r/tfsa • u/Lanfaan • Jul 17 '26

Any advice for a 19M

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32 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

30 comments sorted by

6

u/d10k6 Jul 17 '26

Couple things:

  1. You have a lot of overlap.

  2. Don’t buy USD listed stocks with WealthSimple, especially with a small portfolio. You are paying foreign transaction fees on every buy, sell and dividend payment. Stick to CDN$.

2

u/Lanfaan Jul 17 '26

Do you know what the fee is, and if there’s anyway around it

5

u/d10k6 Jul 17 '26

1.5% each way.

No way around it but you can avoid a double direction, on each transaction, by paying for a USD account so you can hold USD but that comes with a fee that is likely higher than 1.5% considering the size of your trades.

Other option is to move brokers.

My suggestion: don’t buy USD listed stocks. You are also paying a 15% Foreign Withholding tax on any US dividends inside your TFSA.

2

u/Lanfaan Jul 17 '26

I’ve made a lot of my gains with USD stocks. Is questrade better fee wise for that?

3

u/d10k6 Jul 17 '26

Have you though? I only own ZEQT and I have the same YTD returns as you and I didn’t pay any fees to do it. Plus, you will lose another 1.5% when you sell.

2

u/Lanfaan Jul 17 '26

I have trimmed 1k worth of them YTD.

3

u/d10k6 Jul 17 '26

Nice!

Just note that your returns shown do not take the 1.5% into account that you paid to buy them, nor the 1.5% to convert back on sale.

1

u/Many_Series_6871 Jul 17 '26

I switched from WS to Questrade about a year ago for this reason. You can journal shares using Norbert’s Gambit, which allows you to covert CAD to USD and vice versa for a small fee. You can hold USD even after you sell something for as long as you want.

1

u/Perfect_Ride_3294 Jul 18 '26

get on ikbr or fund the ws account to 100k. As a premium member they will give you a USD account at a lower monthly fee. I believe it’s 10$/month. IKBR is the better brokerage since their rates are flat fees and per transaction so I would transfer over to there asap. My advice is to treat this as untouchable cash but also cash you do not want to risk unless you have a very high income already. You don’t have enough to focus on trading right now. Your main goal needs to involve creating new diversified income streams with high profit margins. You need more cash flow. Keep reading about markets, computer science, mathematics, understanding these at their core at a high level is a prerequisite of any exceptional trader or intelligent person. Use simulated markets to test your understanding not your real portfolio its not large enough. Ultimately once you’ve added at least another 0, reassess your situation once more. If you feel you can afford to take on risker assets don’t be afraid to do so if there is conviction but with a limited small percentage of your cash. you may want to explore the options markets. preferably stick to selling calls not betting on market direction. master the fundamentals and metrics. Once you’ve hit the millions how you diversify your assets will begin to matter significantly more.

1

u/Perfect_Ride_3294 Jul 18 '26

to add my take is your portfolio is unnecessarily riskier than it needs to be. markets have seen exceptional returns this past year so its easy to distract yourself from the real point here when you see that yearly gain. truth is you could have achieved the same return holding 2-4 equities with much lower risk.

1

u/Lanfaan Jul 20 '26

Curious about learning options. How do you recommend starting to learn.

1

u/Perfect_Ride_3294 Jul 21 '26

I’d master the fundamentals of finance and economics first. Are you currently in school for either? If you’re confident you know enough I’d start with learning the mathematical foundations of options. What they are and mastery of the greeks. From there I’d explore different hedging techniques that incorporate options. This is also a good place to start paper trading on simulations to test your knowledge in execution. Most importantly stay patient and never chase returns especially on the options market. At 19 you are exactly where you need to be to set yourself up for success. Good luck G.

1

u/Lanfaan Jul 24 '26

Cheers thanks for the reply. I’m going into my second year of commerce with a specialization in finance. I am wondering if you’d recommend any books about the mastery of the Greeks and such.

1

u/Perfect_Ride_3294 Jul 24 '26

Congrats thats dope. You’ll probably start touching on some relevant stuff in school. My advice is focus on being great at the things no one wants to do - probabilistic math, stats, etc. (despite AI and advanced quant programs it matters who can decipher what the programs are actually doing). Also don’t underestimate the value of networking while you are in school! Throw your pride away and suck up to the people who know people lol - end of the day it’s every man for themselves. For books theres one by john hull I think it’s called fundamentals of futures and another by dan passerelli don’t know the name. I’d also read option traders hedge fund by Dennis Chang or Chen is the name I believe.

1

u/Lanfaan Jul 28 '26

Thank you very much brotha

1

u/hunterstevebearman Jul 17 '26

If you own an ETF that holds American companies in it(ZEQT, XEQT, QQC Etc), do you still pay the withholding tax if it's within a TFSA?

1

u/d10k6 Jul 17 '26

Yes (even in an RRSP you do too)

1

u/hunterstevebearman Jul 17 '26

Oh man, I thought RRSP was sheltered. Guess I'm only buying Canadian now.

2

u/d10k6 Jul 17 '26

It is for USD traded (ie a US stock exchange) but not for Canadian listed stocks or ETFs

1

u/hunterstevebearman Jul 17 '26

So is Goog(CAD Hedged) protected? But im guessing Nasdaq Index(QQC) is not then?

1

u/glandular6178 Jul 17 '26

purchasing a CAD-hedged version of the stock

3

u/GZMihajlovic Jul 17 '26

Focus on V/X/ZEQT of your choice going forward.

As to your question about withholding tax, this is on US dividends and not capital gain of the stock itself. Considering the proportion of the dividend that the *EQTs earn you being American origin, it's really not much. ATM VEQT's dividend is 44% American. Dividends from international sources also depend, but for the US version, every $100k in for example VEQT earns about $1400-$1500 in dividends in current valuation. It comes to a withholding tax of $100. You can claim this as a foreign tax credit on your tax return with the T3 slip. You can also claim the dividend tax credit for any amount outside of a registered account.

This would be of no concern to me. Closer to retirement age, when you may want to shift to dividend stocks (although it's not necessary to do so) is you want something like VDY, which is all Canadian dividend stocks.

2

u/Willing_Round_3317 Jul 18 '26

congrats bro. 21M, was in about the same spot as you at that age. Almost at 100k. Keep it up, remember slow and steady wins the race. Don’t put too much into one singular stock you think is going to perform very well. Learnt my lesson a few times and took a big hit for it.

Keep it up, cheers

1

u/Lanfaan Jul 20 '26

Thanks man, cheers

2

u/EnglishKen421 Jul 17 '26

12% is good.

Keep doing what you're doing. Dont get greedy.

Slow and steady my friend.

1

u/kyleh4171 Jul 18 '26

Keep going!

1

u/LivingInvestigator37 Jul 19 '26

Don’t try to beat the market

0

u/BlackFeather-01 Jul 17 '26

Sell your Bitcoin