TFTA, TFSA and Questrade

I applied for and have my new TFTA account and I am now just waiting for a password to start trading.

The process went smoothly except I tried faxing in my photo ID and it was too dark, I should have scanned and emailed it so I have about a two day delay that I caused.

I was able to use e-signatures to send everything in without having to mail paperwork, used a transfer from my margin trading account to initially fund the account and sent an EFT from my bank account to add some more capital to start with.

The only thing that I have not had cleared up for me is exactly how two trading accounts will work. I am sure that the trading platform handles multiple accounts, the manual states that it does but gives no details. I am sure it is just a tab selection to switch between the two so I am not really concerned about the functionality.

What I am not sure about is how to get the two onto the one platform...or how to switch the platform to TFTA exclusively. I just am trying not to incur any additional data fees or at least keep any potential data fees outside of the TFTA.

Having said that, my plan is to do no margin trading so I could just transfer the whole works. Being a discount broker I did not want to get too complicated with my setup so I will wait and see how it meshs...I have an email in to have this questions answered but I don't expect a quick answer. Right now they are up to their eyeballs in people inquiring about TFSA stuff. I see that their online help, which is usually very timely, is now running 20 people deep and 30 minutes or more behind the estimated handling time.

Don't be in a hurry if you are looking for answers from Questrade right now. Perhaps they underestimated the flurry of applications and questions that go with that.

The end run is that I expect that once I have my password and access to the TFTA I will have to call and have a CSR do some keypunching to get me set up the way that I want. I registered the account under the free platform package for now...I should have suspended my Pro package for January but I would have had to register the request in December and I would have lost my realtime feed to do any more testing... I need my feed.

All in all we shall see how this goes.

Jeff.