Learn How to Invest with TD Direct Investing Learning Centre

It’s officially back-to-school season, and if you’re like me and are an adult with zero kids…it may mean something very different for you. I often take this time of year to assess where I’m at with my goals and what new things I can do to continue my lifelong learning.

If you’ve been following me for a while, then you may already know about the journey that has landed me where I am today. I’ve been back to school so many times I’ve almost lost count! It started when I graduated with a BFA from Simon Fraser University in 2009. After deciding not to pursue a career in film, I got my certificate in Digital Marketing Management from the University of Toronto in 2014 so I could switch careers. But after a few years of working in that field, I realized my true passion was personal finance, which led me to become an Accredited Financial Counsellor Canada® in 2018.

If that wasn’t enough studying for a lifetime, I also spend my free time reading personal finance books and taking online courses to improve my knowledge and skills. As we speak, I’m actually enrolled in the Canadian Securities Course (though I haven’t made much headway yet).

For me, personal finance is a passion. And if you’re reading this right now, or found me through my YouTube channel, I’m gonna guess it’s something you’re either passionate about or at least curious about too.

But here’s the thing, you don’t need to do as much schooling as I did to feel knowledgeable or confident managing your money. You also don’t have to spend as much on education as I have. There are a ton of amazing educational resources out there to help you grow your personal finance knowledge, and many are absolutely free!

Introducing TD Direct Investing Learning Centre

This leads me to something I’m very excited to share. Back in June, TD Direct Investing launched their new and improved Learning Centre. You may remember me blogging about TD Direct Investing when they launched their GoalAssist™ tool in the spring. You may also remember the video tutorial I made about it.

TD Direct Investing has been overhauling its Learning Centre for some time. I know this because I’ve been working with them on a few projects for several months now, including the Level Up Your Money event I did with Erin Lowry in May.

You see, as a self-directed investing platform, they cannot provide investment advice or push any particular investment product onto clients. The only thing TD Direct Investing can provide you is access to their trading platform — that’s it. Everything else, such as what stocks you want to buy, what investment strategy you’re using, or what’s in your portfolio, is completely up to you!

Because of that, they’ve put a real emphasis on education. They want to ensure clients have access to the tools and resources to help them build confidence with self-directed investing. While TD Direct Investing has had learning resources for years, their new Learning Centre brings all that great content into one easy-to-find spot on their website. It houses a wide range of free educational videos, master classes, and webinars, which are accessible to clients of all levels, from the more novice to the experienced investor.

Since I know that DIY investing can seem overwhelming and even scary when you’re a beginner, I’m so happy to see TD Direct Investing do something like this to make self-directed investing more accessible. Because it should be more accessible. Investing is for everyone and it’s 100% a learnable skill. If I can go from having no idea what I was investing in 5 years ago to now feeling knowledgeable enough to teach workshops on investing, anyone can learn and implement this stuff!

So, since I have a TD Direct Investing account, I want to give you a special peak inside.

1. Navigating TD Direct Investing Learning Centre

After you’ve logged into your TD Direct Investing WebBroker account, navigate to the Learn tab at the top and click on it.

You’ll then be forwarded to the Learning Centre, which is broken into 3 sections.

First, there’s the Video Lessons section.

If you scroll a bit more down, you’ll find the other 2 sections: Master Classes and Webinars.

2. What’s in the Video Lessons Section

In the Video Lesson section, there are 3 different online courses you can take: New to Investing, Portfolio Management, and WebBroker Essentials.

Each online course will take you an hour or less to get through, and each course is broken down into a series of videos on a number of different topics.

Here’s what it looks like if you jump into the New to Investing course.

Here’s what it looks like in the Portfolio Management course.

And lastly, here’s what it looks like in the WebBroker Essentials course.

3. What’s in the Master Classes Section

TD Direct Investing offers daily interactive master classes, which are live online workshops with an instructor on a specific topic. When you click on the Master Classes Schedule link, you’ll be redirected to a page that includes the classes schedule by topic at the top.

There’s also info about registering for their “New to TD Direct Investing” master class, which happens every Monday at 4 pm ET. If you are new to the platform, I’d highly recommend doing this (I did when I first became a client and found it super helpful!).

As you continue to scroll down, you’ll be able to find more specific information about their master classes, such as this one on being New to Investing, which includes sub-topics and class times.

And as you continue all the way to the bottom of the page, you will find more information about the different instructors and their bios.

4. What’s in the Webinars Section

Similar to the master classes, Learning Centre also offers live webinars on a range of topics from investing basics to more advanced concepts. New webinar topics are offered monthly and something cool about the webinars is they often feature notable industry experts outside of TD as guest instructors. Clients can participate in these on their own time, either by registering for one of the new live webinars, or by watching the Learning Centre’s back catalog of on-demand webinars (and there are a ton of them!).

Here’s an example of one of their previous webinars, hosted by Vanguard Canada on hedging foreign investments.

And here’s what it looks like once you click on that webinar to watch it.

And that’s it! That is an inside look at the new Learning Centre at TD Direct Investing. If you’ve already got an account with TD Direct Investing, then you can access the Learning Centre right now. If you don’t but are thinking of becoming a DIY investor, then just remember this is one of the big benefits to using this trading platform compared to others out there.

Going back to what I was saying at the beginning of this post, learning is a life-long journey. If you want to have a better understanding of how to grow your wealth and become a confident investor, then the only way to do that is to make educating yourself a priority in your life. And there’s no better time to do it than right now. The resources are out there for you to get to that next step. It’s up to you if you want to make a change in your life and take action.

Let me know what you think in the comments! Are you a client, and if so what do you think of the new Learning Centre at TD Direct Investing? If you’re not, what are some key things you look for in a discount brokerage?