Who?

TD Waterhouse is an online/phone share dealing brokerage.
They are a subsidiary of the Canadian Toronto- Dominion bank and have further online presence in the USA, Canada and Luxemburg.

What?

They offer an online and phone service whereby you can access the British stock market plus many international exchanges.
They also offer in depth research facilities and a fairly easy to use account system so you can keep a track of your investments.
There are also tutorials and explanations of the many account types available.
Many types of stock market dealing are available from normal buying and selling through spread betting and SIPP investments.

Why?

After doing extensive due diligence, both online and by personal recommendation offline, I came to the conclusion that TD Waterhouse were going to be the service that met my need and expectation of level of service.
I chose TD Waterhouse after less than satisfactory dealings with another share dealing service, who I found to be very slow on acting on buying and selling instructions, on occasion losing me several hundred pounds through slow service.

Applying.

You have to fill in an online application form to use their services.
This form is fairly standard and straightforward to fill in, however, be aware that you may well be asked to ring them to confirm details and have a credit check run on you.
This check is required as you are awarded a trading balance with which to start your trading.
This balance is optional in so far as you choose whether to use it or not. You could fund your account yourself and not use the funds available to you at all.
Having this fund available is handy though, should a buying opportunity come up and you don’t have funds to hand. In this case you can use the money they have made available to you and buy in a variety of ways.(more on that later.)
Once you have been authorised to open an account you will receive passwords in your email.
The first time you access your account you will be asked to replace the provided password with one of your own to improve your security.

Once you have your account there are lots of training and information pages on the site to help you understand share dealing and find the right type of trading that you wish to do.

How?

Buying and selling is simple on the TD Waterhouse site.
After accessing the “place an order” screen you are presented with several boxes to fill in to complete your order.
The screen show you your trading figure (the amount of cash you have available) Once you have inputted the epic (the three or four letter code that identifies the company) of the company you want to buy you are told how much you have available to invest in that stock. This may not be all the money you have available to trade.
You will also be told whether the market is open or closed. You may still place trades when the market is closed but they will not be actioned until the market is next open. There is also risk involved in doing this as the opening price could be way different to the price quoted which was the closing price of the last session. Also the markets are more volatile in the first half hour or so of trading. So if you place a trade while the market is closed make sure you place a limit on what you are willing to pay. The same goes for selling, always place a lower limit of what you are willing to accept.
Once you have decided on the stock you want and how much you want to invest you then have to fill further boxes in, you will be asked if you are buying or selling and what settlement period you require.
There are a few choices, T3, T5, T10 or T20. This translates to how many trading days you want to pay for your shares. IE choose T3 and you will have to settle up in 3 days or T10 will be ten days. Days only count when the market is open so in terms of calendar days a T10 would in effect give you12-14 days to pay up depending when weekends fall.
Bear in mind that for longer settlement periods you may have to pay a slight premium to the share price. I haven’t found as yet that this has been much, if any.
Next you are asked whether you want to quote the amount you wish to invest in cash or number of shares. Whichever you choose the next box is filled in with either the amount of shares or the amount in cash.
Next you have to decide what type of order you require. A limit order will let you place an upper (buying) or lower (selling) price that you will accept. A market order will get you the best price they can get you at the time of trade. This could vary from what you expected to pay. The last choice is fill or kill which means that they will try to trade at the price you have stated but for a limited time only.
Lastly you are asked for which currency you would like to settle in.
You are then given the opportunity to preview your order to make sure all is correct before you place it.

A page lists all your orders and tells you how they are progressing. More detail can be found by clicking on the relevant order number. This screen will tell you all the details once the trade has been completed.

A handy page is the settlements calendar which gives you a graphical portrayal of when various trades are due to settle so that you can make sure you have the funds in your account on that date.

One thing to bear in mind is that if you buy shares on an extended settlement and you sell them before the settlement date you won’t have to pay for them. This is useful if you know a company is due good news so you can buy extra in that company and as long as the news is out before the time is up you don’t have to pay and make a good profit. Of course if the news doesn’t go as you wished then you either have to sell at a loss or pay for the shares. That, as they say is the gamble.

Keeping an eye on my account.

There are several pages that offer you all the information you need for managing your account. You can find out what shares you own in the portfolio page and what you bought and sold when in the trade history pages. This also gives you a running total of your current cash position which is handy, especially if you have several outstanding orders that make knowing your exact position slightly tricky.
There is also the opportunity to have any company news sent to you by e mail on the alerts page. This can be vital to judge how a company is doing and getting your investment timing right.
A stockwatch page lets you keep a closer eye on certain stocks that you might want to invest in at a future date.

Yay

So far I have found their service to be very quick and very efficient.
Most trades are completed within a few minutes if not seconds for some in liquid stocks. Even with small companies with less shares, I have found that transactions have been completed within a few minutes. Quite often they even manage to beat the bid/offer price, thus getting you a better deal.

Oh Dear.

My one gripe (which is not solely a problem on their site) is that in your portfolio they only quote the mid price. This is the actual quoted share price which is in the middle of the offer (what you pay to buy) and the bid (what you get when you sell.)
For me it would be much more useful to quote the bid price as this is the one that really values your shares as it is what you get when you sell.
Also prices quoted on the site are fifteen minutes old, although when placing orders prices quoted then are up to date.
These are not big problems however, as I have overcome it by setting up a portfolio on another well known share dealing site where I have an account to monitor prices and to do research

A quick point on quoted prices.

The bid, offer and mid prices quoted are not necessarily what you will get/pay for share trades.
Market conditions at the time of the deal can vary these. Also the size of your trade will impact on the price you pay/receive.

How much?

For normal buy/sell transactions you will pay £9.95 plus the Government imposed stamp duty. This seems to be an average price with some trading platforms charging more, some less.
To me, going for the cheapest transaction charges is not necessarily the only consideration, as less than quick transaction times could potentially cost you a lot more than the couple of quid you might save on the transaction charge.
Be aware that there may be a higher charge for phone trades, although if you are ringing because the site is down then you will probably be charged at the online rate.

Reliable?

After a few months of using them I have nothing bad to report on their reliability.
One point is that their site doesn’t like some browsers. It won’t work on Opera and only under sufferance on Firefox. It really needs Internet Explorer.
I use it on Firefox and it does work fine although it does give me a warning at the start of a session that it would be happier if I was using Explorer.

Recommend?

Yes I would recommend them to both novice and experienced investors alike. Both categories are well catered for on their website.
I have had no problems at all so far and have found staff on the phone to be very polite and do all they can to solve any query I may have had.

And finally….

Remember that there are no certainties in the stock market, so only invest what you can potentially afford to lose and do research, lots and lots of research before you part with your hard earned pennies.
But if you do decide that investing is for you or you already do, then I think TD Waterhouse is as good as any investment broker to handle your needs.