Education

Reference pages on how investing in Canada actually works. Each one is built from the documents that set the rules or report the figures, with the source and page cited, and each is dated so you can see how current it is.

These are explainers, not news. They get updated when a rule or a limit changes rather than when something happens.

Start here

• What a stock is, and what you actually own Shares, votes and dividends, the three different share counts, common against preferred, and market capitalisation, worked all the way through one bank’s own quarterly filing.
• How the stock market works The TSX and the TSX Venture Exchange, the order book, bid and ask, the opening and closing auctions, T+1 settlement, and who regulates it all.
• How to open a brokerage account in Canada The account types, what the application asks and why, how to fund it, and what CIPF protection actually covers.
• How to buy your first stock Market, limit and stop orders side by side, a worked fill on a real Royal Bank quote, what happens in the seconds after you click, and what a trade costs.
• How to read a stock quote Every field on the quote screen explained: bid, ask and the spread, volume and board lots, the 52-week range, and the P/E and dividend yield rebuilt by hand from a bank’s own filing.
• What moves a stock price Earnings against expectations, guidance, news, sentiment and supply, worked through a real week when every big bank beat its estimate and one still fell 4.2%.
• How markets behave: corrections and bear markets What the words actually mean, how often the Canadian market falls and how far, how long it has taken to come back, why our bear markets are not the same as American ones, and what selling into one costs.
• Compounding, and why time in the market beats timing it Why the growth arrives late and then arrives fast, what ten years of waiting costs, and the test on 25 years of S&P/TSX closes in which the worst market timer still finished far ahead of the investor who never started.

The accounts

• How a TFSA works Room, withdrawals, the recontribution trap and the penalty for getting it wrong.
• How an RRSP works Contribution room against deduction limit, the first 60 days, withholding and the conversion at 71.
• How an FHSA works Participation room, the four-year lookback, qualifying withdrawals and the deadline.
• How the Home Buyers’ Plan works The $60,000 limit, the 15-year repayment schedule and using it alongside an FHSA.
• TFSA vs RRSP vs FHSA: which account to fill first The order to fund them in, worked on 2026 CRA bracket rates: the point at which an RRSP and a TFSA come out identical, why the FHSA usually goes first, and the OAS recovery tax that lifts a retiree’s marginal rate to 41%.
• How investment income is taxed in Canada Interest, capital gains and the dividend gross-up and credit, worked to the cent on 2026 rates: why the same $1,000 keeps $936 as an eligible dividend and $703.50 as interest, and where the 15% US withholding is and is not recoverable.
• Adjusted cost base: how to calculate and track it The averaging rule, the five events that move your cost base, and nine quarters of a real Royal Bank dividend reinvestment plan showing that an untracked plan makes you pay tax twice on the same $1,442.33.

Run your own numbers

Every account above has a calculator that uses the same CRA figures the page cites. They are listed on the tools page.