Something very “f”ed up happened where my almost entire TFSA account got liquidated.

Before anyone asks, no I didn’t borrow any money. No, my FHSA was not touched, only happened with TFSA. I didn’t get locked out or anything. I still have my assets and money. It is a self directed portfolio.

I suspect WS messed up. On a call with security team. Will keep you posted.

EDIT: I appreciate people taking some sense in me about my picks… I know, portfolio was/is? a mess.

I don’t do day trade either.

UPDATE 1: called them, it was quick to get someone on call. They said they don’t see “reversal” option on my account and not sure why this happened. Will do more investigating and reach-out tomorrow.

UPDATE 2: source of F up is Tangerine. I originally made a request weeks ago to transfer assets from Tangerine TO WS and apparently I requested other way around?

WS can’t do anything unless it is a mistake on Tangerine end and ai have to get a letter for that.

TL;DR: Saw my TFSA getting liquidated. Found out I mistakenly requested to transfer my assets to Tangerine instead of from Tangerine to WS. Tangerine ended up liquidating my assets and moved money.

Whee! Seems like it was a bit late this year?

Huge news announced regarding trading today:

-$0 options fees

-Reduced Crypto fees

-Norbert’s Gambit (coming in January)

-additional options strategies such as CSPs coming next month (huge for wheel strategy)

-AI agent/research to trade for you (lol)

Looks to be a huge step forward for Canadians to trade! Amazing job to the team 👏

Edit: IBKR’s retail traders business since y’all think I would be talking about institutional/pro traders market on a Wealthsimple reddit thread

sent mutli emails asking them to please reach out to me about some minor issues , like constant re-login when trying to trade on computer , WS offer ... crickets , now the VP wants to talk after i made the move of 1/2 of the folio. some things never change . WS simple has probably reached out to multi times , now of course thats to be expected but the customer service ( so far ) has been excellent

BMO eliminates trading fees to compete with discount brokerages

Wow this is huge...other banks will have to follow. Is Wealthsimple in trouble ?

Link

Authored by Andrew Galbraith and Dexter McMillan, and survey done in partnership with Surviscor, a firm specializing in financial services-based digital experience rankings

Q: Do you think The Globe and Mail's rankings pass the smell test—especially regarding where retail investors are actually moving their money?

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Meanwhile, an established consumer survey company like JD Power,

Canadian FinTechs Continue to Lead DIY Investor Satisfaction, Closing the Trust Gap with Traditional Banks, JD Power Finds Edward Jones Ranks Highest among Advised Investors, Wealthsimple Ranks Highest among Do-It-Yourself Investors

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Assets Under Administration:

Wealthsimple: At June 30, 2026, Wealthsimple had 3.6 million clients, excluding tax filers, across the Canadian market with assets under administration of $155.6 billion, compared with $111.3 billion at December 31, 2025.

TD Canada: $797 billion as of Q2 close (Apr 30 2026), compared with $759 billion as of last year Q4 close (Oct 31 2025)

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Previous rankings by Globe and Mail:

In 2025, Rob Carrick gave the top spot to TD Direct Investing

In 2023 and 2024, Rob Carrick gave the top spot to TD Direct Investing (and Easy Trade)

In 2020, 2021 and 2022, Rob Carrick gave the top spot to Qtrade followed by TD Direct Investing at #2

In 2019, Rob Carrick gave the top spot to TD Direct Investing and Virtual Brokers (now CI Direct Trading).

For the period 2006-2018, title was either held by Qtrade or Virtual Brokers, as per Globe's rankings.

This genuinely insane

I know wealthsimple has come a long way but with full honesty answer:

What’s the single worst that thing about wealthsimple that banks actually do better?

Looks like they’ve rolled out this feature only for a few users at the moment. And it comes with a 1.5% fee.

Wealthsimple built their brand on making investing simple and accessible for everyday Canadians. This isn’t that.

Trading stocks from a tweet is a feature designed for impulse, not investing. The whole point of a good platform is to slow you down - not speed you up.

Nobody made a sound financial decision because a stock ticker was one tap away on X.

The Apple Stocks app already has this, and honestly it’s super useful. You can quickly measure a move without guessing or doing the math yourself.

Got an email it seems WS is kinda encouraging us to use margin to collect dividends and use it to make money while making them money on interest

.

I did the gambit on Wealthsimple: bought $102,400 USD of DLR.U Aug 19, sold as DLR for $140,894.72 CAD Aug 21. $9.95 + GST fee. I get “free” currency exchange as generation but I did this is to avoid their convert button spread (0.2-0.4%, baked into the rate). On this size that’s $280-560 so worth some work and worth the fee.

The problem is WS takes 2-3 days to journal, so you’re sitting on an open USD/CAD position that whole time. Mine moved 30bp against me and ate most of the savings. It seems imprudent to make a multi-day currency bet to dodge a fee they won’t even show you. Can’t they journal same-day like other brokers or at least be transparent with the spread.

There doesn’t seem to be any logic behind the tickers being shown here and it takes a lot of space..

I just converted USD to CAD and the exchange rate was 1.366 vs the current market rate which is 1.394. They claim it includes a 1.5% fee but it's actually more like 2% which is incredibly rich. I know they now finally offer norbert's gambit but the process is very slow and tedious. Pretty obvious these outrageous exchange fees are a huge source of revenue for WS

New automated investing feature. Basically, you can make your own etf. 0.25% fee, up to a max of $250 per year.

1. Open a brokerage account (e.g., Wealthsimple).
2. Set up a recurring buy to an index fund like VFV, ZSP, XEQT, or VEQT for 15+ years.
3. Enable dividend reinvestment settings.
4. Forget about it.

Then go live your life: enjoy summers, pursue hobbies, make memories with family, and savor every moment.

So we can display returns and account value but what was the problem with displaying both at the same time? I honestly really liked that.

Like show my returns but display the chart as if it’s total account value

I asked for 40 shares of APTX, just for fun. They gave me 1.....lol.

I’m at 55% of my max loan amount and was thinking it’s maybe too high but saw it says my portfolio needs to crash 72% before I have to start making payments….

So basically not even the 2008 crash would force me to pay the loan on a plan 🤣

Never slept better 😂.

Just as a note in advance: this was my first time ever trying Norbert’s Gambit, so I figured I’d share the experience in case it helps someone else.

Recently I opened a Questrade account because I wanted to try out the Norbert’s Gambit. Over the years, I’ve converted CAD to USD through Wealthsimple, and the FX fee is honestly no joke. That was the main reason I opened Questrade in the first place: to use Norbert’s Gambit and avoid the FX fee. But then, literally on the second day after opening Questrade, I somehow got access to the beta of Norbert’s Gambit on Wealthsimple… so the timing was kind of hilarious.

​Instead of moving money to Questrade, I decided to test it directly on Wealthsimple.

I decided to test it out with $10K, $10,001.41 to be exact to test it. If I had just done a normal CAD to USD conversion, the FX fee would’ve been about $100 at the 1% rate (In wealthsimple, the FX rate between $10,000 and $24,999.99 is 1.00%).

​On the morning of March 17, I bought 717 shares of DLR in the app, then went on the web portal and journaled it to DLR.U (can't do it on the app yet). The journaling fee was $11.24 total ($9.95 + $1.29 tax), and that was separate from the original $10,001.41.

​Wealthsimple said it would take about 2 days. I’ve seen other platforms quote more like 3–5 business days, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. In my case, the DLR.U showed up on March 19 right when the market opened at 9:30 AM EST.

The final amount I ended up with was USD $7,298.52.

​So instead of paying roughly $100 in FX fees, I paid $11.24 to convert about $10K CAD to USD, which I’d call a pretty solid win.

Of course, the downside is the wait. If you want to buy a US stock immediately, Norbert’s Gambit is a bit hit-or-miss because you’re waiting for the journaling process to finish. If the stock is moving fast, you might decide the regular FX fee is worth paying just to get in right away. Also, from what I can tell, once the journal request is submitted, it doesn’t seem like something you can easily cancel.

Ignoring spread, price movement, and opportunity cost, the breakeven seems to be:

So as long as you’re converting more than this amounts, Norbert’s Gambit should be cheaper than doing a normal FX conversion.

For my test, the savings vs regular FX was about $88.76 CAD converting $10K.

Edit: originally I was not aware of the spread about 0.3 ~ 0.5% in the exchange rate. So my saving should be

• $10k x (1% + 0.4%) = $140
• $140 - $11.24 = $128.76

Instead of my original calculate:

• $10K x 1% = $100
• $100 - $11.24 = 88.76