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"Canada needs the
online trading and discount brokerage industry."
That, in nine
words, is our view.
In this, our
first editorial in Canadian Online Trader, we provide
five reasons why Canada needs our industry.
ONE - ease of investing
We--that is,
the vast majority of Canadians--need an easy and convenient way
to invest our money. Signing up for an online brokerage account
is not at all difficult, and once that's done, buying, and
later, selling, is easy and convenient.
TWO - trust
We need to be able to make these investments based on
trustworthy information. It would not take very long for any of
us to find friends, relatives, office colleagues, or maybe even
just look in a mirror, to find investors taken to the cleaners
by financial advisors who insisted that the best way for us to
invest our money was to buy the products with the highest
commissions for them.
At least we can trust our own motives.
THREE -
competence through education
There's no denying the importance of good advice, but one of the
problems of investing through an individual financial advisor is
simply that you may have found graduate number 207 in a training
class with 207 students.
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And yet this is
the person assigned to your account by a big investment firm.
Your advisor can be as honest as the day is long. Just not very
skilled.
As an online
investor, you can get your information from the
people--plural--you choose, and check out their qualifications
without any embarrassment.
FOUR - variety
and choice
As an online trader, you can pick a broker which offers whatever
you want to buy, from whatever stock market you want to deal
with, anywhere in the world. Contrast this with trying to get
your 9-to-5 conventional financial advisers to place your money
in an investment outside their own little circle, outside of
office hours.
FIVE - forced
growth for you
But this could well be the most important benefit to Canada of
the ongoing existence of online brokers.
You are
responsible for your own decisions, and that means you MUST work
hard at building your knowledge, understanding more and more of
the choices that face you, and you MUST keep track of what your
investments are doing.
As a client of an
online brokerage, chances are greatly decreased that you are
even going to take the time to look at your account records on screen.
As far as opening
those envelopes that arrive containing your financial records...
many conventional investors think, or at least hope, their
advisers will call if thre's anything worth reading.
When you manage
your own investments, you'll understand
what the TV announcers mean when they talk about the stock market.
You'll know, because you were forced to learn, whether that
politician at the lecture is spouting good policy, or nonsense.
Canadian
Online Trader is proud to be the voice of this industry.
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