What is the big deal about the chinese remnibi trading hub that opened in toronto
Chinese suppliers can quote their price in CNY rather than USD (as has been typical), and thus avoid the exchange risk from US dollar volatility- the CNY has been generally appreciating so committing to receive payments in US dollars when their costs are in CNY means they are typically on the losing end of the equation and they have to pad their prices a bit.  Canadian importers will have to buy RMB (typically with CAD) to pay for their orders and Canadian exporters can take payment in RMB if they wish, or set prices in CAD. By avoiding the US dollar middleman the transactions are made less risky and incur less costs. Japan did this many decades ago (they, too, used to price their products in USD).  This is important in transactions of large amounts, not so much for the tiny amounts associated with tourism. Two-way annual trade between China and Canada is in excess of $70bn.  Of course Forex trading may greatly exceed the actual amounts required for trade- the world Forex market is at least an order of magnitude greater than size of real international trade. All that trading in currency and financial instruments means more jobs on Bay Street and more money flowing into a very vital part of the Canadian economy.  Recent article from the (liberal) Toronto Star here.
Prop (proprietary) traders trade using huge amounts of a bank's money (i.e. other people's money) so the reason why they have such low commissions (and they certainly do) is that the firms for which they work negotiate low commissions as the quantities and volumes (as they also trade very frequently) will be high and so the total commission will be very high. There is no such thing as a prop trading account unless you are a big bank with a very large bank roll (tens of millions of USD) so you cannot open one to enjoy those benefits unless you have enough money that you can negotiate your commission with brokers. 25k CAD is definitely not enough money to even start a conversation about those sorts of commissions. note: prop traders are generally banned from trading intraday with their own money by their employers and the law as it is a massive conflict of interests. Those who do and get caught face lengthy prison sentences. I started my account with $500 so I know where you're coming from.  For the words of caution, in about 2009 we entered a pretty significant bull market.  During this period you could basically buy almost any big name company and do pretty well for yourself.  So don't be too cocky about your ability to pick winners in the middle of a bull market.  Over the last few years you'd have to try pretty hard to consistently pick losers. I absolutely think you should put real money in the game when you have this sort of interest.  However, at your $400-600 level broker fees will eat any sort of active trading or short term profit you could muster.  Stock trading is not a great way to make money in the short term.  If you're looking to save for something specific you should put that money in a zero risk savings account.   You should do more research on brokers.  Find the lowest possible trade commission at an organization where you can meet the account opening minimum.  A $10 commission is 11% more than a $9 commission. What if there is only one trading day and the volume is smaller than   the open interest on that one trading day. This is assuming there is   no open interest before that day? I pulled this from a comment. This can't happen. We have zero open interest on day one. On day 2, I buy 10 contracts. Volume is 10 and now open interest is also 10. Tomorrow, if I don't sell, open interest starts at 10 and will rise by whatever new contracts are traded.   This is an example. I removed the stock name. This happens to be the Jan'17 expiration. The 10 contract traded on the $3 strike happen to be mine. You can see how open interest is cumulative, representing all outstanding contracts. It's obvious to me the shares traded as high as $5 at some point which created the interest (i.e. the desire) to trade this strike. Most activity tends to occur near the current price. If you are restricting yourself to Scotiabank (Both retail banking and iTrade), your choices are pretty limited.  If you are exchanging more than CAD$25,000 to EUR without margin, you can call Scotiabank and ask for a quote with much lower spread than the published snapshots.  The closest ETF that you are talking about is RWE.B on TSX, which is First Asset MSCI Europe Low Risk Weighted ETF (Unhedged). You will be exposed to huge equity market risk and you should do it only if you intend to hold it for 3-5 years.  Another way of exchanging cash is without opening an account is through a currency exchange broker (search “toronto currency exchange” for relevant companies). First you send an email asking for a quote for the amount you wanted, then you send the CAD to them via cheque, and they would convert to EUR and deposit it to your EUR account at Scotiabank (retail banking). This method costs around 0.7% compared to 2.5% charged by Scotiabank. An example of these brokers is Interchange Currency Exchange in Toronto.  If you are hedging more than 125000 EUR, the proper method is to open an account that supports trading Currency Futures on Globex (US CME group). You can long Euro/Canadian Dollar Futures on margin.  The last method is to open an account at Interactive Brokers, put CAD in it, then borrow more CAD to buy EUR. This method costs a few dollars upon trading and the spread is negligible. You need to pay 2.25% per year margin interest through. after 10 years, I don't see how you could end up buying from a little shop. I know people much less experienced than him that don't do that...   It's difficult but even someone with 1 year of experience here in China wouldn't do that Because of things this article doesn't go to that I've read other places.   1. Britain didn't have elections in Hong Kong for decades at the request of Communist China.    2. Britain started really democratizing Hong Kong before the handover to get some facts on the ground to try and have a better representational system in place for the Chinese handover.    3. Stuff in Hong Kong used to get done under the British.    4. Now with newly empowered representation and politicians who don't necessarily trust the Beijing government, opposition to development and policy issues is happening, and less is getting done in Hong Kong vs. other major mainland cities. "Have to do a presentation for an International Business and Cultures class in about a month and the assigned WSJ article isn't quite clicking with me and looking for a kind soul here to put it into layman's terms I guess.  If I am violating any policy or breaking a rule by posting the text from the article, please delete.  Thank you for any reply!  WASHINGTON--Finance officials trying to avert the next global economic crisis found time at a summit here to worry about something besides Brexit and European banks: China's mounting debts and its flagging economic overhauls.  The country's surging credit growth, overcapacity in its steel and metals industries and its bloated housing market drew widespread complaints from finance officials and central bankers attending semiannual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.  Officials congratulated China for its efforts to get the yuan included in the IMF's international basket of currencies, known as special drawing rights, starting Oct. 1. And despite a couple of scares in the past year or so, the country's markets and economic growth have appeared to stabilize in recent months.  But in a sign of how important the world's second-biggest economy is to global growth, China is increasingly being called out.  U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew warned Beijing in unusually candid language about China's overproduction and overbuilding, which he suggested could become the biggest U.S. complaint about the country, as their earlier disputes over the country's exchange rate become less divisive.  ""I'm talking about steel, I'm talking about aluminum, I'm talking about real estate--when you don't have market forces driving investment, when you don't have bad investments allowed to fail, you end up with resources allocated in a way that ultimately chokes the future of economic growth,"" Mr. Lew said at the Peterson Institute for International Economics on Thursday.  The IMF zeroed in on a measure called current credit overhang, a widely followed international indicator of potential crises. The deviation of China's credit growth from its long-term trend has surged from zero during the financial crisis to up to 27%. Last year, banks' balance sheets grew to 286% of gross domestic product.  ""More is needed, especially to curb excess credit growth, reduce the opacity of credit products, and ensure sound interbank funding structures,"" said Peter Dattels, deputy director of the fund's monetary and capital-markets department.  China's policy makers are caught in a deepening trap, economists say. Dealing with the debt problem would require the country to start deleveraging. But slower credit growth is bound to hamper the overall economy. That could backfire by making it harder for companies to repay existing debt.  Clamping down on credit would also raise the prospect of political unrest in a country that has grown accustomed to very rapid growth. Faced with such unappetizing prospects, the country's leaders have largely eschewed credit restraint in the hope that they will be able to deal with its economic problems over time.  Part of the problem is the complicated and poorly disclosed structure of the country's swollen banking system, economists say.  ""The increasing complexity, opaqueness of the shadow banking, both on the asset side, but even more on the funding side where a lot of the funding is short term, is not stable,"" Markus Rodlauer, the IMF's Asia-Pacific deputy director, told reporters on Thursday. ""It's still of a size that is manageable, but the trajectory is dangerous, and needs to be contained.""  China's appetite for steel and aluminum, which shrank abruptly in the past year or so, is of vital interest to commodity-exporting economies such as Russia and Brazil. For now, exporters appear to be confident that demand won't drop off again in the short term.  ""China's growth is stabilized at a lower level,"" Brazilian Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles said in an interview. ""I don't see a further collapse coming.""  Still, much will depend on China's economic transition.  ""They are trying to alter their priority from manufacturing to services, from export-oriented to domestic consumption,"" said Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in an interview. ""In the transformational stage, there will be ripples.""  Chinese officials in Washington touted the country's annual GDP of between 6% and 7% and said growth has remained stable as economy transitions.  ""If that transformation is successful, China will continue to have a stable share of global growth,"" People's Bank of China Deputy Governor Yi Gang said on Thursday.  Ian Talley and Bob Davis contributed to this article.  Credit: By William Mauldin" are you being sarcastic?  for some reason I'm reading your posts that way but I'm entirely serious, as someone who works in a Chinese company... its a major priority to keep our R&amp;D and code/other developments completely under wraps