to close a position?? Did I fat finger an order? Am I now in debt for thousands of dollars to Fidelity?? They're going to come after me like they came after Madoff. Even after you are approved for PDT you still get these warning messages in your account. Some would say if I didn't comply with "whatever rule" they'd even suspend my account for 60 days. It was ridiculous, hard to describe because it doesn't make sense, and it took the support guy on the phone a good 20 minutes to explain it to me. Basically I got the answer "yea it's all good, you did nothing wrong. As long as you have the cash in your account to cover whatever the trade balance was" So I just kept getting these warnings that I had to ignore everyday. I hate Fidelity.
My fist day trading, I made a few so-so trades and then I got impatient. I saw YECO breaking out and I chased, soon realized I chased, so I got out. -$500. Shit, I have to make that back, I don't want my dad to see this. Got back in. Shit. -$400. So my first day trading, I lost $900. My dumbass was using market orders so that sure didn't help. I reeled the risk back and traded more proper position size for a while, but the commissions for a round trip are $10, so taking six trades per day, I'm losing $60 at a minimum on top of my losing trades. Quickly I realized I didn't know what the hell I was doing. What about my dad? Does HE know? One day, in the trading dungeon, I was frustrated with the experience I'd been having and just feeling lost overall. I asked him.
"So, are you consistently profitable?"
"mmm... I do alright."
"Yea but like, are you consistently profitable over time?"
.........................
"I do alright."
Silence.
"Do you know any consistently profitable traders?"
"Well the one who wrote that book I gave you, Tina Turner.. umm and there's Ross Cameron"
......................
"So you don't know any consistently profitable traders, personally.. People who are not trying to sell you something?"
"no."
...................
Holy fucking shit, what did this idiot get me into. He can't even say it to my face and admit it.
This entire life decision, quitting my job, leaving my rental, moving from my city to back home, giving shit away, it all relied on that. I was supposed to be an apprentice to a consistently profitable day trader who trades for a living. It was so assumed, that I never even thought to ask! Why would you tell your son to quit his job for something that you yourself cannot do? Is this all a scam? Did my dad get sold a DREAM? Did I buy into some kind of ponzi scheme? How many of those winning trades he showed me did he actually take? Are there ANY consistently profitable DAY TRADERS who TRADE FOR A LIVING? Why do 90% fail? Is it because the other 10% are scamming the rest in some way? Completely lost, I just had no clue what was what. If I was going to succeed at this, if it was even possible to succeed at this, it was entirely up to me. I had to figure it out. I still remember the feeling like an overwhelming, crushing weight on me as it all sunk in. This is going to be a big deal.. I'm not the type to give up though. In that moment, I said to myself,
I'm going to fucking win at this. I don't know if this is possible, but I'm going to find out. I cannot say with certainty that I will succeed, but no matter what, I will not give up. I'm going to give all of myself to this. I will find the truth.
It was a deep moment for me. I don't like getting on my soapbox, but when I said those things, I meant it. I really, really meant it. I still do, and I still will.
Now it might seem like I'm being hard on my dad. He has done a lot for me and I am very grateful for that. We're sarcastic as hell to each other, I love the bastard. Hell, I wouldn't have the opportunity to trade at all if not for him. But maybe you can also understand how overwhelmed I felt at that time. Not on purpose, of course he means well. But I am not a trusting person at all and I was willing to put trust into him after all the convincing and was very disappointed when I witnessed the reality of the situation. I would have structured this transition to trading differently, you don't just quit your job and start trading. Nobody was there to tell me that! I was told quite the opposite. I'm glad it happened anyway, so fuck it. I heard Kevin O'Leary once say,
"If I knew in the beginning how difficult starting a business was, I don't know that I ever would've started."
This applies very much to my experience.
So what did I do? Well like everyone I read and read and Googled and Youtube'd my ass off. I sure as hell didn't pay for a course because I didn't have the money and I'm like 99% sure I would be disappointed by whatever they were teaching as pretty much everything can be found online or in books for cheap or free. Also I discovered Thinkorswim and I used that to sim trade in real-time for three months. This is way the hell different than going on a sim at 5x speed and just clicking a few buy and sell buttons. Lol, useless. When you sim trade in real-time you're forced to have a routine, and you're forced to experience missing trades with no chance to rewind or skip the boring parts. That's a step up because you're "in it". I also traded real money too, made some, lost more than I made. went back to sim. Traded live again, made some but lost more, fell back to PDT. Dad fronted me more cash. This has happened a few times. He's dug me out of some holes because he believes in me. I'm fortunate.
Oh yeah, about that book my dad gave me. It's called A Beginner's Guide to Day Trading Online by Toni Turner. This book... is shit. This was supposed to be my framework for how to trade and I swear it's like literally nothing in this book fucking works lol. I could tell this pretty early on, intuitively, just by looking at charts. It's basically a buy-the-breakout type strategy, if you want to call it a strategy. No real methodology to anything just vague crap and showing you cherry-picked charts with entries that are way too late. With experience in the markets you will eventually come to find that MOST BREAKOUTS FAIL. It talks about support/resistance lines and describes them as, "picture throwing a ball down at the floor, it bounces up and then it bounces down off the ceiling, then back up." So many asinine assumptions. These ideas are a text book way of how to trade like dumb money. Don't get me wrong, these trades can work but you need to be able to identify the setups which are more probable and identify reasons not to take others. So I basically had to un-learn all that shit.
Present day, I have a routine in place. I'm out of the dungeon and trade by myself in my room. I trade with a discount broker that is catered to day traders and doesn't rape me on commissions. My mornings have a framework for analyzing the news and economic events of the particular day, I journal so that I can recognize what I'm doing right and where I need to improve. I record my screens for later review to improve my tape reading skills. I am actually tracking my trades now and doing backtesting in equities as well as forex. I'm not a fast reader but I do read a lot, as much as I can. So far I have read about 17-18 books on trading and psychology. I've definitely got a lot more skilled at trading.
As of yet I am not net profitable. Writing that sounds like selling myself short though, honestly. Because a lot of my trades are very good and are executed well. I have talent. However, lesser quality trades and trades which are inappropriately sized/ attempted too many times bring down that P/L. I'm not the type of trader to ignore a stop, I'm more the trader that just widdles their account down with small losses. I trade live because at this point, sim has lost its value, live trading is the ultimate teacher. So I do trade live but I just don't go big like I did before, I keep it small.
I could show you trades that I did great on and make people think I'm killing it but I really just don't need the validation. I don't care, I'm real about it. I just want to get better. I don't need people to think I'm a genius, I'm just trying to make some money.
Psychologically, to be honest with you, I currently feel beaten down and exhausted. I put a lot of energy into this, and sometimes I work myself physically sick, it's happened multiple times. About once a week, usually Saturday, I get a headache that lasts all day. My body's stress rebound mechanism you might call it. Getting over one of those sick periods now, which is why I barely even traded this week. I know I missed a lot of volatility this week and some A+ setups but I really just don't give a shit lol. I just currently don't have the mental capital, I think anyone who's been day trading every day for a year or more can understand what I mean by that. I'm still being productive though. Again, I'm not here to present an image of some badass trader, just keeping it real. To give something 100% day after day while receiving so much resistance, it takes a toll on you. So a break is necessary to avoid making bad trading decisions. That being said, I'm progressing more and more and eliminating those lesser quality trades and identifying my bad habits. I take steps to control those habits and strengthen my good habits such as having a solid routine, doing review and market research, taking profits at the right times, etc.
So maybe I can give some advice to some that are new to day trading, those who are feeling lost, or just in general thinking "...What the fuck..." I thought that every night for the first 6 months lol.
First of all, manage expectations. If you read my story of how I came to be a trader, you can see I had a false impression of trading in many aspects. Give yourself a realistic time horizon to how progress should be made. Do not set a monetary goal for yourself, or any time-based goal that is measured in your P/L. If you tell yourself, "I want to make X per day, X per week, or X per year" you're setting yourself up to feel like shit every single day when it's clear as the blue sky that you won't reach that goal anytime soon. As a matter of fact, it will appear you are moving further AWAY from that goal if you just focus on your P/L, which brings me to my next point.
You will lose money. In the beginning, most likely, you will lose money. I did it, you'll do it, the greatest Paul Tudor Jones did it. Trading is a skill that needs to be developed, and it is a process. Just look at it as paying your tuition to the market. Sim is fine but don't assume you have acquired this skill until you are adept at trading real money. So when you do make that leap, just trade small.
Just survive. Trade small. get the experience. Protect your capital. To reach break even on your bottom line is a huge accomplishment. In many ways, experience and screen time are the secret sauce.
Have a routine. This is very important. I actually will probably make a more in-depth post in the future about this if people want it. When I first started, I was overwhelmed with the feeling "What the fuck am I supposed to DO?" I felt lost. There's no boss to tell you how to be productive or how to find the right stocks, which is mostly a blessing, but a curse for new traders.
All that shit you see, don't believe all that bullshit. You know what I'm talking about. The bragposting, the clickbait Youtube videos, the ads preying on you. "I made X amount of money in a day and I'm fucking 19 lolz look at my Lamborghini" It's all a gimmick to sell you the dream. It's designed to poke right at your insecurities, that's marketing at it's finest. As for the bragposting on forums honestly, who cares. And I'm not pointing fingers on this forum, just any trading forum in general. They are never adding anything of value to the community in their posts. They never say this is how I did it. No, they just want you to think they're a genius. I can show you my $900 day trading the shit out of TSLA, but that doesn't tell the whole story. Gamblers never show you when they lose, you might never hear from those guys again because behind the scenes, they over-leveraged themselves and blew up. Some may actually be consistently profitable and the trades are 100% legit. That's fantastic. But again, I don't care, and you shouldn't either. You shouldn't compare yourself to others.
"Everyone's a genius in a bull market" Here's the thing.. Markets change. Edges disappear. Trading strategies were made by traders who traded during times when everything they did worked. Buy all the breakouts? Sure! It's the fucking tech bubble! Everything works! I'm sure all those typical setups used to work fantastically at some point in time. But the more people realize them, the less effective they are. SOMEONE has to be losing money on the opposite side of a winning trade, and who's willing to do that when the trade is so obvious? That being said, some things are obvious AND still work. Technical analysis works... sometimes. The caveat to that is, filters. You need to, in some way, filter out certain setups from others. For example, you could say, "I won't take a wedge pattern setup on an intraday chart unless it is in a higher time frame uptrend, without nearby resistance, and trading above average volume with news on that day."
Have a plan. If you can't describe your plan, you don't have one. Think in probabilities. You should think entirely in "if, then" scenarios. If X has happens, then Y will probably happen. "If BABA breaks this premarket support level on the open I will look for a pop up to short into."
Backtest. Most traders lose mainly because they think they have an edge but they don't. You read these books and all this stuff online telling you "this is a high probability setup" but do you know that for a fact? There's different ways to backtest, but I think the best way for a beginner is manual backtesting with a chart and an excel sheet. This builds up that screen time and pattern recognition faster. This video shows how to do that. Once I saw someone do it, it didn't seem so boring and awful as I thought it was.
Intelligence is not enough. You're smarter than most people, that's great, but that alone is not enough to make you money in trading necessarily. Brilliant people try and fail at this all the time, lawyers, doctors, surgeons, engineers.. Why do they fail if they're so smart? It's all a fucking scam. No, a number of reasons, but the biggest is discipline and emotional intelligence.
Journal every day. K no thanks, bro. That's fucking gay. That's how I felt when I heard this advice but really that is pride and laziness talking. This is the process you need to do to learn what works for you and what doesn't. Review the trades you took, what your plan was, what actually happened, how you executed. Identify what you did well and what you can work on. This is how you develop discipline and emotional intelligence, by monitoring yourself. How you feel physically and mentally, and how these states affect your decision-making.
Always be learning. Read as much as you can. Good quality books. Here's the best I've read so far;
Market Wizards -Jack Schwager
One Good Trade -Mike Bellafiore
The Daily Trading Coach -Bret Steenbarger
Psycho-cybernetics -Maxwell Maltz
Why You Win or Lose -Fred Kelly
The Art and Science of Technical Analysis -Adam Grimes
Dark Pools -Scott Patterson
Be nimble. Everyday I do my research on the symbols I'm trading and the fundamental news that's driving them. I might be trading a large cap that's gapping up with a beat on EPS and revenue and positive guidance. But if I see that stock pop up and fail miserably on the open amidst huge selling pressure, and I look and see the broader market tanking, guess what, I'm getting short, and that's just day trading. The movement of the market, on an intraday timeframe, doesn't have to make logical sense.
Adapt. In March I used to be able to buy a breakout on a symbol and swing it for the majority of the day. In the summer I was basically scalping on the open and being done for the day. Volatility changes, and so do my profit targets.
Be accountable. Be humble. Be honest. I take 100% responsibility for every dime I've lost or made in the market. It's not the market makers fault, it wasn't the HFTs, I pressed the button. I know my bad habits and I know my good habits.. my strengths/ my weaknesses.
Protect yourself from toxicity. Stay away from traders and people on forums who just have that negative mindset. That "can't be done" mentality. Day trading is a scam!! It can certainly be done. Prove it, you bastard. I'm posting to this particular forum because I don't see much of that here and apparently the mods to a good job of not tolerating it. As the mod wrote in the rules, they're most likely raging from a loss. Also, the Stocktwits mentality of "AAPL is going to TANK on the open! $180, here we come. $$$" , or the grandiose stories, "I just knew AMZN was going to go up on earnings. I could feel it. I went ALL IN. Options money, baby! ka-ching!$" Lol, that is so toxic to a new trader. Get away from that. How will you be able to remain nimble when this is your thought process?
Be good to yourself. Stop beating yourself up. You're an entrepreneur. You're boldly going where no man has gone before. You've got balls.
Acknowledge your mistakes, don't identify with them. You are not your mistakes and you are not your bad habits. These are only things that you do, and you can take action necessary to do them less.
It doesn't matter what people think. Maybe they think you're a fool, a gambler. You don't need their approval. You don't need to talk to your co-workers and friends about it to satisfy some subconscious plea for guidance; is this a good idea?
You don't need anyone's permission to become the person you want to be.
They don't believe in you? Fuck 'em. I believe in you.

Hi,
I will be moving from Australia to Canada. I have a fair amount of stocks across Australia, US, Hongkong etc. I need help choosing a broker as I wish to transfer these stocks to a Canadian Broker.
Below are my 3 requirements and would really appreciate your help :)

1. BIGGEST ISSUE is finding a broker who trades across different international exchanges like Australian, Chinese, European etc. The one I use here does. Most brokers I found online in Canada trade only Canadian and US stocks like Questrade. I only buy stocks, no options etc.
2. ANOTHER ISSUE is a broker with low forex fees. I could not find this information on the websites of most brokers.
3. Bein able to hold different currency accounts, so if I sell a US stock I don't want it to be automatically converted to CAD and pay a forex fee as I may want to use those to buy USD stocks later.

Things that are nice to have but not necessary are:

1. A bank brokerage - seems safe when you are new to a country
2. Low brokerage cost- as I only make very few transactions.
3. Being able to place limit orders

Thank you very much for reading my post and for your suggestions.

I just want to share my personal experience change brokerage from RBC&TD to interactive broker since late 2019. I found interactive broker much better than TD/RBC for my US equity investment. I invest predominantly in US stocks, including Canadian companies dual listed in NYSE/NASDAQ.
Some of the big Pros:

1. Very low commission compared to RBC/TD. 1USD for fixed pricing, 0.35 for tired pricing.
2. Participation in pre-market and after-market. This help me to fill my aggressive limit order.
3. USD/CAD forex is 2USD, even cheaper than Nombert Gambit.
4. Fractional shares allow me to invest in Google/Amazon/Tesla in a more reasonable pace.(buy 500 dollars for four times vs buy 2000 at one time)

Some Cons:

1. They have several platforms which is very confusing. TWS is most powerful but look ugly on Mac. Client portal is nice looking but function-lacking. I actually found IBKR IOS to be powerful but also nice looking, so end up mostly use IBKR IOS.
2. Be careful using EFT deposit. There is a 60 business day holding period if withdrawal to a different bank.
3. One might need to spend some time research on their fee structure, deposit/withdrawal procedure.

I have ignored IB for years due to it being an American brokerage and do not have physical locations. Finally tried it and now think it is the best for US equity investment in Canada. Hopefully if we move more investment to online brokerage such as Questrade/IB/Wealthsimple, eventually will shake the big 5 and force them to lower their ridiculous commission.(It is still nice to have one of the big 5 for some portfolio.)

Hi,
I will be moving from Australia to Canada. I have a fair amount of stocks across Australia, US, Hongkong etc. I need help choosing a broker as I wish to transfer these stocks to a Canadian Broker.
Below are my 3 requirements and would really appreciate your help :)

1. BIGGEST ISSUE is finding a broker who trades across different international exchanges like Australian, Chinese, European etc. The one I use here does. Most brokers I found online in Canada trade only Canadian and US stocks like Questrade. I only buy stocks, no options etc.
2. ANOTHER ISSUE is a broker with low forex fees. I could not find this information on the websites of most brokers.
3. Bein able to hold different currency accounts, so if I sell a US stock I don't want it to be automatically converted to CAD and pay a forex fee as I may want to use those to buy USD stocks later.

Things that are nice to have but not necessary are:

1. A bank brokerage - seems safe when you are new to a country
2. Low brokerage cost- as I only make very few transactions.
3. Being able to place limit orders

Thank you very much for reading my post and for your suggestions.

A few months ago I came across a way to hold crypto in my RRSP/TFSA and have been answering questions about how to do that in comments, DM's, and Skype consults. I figured it would be helpful to put together one big comprehensive FAQ. Cryptocurrency is treated as a commodity by the CRA and you must pay capital gains taxes on any profits if held outside a TFSA. If bitcoin goes to $1m as some are predicting, the Canadian government is going to be taxing a huge windfall in capital gains taxes.
BACKGROUND
Bitcoin & other crypto cannot be held directly in a RRSP/TFSA, and there are no eligible ETF's in North America yet. However, the ETN COINXBT which trades on the Stockholm Stock Exchange in Sweden (Nasdaq Stockholm) is eligible.
ABOUT COINXBT
COINXBT holds bitcoin directly and its price per share is based on a 0.005 multiple of the current bitcoin price.
For example, if the current price of bitcoin is $10000USD, a share of COINXBT will be worth $50USD (ie: $493 Swedish Kroner)
Company's website and full prospectus at: https://xbtprovider.com/
Price quote / chart: https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/COINXBT:SS
HOW-TO TRADE
Only some Canadian brokerages allow you to trade on eligible international exchanges in your TFSA. Some do not.
Typically placing trades on international exchanges online is not an option and must be made over the phone broker-assisted at a much higher cost than typical North American securities.
CANADIAN BROKERS
I've called pretty much every brokerage to inquire if international securities can be held in a TFSA and what the fee is to transact. You may want to call yourself to see if policies have changed, but here's a summary:

• National Bank: $75 per trade + $0.06 per share (confirmed works)
• TD: Fee dependent on amount traded. Up to $5K is $187, $80K would be $520 per trade (confirmed works)
• CIBC: $250 minimum, based on trade amount. $50K would be about $350 to buy and $350 to sell (confirmed works)
• Scotia iTrade: $250 CAD per trade CAD, unlimited shares & order size (should work)
• BMO Investorline: Fee-based on total trade amount. $50K would be $325 to buy $225 to sell, $50-$60K would be $350 to buy $240 to sell (should work)

Not available, or not available in RRSP/TFSA:

• Interactive Brokers, can trade it, but not in RRSP/TFSA
• Questrade
• Royal Bank
• Credential Direct
• HSBC (has access to almost every exchange other than Stockholm)
• Qtrade
• Virtual Brokers

FAQ's
Are you sure it's legal? I'm quite sure it's illegal.

• This is 100% legal. The Stockholm Stock Exchange is a RRSP/TFSA eligible exchange. Source: https://www.fin.gc.ca/act/fim-imf/dse-bvd-eng.asp

Who is your broker? CAD account?

• I used National Bank Direct Brokerage. The fee's came out to $75 per trade + $0.06 per share.
  For example, the commission for a trade I did for 885 shares of COINXBT was $75 + $53.10 for a total of $128.10. Canadian funds were used to make the purchase and there were no forex fees for converting to Swedish Kroner (SEK)
  

How do I make a trade once I'm ready?

• Call your brokerage and say you want to place a trade on the Stockholm stock exchange. You may be forwarded to a person that specializes in that, and eventually to a broker that deals with placing order on international exchanges. Tell them the symbol to trade is COINXBT and the name of the ETN is "Bitcoin Tracker One".

How do I calculate the number of shares to trade to max out my TFSA?

• The price of COINXBT is in SEK. In my case using NB I took my balance minus anticipated fees divided by the current price to see how many shares I could buy.
  For example: For a $10,000 TFSA, current COINXBT price = $554.77SEK (84.27CAD), would be 117 shares at a cost of $9859.59 + $82.02 commission for a total of $9941.61CAD
  

Market or Limit order?

• The first time I placed an order for COINXBT I tried to place a limit order a little below the market price. Over the next week the price of bitcoin ran up a lot and didn't come down. I ended up buying a lot higher. Since then I've been placing limit orders slightly above the current price or just market orders so that they go through right away. I've had no issues doing it either way.

When can I trade? Is it only possible to make the trade while the Swedish market is open and the TSX are open at the same time? Or can you place the order at any time of day?

• You should be able to place the trade anytime your Canadian broker is open (~9:00 - 17:30 EST). However, it the time is outside Stockholm's trading hours, it will be entered as an after-hours trade and will go live when Stockholm opens the next day. My understanding is that the Stockholm exchange closes at 5:30PM (11:30 EST). Here's a comparison of timezones showing Stockholm trading hours: https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/?qm=1&lid=2673730,6077243,5946768&h=2673730&date=2017-10-3&sln=9-18.5

Which number did you use to contact the brokerages?

• Contact numbers for various Canadian brokers: http://www.moneysmartsblog.com/canadian-online-discount-stock-brokerage-comparison/

What happens when there is a fork?

• XBT Provider has said they will monitor forks for 3-months and then decide what action to take. In the case of Bitcoin Cash, they sold the forked coins and distributed it as a dividend to anyone that held ETN shares on the fork date.

What about other cryptocurrencies?

• An ethereum ETN was recently launched: COINETH that also trades on the Stockholm exchange. https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/COINETH:SS
  Other than that, I am not aware of any other eligible crypto securities that can be held in a RRSP/TFSA
  

How is the price of COINXBT determined?

• It's based on the average price of the top 3 exchanges

Why not just buy GBTC?

• GBTC is traded on the OTC exchange in the US and is not RRSP/TFSA eligible

Why can't I place a trade online myself?

• For now, there are no crypto ETF's on North American exchanges. They have been in the works for years in the US, but no approvals yet. Evolve funds recently said they plan to launch a Canadian Bitcoin ETF.
  Trading COINXBT is a bit of a hassle, but you're getting in ahead of everyone else that are not willing to put in the time/effort.
  Once the Canadian/US ETF launches, it will probably be worth it to sell COINXBT and switch to the North American one which should be easy to trade online just like other ETF's.
  

Feedback
If you've managed to get crypto into your RRSP/TFSA in any other ways than listed above please do leave a comment and I'll update the post. Thanks!