"They're like gyms that rely on only 5% of members showing up; when 40% show up on the same day, they've got problems," said Glenn LaCoste, chief executive at Surviscor, which analyzes online services including Canadian discount brokerages.Questrade, one of Canada's biggest non-bank online brokerages with C$20 billion of client assets, has had about 200,000 account openings annually in its 21 years of operation. Robinhood has amassed over 13 million accounts in 7 years.
"We have a very strong regulatory system in Canada...and we're not even close to the model of the firms" that experienced capital shortfalls in the US, said Stephen Graham, chief operating officer at Questrade.Qtrade's new account openings spiked 60% in the last week of January from previous weeks, and trade volumes doubled in the month from a year earlier, more than half of these coming from Blackberry, AMC Entertainment Holdings, and GameStop, according to Aviso data.
The only major zero-commission trading platform in Canada is Wealthsimple, owned by Power Corporation of Canada,. It charges 1.5% in exchange fees on US trades and funds Canadian trades with local deposits, chief executive Michael Katchen told Reuters. About 20% of its trades are in US dollars.