Hi All,
I’ve been practicing with OANDA for the past couple months and am looking to open a trading account 
But during registration OANDA Canada just informed me I have to be an accredited investor to be able to open an account with them (which means I need to have an income over 200k a year or own >1 million asset beside my residence…)
Is there any other platform Canadian can use without having to meet this requirement? 
Thanks!!!
Questrade should be fine ( i used them before i went to the one below )
Dukascopy should be fine too ( i use them now )
Thanks!
But it seems like I can only deposit USD into the account for Questrade, even if I deposit as CAD it will convert to USD immediately… but then the chance of losing profit happens there as I mainly trade CAD/XXX…
Is it the same with Dukascopy?
ya, if memory serves in the stocks account (Questrade) you could settle in CAD but in FX you had to settle in USD.
Dukascopy can settle in USD, CAD, EUR, and a handful of others. opening is a bit more involved than with Q and you have to account for initial funding fees (bank wire) which i think could be $10 to $50 depending on $$$ value being wired. once you get past that, D kicks Q’s butt like there’s no tomorrow.
there may be other options too, like FXCM. last time i looked at them, they looked pretty darn good.
I’m in the same boat. Just now, I went to sign up for a real account with Oanda, and… surprise!.. I can’t because I’m not a millionaire, literally!
Oanada says for a Canadian to open an account, you must be qualify to be an Accredited Investor. That basically means Canadians are required to have at least $1,000,000 in assets, or an income of $200,000. Ridiculous! I’m gonna miss Oanda’s 1 pip spread on EUR/USD
I kinda got in a panic, and got pretty worried that other brokers might have this same requirement. I just emailed 26 brokers, asking about their requirements for Canadians, including Dukascopy and Questrade.
So do you guys know for sure that it’s not the same BS with all brokers?
i’m not a millionaire (yet) and had no problems opening with Q or D. but i live in canada. if you live in thailand, you might have other restrictions imposed even if your citizenship is canuckistan.
Same situation here… I’ve been demo trading on Oanda for three months.
My trading plan is based on Oanda’s spread and I’ve been spending time trying to famliarize myself with their platform which isn’t the greatest… Last night I go to sign up and I found out about this rule! Funny I’ve scoured through the forums a few months back trying to find a broker and there was no previous mention of this.
Are there any brokers with spreads similar or better then OANDA? So far I’ve heard Dukascopy had better spreads but their minimum deposit say $5000 on the Swiss site and Europe site $100 ??
MB trading advertises better rates as well. But they only offer the MT4 platform which is not good for one click trading …
Anyone have experience with any of these guys or suggestions for other brokers?
Any Canadians try opening accounts with them? Seems Dukascopy is a bit harder to open an account with.
Is it possible to open through Oanda’s other branch??
The biggest thing my trading plan was relying on was the fact that Oanda lets you trade single units of currency… This was key in my trading plan so that lot sizes don’t have to be increased from 0.2 to 0.3 instead you could go to 0.233 for example… Man how frustrating!
my Dukas account lets me trade from 1000 units (which is 1 micro lot i think) without problem and it’s a normal account (no special settings as far as i recall). i was able to open my account with them with no more than $2k CAD a year and a bit ago, so i guess their opening limits have changed! though to be fair, if you really want to make solid amounts of money, then a $5k opening balance isn’t all that huge.
i wouldn’t say that opening an account with Dukas is HARD. sure, you need a few solid dollars to put up, and the process needs a bit more paperwork, but it’s not hard, just takes an extra half day to get the things in order.
what you could do is open an account with Questrade (Canadian), build up your experience and equity to over $5k (or save up to add to what you have) and then make the move to Dukascopy if you like their platform / spreads / etc.
what are FXCM’s requirements??? i hear good things about them overall.
I agree that you need at least $5k and that’s not enough, but I’m a noob so opening a $500 account is in between demo and live. If that works out I can justify increasing the amount if it has to be more it’s not the end of the world. Oanda has a feature that you can set for you trade size NAV net value of account. That way if you set it for example that a 30 pips gain is a 1% increase in your account it will always be so since your trade value increases as your account increases… This works well with Oanda because you can literally trade 1 single unit… So you can have positions of say 1544 where as if you’re trading micro lots you can only go up in 1000 unit increments hence NAV with small accounts wouldn’t work.
I hear quest trade has a typical spread of 3-5 on eur usd and Dukascopy is around .7 and mb around .5? I don’t know if anyone can confirm. Quest trade spread is too high.
Your right about the setup with Dukascopy it’s not impossible just a bit harder, Ie on their site it says you have to mail them your docs where Oanda you can email or fax… Much easier.
I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about fxcm but then again it seems like there is stories about every broker … Anybody know their typical spread? Any Canadians have experience opening an account with them recently?
Anybody have experience with MB? I still don’t understand what an exn is vs an ecn, but their spread seems good they have a lot of awards listed from Barron’s only thing I hear they don’t have as much money so they are considered small not sure if that’s true and how important that is
I just want to say between learning technical analysis, money management, and market psychology I’ve found picking a broker to be the most difficult aspect of trading so far…
I read a thread recently over at ForexFactory that a few Canadian traders didn’t have issues opening and trading with Pepperstone. They might be an alternative.
I believe most UK and Australian brokers still accept them so long as the broker doesn’t have an office already in Canada.
You would probably want ECN brokers and from my experience, I can recommend on two great brokers: FXCM & Sunbirdfx. Each one of them has its own pros and cones and therefore I keep tow live accounts in each one so I can enjoy the benefits of both of them. They give service for Canadian residents. Cannot remember what is the min deposit at FXCM. It is $100 at sunbirdfx.
I’ve opened a demo with pepperstone and dukascopy Europe. Pepperstones spread is higher then Oanda so doesn’t work for me. Dukascopy has great spreads but I’m still working out calculations for commission and looking into rebates. I love the dukascopys platform!
It seems that mb trading has the best spreads but I find order entry a bit tedious on mt4. Really not a fan of mt4 don’t understand why everyone loves it so much
Hey MaxGold, you mentioned pros and cons with FXCM and SunterdFX. Could you tell us what you like and don’t like about them?
I know what you mean, Dukascopy’s commissions are a bit confusing. I worked it out to be about 0.7 pips for the amounts I would be trading or depositing. I think it was 0.7 pip if you have a deposit around $1000. I think their typical EUR/USD spread is 0.8. So basically, after factoring in the commission, one could treat it like a 1.5 pip spread. Not bad, but not great. If you have more money in your account, the commission is smaller.
I’ll be done my search in a couple days-ish. I will post a summary for anyone who is interested. I’ve contacted 26 brokers. So far got a list of 5 that take Canadians. A few of them are looking pretty good.
Still waiting for FXCM and SunbirdFX to reply for over 2 weeks. They are the slowest to reply. I’ve actually emailed them both twice. WTF is up with this lame customer service?
I asked Questrade about their requirements for Canadians. They told me Albertans gotta qualify as Accredited Investors (must have $1,000,000 in assets). I don’t know why they told me about Alberta, when I asked about Canada in general. Then i asked about BC specifically, and he basically didn’t answer, and told me to look at the application form and find out for myself. Yeah, F you too, Questrade. Lazy SOBs. But I’m guessing all Canadians have to qualify as Accredited Investors. So looks like Questrade is a no go.
Still bummed about Oanda
Hi RainMan,
First, I’m sorry to hear that you didn’t receive a response to your emails to FXCM. Our customer service team usually responds to emails within a day. If you forward a copy of those emails to me, I would be happy to answer your questions and will also try to find out what happened to the previous emails you sent. You can either email me at <[email protected]> or post your questions on the forum.
Not sure if this was one of the questions on your email, but FXCM offers our forex trading services to Canadian clients through Friedberg Direct, which is based in Toronto and regulated by IIROC. Clients with Friedberg have their accounts insured for up to $1 million by the CIPF. Here is a link to the website with more information: www.fxcm.ca
I am FXCM’s Brand Ambassodor to online communities like BabyPips. I am here to answer your questions, so feel free to reach out to me in the Broker Aid Section for FXCM.
Jason
Thanks for your help, Jason. That’s good customer service. I did not know there was and FXCM specifically for Canada. I had originally emailed FXCM UK at <[email protected]>. After reading your post, I emailed FXCM Canada with the relevant questions. I’ll post back if I need your help with anything. Cheers eh 
Anytime eh