[larrythedog]

Robinhood definitely takes the cake for ease-of-use, but companies like Interactive Brokers offer very low commissions, and a much more comprehensive tool. May be worth checking out if you're a somewhat sophisticated investor.

As for your response to the short-term trading concerns. Transfer restrictions don't really matter here. I can still buy/sell stocks as much as I want. I don't have to cash out to my bank in order to trade SPY 10 times a day.

[roymurdock]

Sure, if you have enough settled funds to make 10 substantive trades in a day.

Say you have 10k of settled funds in your account. You can make a total of 10 $1k trades of SPY throughout the day, or 100 $100 trades. Your account is effectively frozen for the next 3 days as the trades "settle" and you are unable to do anything with them. So you would have needed to cash out of your bank 3 days prior to have active funds ready to go for the next day.

AKA Robinhood gets 2-3 days to earn interest on your unsettled/uninvested funds.

[lewisl9029]

I've found Interactive Brokers to be rather unfriendly for long term investing due to their minimum monthly activity fees though.

But to be fair, they do advertise themselves as a platform for active traders, and the monthly minimums can be waived with a large enough account. I don't qualify for the latter yet, but once I do I'll probably switch over to IB if Robinhood isn't in Canada by then (You can't really beat free).