TD Direct Investing is one of Canada’s first online retail investing platforms. 

Though they have been slow to react to competitive threats such as Questrade, they have been upping their game year over year to improve the functionality of their platform. 

Let’s take a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly side of TD Direct Investing.

TD Direct Investing Review – The Good

Research. Included in TD Direct Investing’s WebBroker platform is a very respectable stock research function. You can easily see analyst price targets, latest news as well as research reports, and stock fundamentals.

TD Direct Investing Review - Stock Overview
TD Direct Investing Review – Stock Overview
TD Direct Investing Review - Analysts
TD Direct Investing Review – Analysts

Integration with Day-to-Day Banking Accounts. The TD platform does exceptionally well when it comes to integrating the trading accounts with day-to-day banking accounts. For example, if I want to transfer money from my TD all-inclusive chequing account into my TD Direct Investing TFSA account, the entire process takes mere seconds – whereas transferring money to a platform like Questrade or WealthSimple Trade takes much longer.

Variety of Accounts. TD Direct Investing has every type of account that retail investors would need. They include:

  • Tax-Free Savings Account (in both CAD and USD)
  • Registered Retirement Savings Plan
  • Registered Education Savings Plan
  • Registered Retirement Income Fund
  • Registered Disability Savings Plan (RDSP)
  • Margin and Cash accounts

Product Variety. There are some perks to being one of the largest banks in Canada, and that includes having access to a very wide range of investment products. With TD Direct Investing, you’ll be able to easily invest in:

TD Direct Investing Review – The Bad

A few times a year we will notice technical issues with TD Direct Investing. These typically range from login errors to planned outages. Usually these issues don’t happen during trading hours, but it is still very annoying.

TD Direct Investing Review - Downtime
TD Direct Investing Review – Downtime

For a large corporation like TD, their uptime should be 99.999% and most people should never notice it being down.

TD Direct Investing Review – The Ugly

While TD Direct Investing and its WebBroker platform is fairly popular in Canada, its trading fees are not competitive with discount brokerages such as Questrade and WealthSimple Trade. 

If you like to make a large number of trades, then you should probably consider an online-only discount brokerage such as Questrade or WealthSimple Trade. With TD, you’ll likely be paying a few dollars more per trade when compared with low cost competitors.

TD Direct Investing’s latest trading fees can be found here: https://www.td.com/ca/en/investing/direct-investing/pricing/

Should you get TD Direct Investing?

If you already bank with TD, then we think you should.

Despite the slightly high trading fees and commission, those things should not be the only factors you consider when choosing a brokerage. The research information, integration with your day-to-day TD accounts, and the fact that you can walk into a branch and yell at someone if something needs to get done right away are significant advantages versus an online-only discount brokerage.

We are not financial advisors, and no content on this site should not be taken as financial advice. No guarantee can be made if you invest based on the information provided on this blog. We make no warranty of any kind regarding the blog and/or any content, data, materials, information, products or services provided on the blog.