Excellent Customer Service: I had to call them various times about opening my account and getting set up trading. Each time, the person on the other end was quick, helpful, and understood what I needed. No problems. They’ll walk you through stuff online. I think they’re still a relatively small firm, so take advantage of this personal treatment!

Easy Online Trading Platform: Yes, it’s simple, but you’ve already done your research. You know what stocks you want to buy. If you need a real-time quote from somewhere, just leave another browser window open to TD Waterhouse or BMO InvestorLine.

You can “Co-Op” Trade or You can Trade Immediately: Most people might think of Canadian ShareOwner as a “co-op.” This is misleading, because they do regular trades as well. These “immediate” trades command the regular commission rate (for the big banks in Canada) of $29/trade.

The “Co-op” Trade is Just Like Any Other Trade: it just happens on a certain date. The trade is still 100% yours. There’s no real pooling of money or anything. For buy-and-hold investors, the fixed trade dates won’t matter so much. You’re probably in it for the dividends anyway, like me.

Dividends automatically reinvested to four decimal places: this right here is what makes Canadian ShareOwner stand out from all the other brokers. Not only will they automatically reinvest your dividends (you don’t have to set it up to do so), but they reinvest even on fractional amounts. If your dividend is $3.63 and the shares costs $10 each, they’ll still put that $3.63 back into your stock where it will contribute to future earnings like a snowball.

Only $9 to buy and no initial deposit needed: Unlike TradeFreedom and other brokers that require initial deposits of $1000, you don’t need anything to set up an account at Canadian ShareOwner except your ID and a cheque for as low as $1.00 (to verify your identity). Can’t beat this if your networth is still lower than the 50 or 100K the big banks want before they’ll let you trade cheaply.

Anyone else want to share stories about ShareOwner or your other favourite discount broker(s)? It would be useful to hear from friends south of the border here.  Zecco looks good, but I can’t take advantage of it as a Canadian.