SeaDub

I've seen some answers in the forum that are applicable but not directly from a Canadian with Interactive Brokers who specifically answered these questions, so starting a new topic. 1) Do you hold your trading cash in CAD or did you exchange it to USD? I understand I do not need to exchange it but can borrow USD to buy US securities, I will just pay interest if I hold a negative USD balance. 2) Is your IB base currency set to USD? This seems to be required to ensure DAS Trader shows the correct balance and buying power. Mine currently shows the account balance equal to the CAD balance, I can see this causing problems with DAS assuming it's USD buying power when executing hotkeys. 3) Come tax time, do you switch your base currency back to CAD to run reports for taxes? Do you do it more often, say for monthly reports as well?

Got a response from IBKR to an email I sent. The FAQ is accurate, you cannot open an account if you are a resident of NWT, Yukon or Nunavut. So now I need to think on this. I'm planning on moving in 2022 so could wait until then. But that would be like 18 months in SIM (at least I'm not losing money?) It seems the other broker/platforms I've looked at are more expensive, slower execution/data, or not as robust platforms. After spending around 11 months in SIM already, I'm tempted to just wait it out now that I'm familiar with DAS and have built my strategies around it's tools and knowledge from this community. I've been looking at Questrade, TD Direct, even QTrade and Wealthsimple Trade. I tend to go for longer moves rather than scalping and was going to look at Medved for Questrade as an option although I understand I'd need L2 data from somewhere else. But all these options feel jury-rigged. Any thoughts on all this are welcome.

So I started an account application with IB Canada and only got as far as selecting where you're a resident. The drop-down did not have any of the Canadian territories, one of which I am a resident of. I found this FAQ: NWT, Yukon or Nunavut are not available from the dropdown list of Provinces when completing an application. IB Canada does not hold a registration on such Canadian territories as NWT, Yukon or Nunavut. However, IB Canada is registered with all ten Canadian provinces. If you are a resident of any Canadian province, you would qualify to open an IB Canada account. https://www.ibkr.com/faq?id=38467200 So it appears I may have hit a hurdle here. I'll try to contact IBKR directly later on to confirm but am wondering if anyone else has run into this? Trade from the territories? And what broker you use?

Thanks Oli, sorry for the late reply. It does help. It's good to know you only use the IB tax slips, I was getting the impression from random websites that I needed to be super accurate on each and every trade in case I got audited. But it also sounds like I could run a daily IB report if I do decide to be overly-cautious about it. Cheers,

I'm Canadian and getting ready to go live soon and I'm feeling stumped on bookkeeping, especially to be prepared for a tax audit. I'm going to claim as individual business income and am looking for how others do their day-to-day bookkeeping. Excel? QuickBooks? Etc. And if Excel, how to track each trade? Do you track each transaction? Each trade as a whole with average entry, average exit, ignoring partialling? And how to record fees? DAS reports total commission for the day, do you split it up per trade/transaction or just put it as an expense for the day? Same questions for the ECN/SEC/FINRA fees. If anyone has a sample Excel file they could share, that would be amazing. Want to have my ducks in a row from the beginning, for my business sake and in case CRA comes knocking. EDIT: just thought that maybe IB, which I plan to use, may have some exporting feature that's useful as well, so let me know if some of your bookkeeping happens there as well.

Well, that's interesting timing. In today's opening, Andrew mentioned he and Peter were working on a presentation about only trading 1 stock. I'll have to keep my ears open for that. But after chatting with you two, I'm not going to narrow my list down to only a few stocks. Today's winning trade was on a stock that would not have been on my short list but was on the gappers scanners and I saw for a possible breakout on the daily.

Thank you both for continuing the discussion. I see the value in understanding the crowd, somewhere along the line, someone in a video said that the common patterns are self-fulfilling prophecies as everyone knows the pattern so they all behave as if it will manifest and lo and behold therefore it does. I also do turn off the chat once the market opens, I currently find it distracting while I'm trying to make my own decisions and since I'm not scalping the opening. My work-day keeps me from tuning in later in the day but I expect after some more experience I will be able to background listen while still making my own decisions. I find Jarad's Morning Brew and Norm and Carlos Premarket Show quite useful in choosing a watchlist. I also look through my usual 50 pre-market to see what might be setting up according to the guidelines Jarad and Dr. Reid laid out in their webinars. I did also set up a scanner for my usual 50 with my rules that I use sometimes and it has found me setups that didn't make it to the morning shows but I need to track those better to see if scanner calls statistically lead to profit. As i write that out, it does seem like a lot of focus on finding the right stock and I guess with the "stocks only trend 15% of the time" that's why I was focusing on that aspect. In fact, that might be why I was asking about going down to the same 6 every day, because I was feeling overwhelmed by analyzing 50 everyday. Ah, we might be honing into something there! I've just started to diligently track where the stocks I end up trading are first mentioned so hopefully over time, I'll get the stats to back up if the morning show watchlist or the scanner or the analysis lines up better with my strategy. And in fact if any particular stocks line up as well. And thank you peterB for speaking of the superstitious nature of people - this early in my journey I may be thinking there is some statistical edge for people when there is just their human psychology at work.

Thanks Roberto for responding. Do you believe your preference "to be familiar with the stocks" have led to an edge? Or forgetting that leading question, why do you prefer to be familiar with them? I see the benefit of adding a second strategy that suits the chop better so I have one for those ranging times as well. Cheers,

Thanks peterB for responding. I believe you are correct that statistically stocks tend to move sideways more than trend - I think I heard Dr. Reid says stocks only trend 15% of the time. So the point about lost study time during non-trending times is poignant. Maybe I need to use a different word than "trend." Maybe it's more "momentum" plays? Basically, I'm using Jarad's "maximize trend days" webinar and Dr. Reid's "trend following" webinar on the 1-minute chart to catch directional moves that usually last 15 to 30 minutes. If after 30 minutes, the price heads the other direction and over the day it's generally moving sideways, I usually still find a trade or 2 if the range's time period is longer than my time-in-trade. I'm not looking for a holy grail, just to see if there is an educational or profit edge to practicing on a limited numbers of tickers. And I don't think I'm inventing anything, it's something that I've read in a few blog posts or seen in videos, although the credibility behind them I can't speak to, hence me asking the question. It got me thinking about: - why moderators say "I don't trade that stock because I can't trade it well"? - that seems to imply that they're being choosy based on experience with a particular stock. - why Peter (I assume you are a different Peter) always has AMD on his watchlist? - is it because he has some intuitive decision-making or strategy edge on it born out of experience with it? - some stocks appear - or more correctly as you point out, the people and machines behind them, cause them - to be choppier while some stocks tend to be slower directional grinders (as an example, maybe TSLA vs MSFT) so it seems some would work better with my strategy while others wouldn't. Happy to hear your further thoughts on these points or anyone else's who jumps in. Again, thanks for taking the time to respond.

So I'm a new trader, a few months in on SIM. I've been focused on a morning trend strategy that's been showing some promise and suits my psychology. One of the things that has crossed my tradedesk a couple times is the idea of only trading a limited number of tickers so you really learn how they behave. I've heard of anything from just 1 ticker for months to maybe half a dozen. I can see the potential benefit from understanding how a specific stock's price moves if it shows similar intraday patterns over the days and weeks, particular if you're interested in it's intraday trends. Right now I have a bucket of about 50 stocks I trade as they show up in the pre-market show or on my screener, so it'll take me awhile to know any one in particular, if that is indeed of benefit. The other potential benefit I see is that I'm heavily long biased, and keep reinforcing that because it's easier to recognize right now as I move from stock to stock. But focusing on a few stocks and taking the opportunities that present means I'm more likely to practice short positions as well. Would love your thoughts on sticking to just 1 to 6 stocks for learning intraday trend trading.

Just finished this webinar, really enjoyed it. I'd stumbled upon a chart pattern on the 5 minute where I was noticing for strong stocks if there was a pullback in the first 15-20 minutes, it would often be followed by a bull trend for most of the morning, leveling off around 11. I'd devised a simple strategy that started at 9:55 based on what the the first 5 candles looked like. It wasn't overly profitable but it got me thinking about trend trading again, which is what I started with when I was first learning about trading (began with sim swing trading 3 months ago, became interested in day trading and joined BBT 2 months ago). The recent Mastermind webinar got me thinking that it really fit my personality and psychology. So I sought out this webinar and lo and behold, half way in, there is a model that looks like what I was starting to notice myself. This webinar gave me the understanding of what was going on with buyers and sellers to cause the pattern and information to help with finding stocks, filtering them, confirming the trend and how to play them. Hoping to put all this into action in the coming weeks. Thanks Jarad! I'm going to write out a play / checklist for myself and wondering if anyone has one they'd be willing to share as I start my own?

Thanks to the contributors on this thread. This is something I'm watching for when the time comes to go live. I came across an answer on the IB Canada FAQ about making a forex trade to convert it. "Do you automatically convert funds when I buy a US stock?" It speaks more to IB's platforms. Looking at DAS, it looks like you need to ensure you have the forex feed to trade it. https://dastrader.com/docs/how-do-i-trade-forex/ which my BBT Simulation account does not have so don't know for you. I'll have to see if my bank has the same USD to USD in Canada issue that Stephane ran into with RBC.

This is interesting to me. I'm also a newbie paper trader at the moment. I relate to the taking exits early and am trialing ChartLog and Tradersync to figure out a good journal. Any updates on trying it out and if it's working?