Scotia iTrade introduces commission-based bond trading

[marty123]

It's not clear what price will be used as these are often sold from inventory. It seems like it might be a situation where we'll have to trust that the broker is selling at the market price. It's not like there is a published ask/bid price for the bonds. Nevertheless, it's an extremely interesting development.

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Dear Scotia iTRADE® Customer,
Scotia iTRADE is pleased to introduce revolutionary fixed income pricing for Canadian investors. We make it easy for you to invest in fixed income and diversify your portfolio!1
Low, Simple Pricing

Until now, it has been difficult to understand what you were paying for a bond and what you were paying in fees. Scotia iTRADE has changed all that and is leading the way by offering transparent, low pricing:

Low, simple, commission pricing at $1 a Bond ($1 per $1,000 Face Value, $19.99 min/$250 max)*

[marty123]

They are listing a bid/ask, and even very basic "Level II" depth.
Inventory seems limited, but I'm not a bond trader, so what do I know.

[thegov]

Was checking a couple of corp quotes at canadianfixedincome.ca which only quotes to 2 decimals -- seemed pretty close to ITrade's numbers.

Not sure yet if this is good or bad for buying small quantities.


They still have a different price for bid and ask -- though the spreads on some are a lot smaller than before.

This'll take a while to figure out exactly what they've done, I think.

[zeno]

[quote="thegov"]Was checking a couple of corp quotes at canadianfixedincome.ca which only quotes to 2 decimals -- seemed pretty close to ITrade's numbers.

Not sure yet if this is good or bad for buying small quantities.

They still have a different price for bid and ask -- though the spreads on some are a lot smaller than before.

This'll take a while to figure out exactly what they've done, I think.[/quote]

I'm very interested in Scotia iTrade's new commission policy for bonds. Bonds seem to be the last frontier of true discount investing. What's your experience been so far? Has it made a difference on the bottom line price of of your bond purchases? Is it worth switching for?

I'm sorry I didn't see this thread earlier, as I could have checked the price of the above posted bond on my RBC Direct Investing and CIBC Investor's Edge accounts. Their bond pricing seems very close to each other. I would be interested in doing an apples-to-apples comparison with iTrade. Is anyone willing be willing to post the iTrade's price for another commonly traded bond for comparison purposes?

[voyager]

I used to do some bond trading before, since iTrade introduced the commission based trading, I stopped and trade convertible bonds instead. My feeling is that iTrade just introduced an extra cost on top of the original bid/ask spread, and the bond order has to be market order, doesn't worth cost.

[voyager]

Bad experience with iTrade is that they even cancelled my filled bond order two days later without any means of compensation, just told me that their back office has no underlying bonds in inventory.

[consultant]

I believe that the bond pricing have improved (even taking into account the trading fee) compared to their old pricing, although if you buy small amounts ($5,000) and pay the minimum of $20 it may not be true. Also compared to Waterhouse it is mostly cheaper and the inventory is better.

I am checking this thread because ITrade's bond trading system is now down in the middle of the day (shows nothing in the inventory). I called them to inquire on when they will fix it and they did not know it is down. The first reaction was to tell me that I am not using it correctly, etc. Seems that they still have not fixed all the issues from the conversion to Scotia....

[voyager]

Now the Scotia iTrade even couldn't trade exchange traded debenture online for quite a few weeks, their trading system is getting worse and worse since scotiabank bought it. For the bond pricing, except the extra trading fees, I didn't see any improvement (already used it for many years), the ads is ads. Probably it's time for a move, any better brokerage?