Making your first trade

Whether you’re saving up for retirement, your kids’ education, or just setting money aside for a family vacation, investing can play a central part in achieving your financial goals. However, if you’re new to investing, it can be tricky to figure out where exactly to begin.

Here are three easy steps to help you get started.

There are a number of special account types available to Canadian investors that can provide valuable incentives and advantages for specific goals. Some of the most popular accounts are:

• RRSP - Registered Retirement Savings Plans are designed for long-term investing towards your retirement, and let you deduct your contributions from your taxes.
• TFSA - Tax-Free Savings Accounts do exactly what they say: they let you save and invest tax-free. What’s better is, unlike other tax-advantaged accounts, there are very few restrictions on what you can use your TFSA funds for, making them very popular for general savings and investing.
• FHSA - First-Home Savings Accounts are designed to help Canadians to save for their first home. They have many of the advantages of RRSPs and TFSAs, but are meant only for saving up for your first home.
• RESP - The Registered Education Savings Plan lets you put money away to help pay for your kids’ post-secondary education. In addition to being tax-advantaged, RESP contributions are eligible for government contribution matching plans.

To learn more about the different accounts you can choose from and their respective advantages, see our Which accounts are right for me? article.

Once you’ve opened your account, all that’s left to do is fund it. Self-directed accounts can be opened with no minimums, and with fractional shares and $0 commissions you can start trading with as little as $1.

We can’t tell you what to buy, or how to invest. But we can provide you with as much information as possible to help you make an informed investing decision.

Forming your strategy

There are several aspects to investing strategy that can inform your buying decision: 

• Diversification - Diversification is how your money is spread across different investments, to make sure your eggs aren’t all in one basket.
• Risk tolerance - Your risk tolerance is how comfortable you are with market fluctuations. While historical stock market performance has had positive overall returns, there will always be times when certain stocks, or even the market as a whole, could experience a slowdown. Your risk tolerance is your ability to weather the storm when your portfolio is under-performing.
• Goals and time horizon - Together, your goals and time horizon determine how much you need to save, and how much time you have to save for it.
• Asset allocation - This usually refers to the balance between risk tolerance and return potential. Your asset allocation will usually be tied to all of the above: more conservative strategies have lower risk, which can be helpful if you have low risk tolerance or a shorter time horizon, whereas more aggressive strategies tend to have more potential for long-term returns, at the cost of being less predictable. 

Everyone has their own investing strategy, but these considerations can help you find the game plan that works best for you.

Finding securities

Once you have a general idea of what sort of strategy you want, the next step is to figure out which securities to invest in. 

Many new investors will use their own personal experience to help guide their early decisions, investing in shares of companies they interact with regularly and brands they recognize and respect. This can be a great starting point, but you may want to do a little extra research before you start investing.

To help you make informed decisions, Questrade has a number of research tools available to you on both web and mobile platforms, such as:

• TipRanks - All of our platforms feature a suite of research tools provided by TipRanks, which provide helpful information like sentiment analysis, performance data, and more 
• Seeking Alpha - Access relevant news and market insights with a click, and get connected to one of the world’s largest investing communities
• TradingView - Want even more powerful trading and charting tools? TradingView is an innovative trading platform that lets you access advanced charting, technical analysis tools, and more

TipRanks and Seeking Alpha are both built into our QuestMobile and Questrade Trading platforms. As shown in the screenshots above and below, they present information in a clear, simplified, easy to understand format. This makes them both great tools for newer traders to learn about specific stocks and make more informed investing decisions.

While TradingView is typically more for experienced traders, it does have some features that can be helpful to newer traders, like paper trading accounts that let you run simulated trades to test out new strategies that might be outside your current comfort zone.

At the end of the day, there’s no single strategy or research tool that works for everyone. It’s up to each individual investor to figure out what works best for them.

Once you know what you want to buy, it’s time to get started. Hop onto your platform of choice, and hit that buy button.

Choosing a platform

Questrade has a few platforms to choose from. Our standard platforms are designed to be easy-to-use and beginner-friendly if you’re just starting out, while still offering tools and features to help you research investments and form your strategy. Meanwhile, our Edge platforms are more advanced and offer greater trading capabilities if you’re an experienced trader.

If you’re making your first trade, you will likely be using one of our two most popular platforms:

• Questrade Trading - Our core investor platform, accessible from any web browser. This is a great go-to for anyone trading from a desktop or laptop. Learn how to trade with Questrade Trading.
• QuestMobile - A trading platform designed specifically for mobile devices. If you prefer to trade on-the-go, this is for you. Learn how to trade with QuestMobile.

If you’re a more advanced trader, or would prefer a platform with more advanced capabilities, you may want to consider our Edge platforms:

• Edge Web - The advanced side of Questrade Trading, giving you the advanced features of an Edge platform with the accessibility of a browser-based trading platform.
• Edge Desktop - Our downloadable platform, a cutting-edge trading platform designed to be fully customizable and packed with powerful tools and features.
• Edge Mobile - All the power of our advanced trading platform in the palm of your hand, ideal for advanced traders on-the-go.

Once you’ve found your platform of choice, you’re ready to buy your first security.

From here, trading is easy:

1. Look up the security you want to buy and choose the account you want to buy it with

2. Put in how much you want to spend, or how many shares you want to buy

3. Review, send, and you’re done!

You have now taken your first step on your investing journey.

Want to learn more about investing? Check out these articles:

• What is the stock market?
• Why 72 is the magic number when it comes to doubling your money
• 10 Tips that every new investor needs to know

And these lessons:

• Different investment strategies
• Data analysis
  

'Zero commission trades', '$0 commissions', '$0 trading', 'trade commission-free' and similar messages, refer to commission-free trading for trades placed online through Questrade, Inc.'s website or mobile apps for stocks and ETFs that are listed on a stock exchange in the United States or Canada. Other fees may still apply.

Questrade may close or modify fractional share positions in stocks or ETFs no longer eligible for fractional trading at any given time. Questrade Fractional Shares Disclosure Statement

Note: The information in this blog is for educational purposes only and should not be used or construed as financial or investment advice by any individual. Information obtained from third parties is believed to be reliable, but no representations or warranty, expressed or implied, is made by Questrade, Inc., its affiliates or any other person to its accuracy.