Yes. A teenager in Canada can invest. But the rules are different depending on how old you are, and the cleanest path forward depends on which side of 18 you're on.
If you're 16 or 17, you can technically have money invested in Canada. The most common way is through what's called an in-trust account, which a parent or guardian sets up on your behalf. Once you turn 18 (or 19 in some provinces), you can open your own brokerage account and invest directly.
Before 18, a Parent Holds the Account for You
Most major brokerages in Canada, including Wealthsimple, Questrade, and the big banks, require you to be 18 or 19 years old to open your own investment account. In Ontario, the legal age to enter into a financial contract is 18. In British Columbia and some other provinces, it's 19.
So at 16, an investing account in your own name at Wealthsimple is off the table for now, and no amount of wanting it changes that. A parent can open you a Kids and Teens account there, held in trust for you with a prepaid card and interest on the balance, and that is a good place to park the savings while you wait. Stocks and ETFs live in a separate account, and that one waits for your birthday.
What can happen is that a parent or guardian opens what's called an in-trust account (sometimes also called an informal trust account) on your behalf. The account is technically in their name, held "in trust" for you. The money is invested for your benefit and eventually transfers to you.
Nobody opened one of these for me. I had no money knowledge as a teenager, none at all, and the subject never came up at home. If your parents are willing to do this for you, that is a head start I did not have.
There's a catch worth understanding. In Canada, investment income earned inside an in-trust account is generally attributed back to the parent for tax purposes. So if the account earns $500 in dividends, your parent pays the taxes on it. Capital gains work a bit differently and are often attributed to the child, but the rules get complicated quickly.
If your parents are considering opening one of these, they should talk to a tax professional first. The attribution rules above are the simple version, and once real money is involved, one conversation with someone who does this for a living is worth having.
For most teenagers, there's a cleaner path.
Once You Turn 18, the TFSA Is Where Your Money Belongs
I went to school for financial services, and of everything that training covered, two things were worth keeping: the types of accounts, and the way compound interest works in both directions, for you when you invest and against you when you borrow. This section is the first of those two.
The most powerful investing tool a young Canadian has is the Tax-Free Savings Account, better known as the TFSA.
The day you turn 18, you become eligible to open one. It's worth understanding how it works before you do.
Any money you earn inside a TFSA is completely tax-free. The dividends your investments pay and the gain you make when you sell stay off your tax return entirely. The government built this account so your money could grow with no cut going to Ottawa.
In 2026, the annual TFSA contribution limit is $7,000. That means you can put up to $7,000 of new money into a TFSA this year. And because unused room carries forward, if you turned 18 in a previous year and haven't contributed yet, you likely have more room than you think.
This is where the in-trust account conversation often ends. If you're 17 right now, the cleanest move is often to simply wait. In a year you open a TFSA in your own name and move your savings in. From that day on, every dollar of growth is yours and the CRA takes none of it.
The year of waiting is still a working year. Save the money and keep it somewhere you can reach, because the TFSA is what you're building toward.
What to Actually Invest In
This is where a lot of teenagers (and honestly, a lot of adults) go sideways, and I include myself. Over COVID, YouTube filled up with new channels teaching people to invest and handing out stock tips, and I tried them all. Big tech and Tesla, index funds, penny stocks, you name it. If the video made a convincing argument for me to buy it, I bought it. I was checking the account a dozen times a day or more, hoping to see it go up, and wondering whether to sell when it dropped even though I knew better. None of that is where a beginner should start.
The recommendation for first-time investors is simple: index ETFs.
An ETF is an exchange-traded fund. It's a single investment you buy that holds dozens or hundreds of companies inside it. A broad Canadian market ETF might hold shares in 60 or more major Canadian companies at once. A global ETF might hold thousands of companies spread across dozens of countries.
Buying an index ETF puts a slice of the whole market in your account. Some of those companies will go up and some will go down, and over time the broad market has historically grown.
Ecclesiastes 11:2 says: "Invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight; you do not know what disaster may come upon the land." The writer had ships and grain in mind. The principle is the one an index fund runs on: spread it out, because nobody can see which one fails.
Two names come up often for Canadian beginners: XEQT and VEQT. Both are single-fund, globally diversified index ETFs available on Canadian exchanges. You buy one thing and you're instantly invested in thousands of companies worldwide. They charge very low fees, and on Wealthsimple you can buy a fraction of a share, so a single dollar gets you started. At most other brokerages, Questrade included, you need the price of one full share.
I should tell you what I actually hold, since I am recommending something I do not own. My self-directed TFSA is about three-quarters broad index funds and a quarter individual names, and the broad share grew after I got burned on the aggressive stuff. The three funds I hold are VFV, which tracks the S&P 500 and is my broad index piece; XEI, a Canadian high-dividend fund I hold for the dividend income; and FIE, a Canadian financials fund that pays monthly, also for the income. I am telling you what I hold so you know where I stand, and nothing on this page is financial advice. If I were 18 and starting with one fund, XEQT or VEQT is the simpler choice, because one fund covers the whole world and you never have to decide how much Canada to own.
For the step-by-step process, this guide walks through exactly what to do with your first investment dollars.
Markets Fall, and You Need to Know That Before You Start
Markets go up and markets go down. In 2022, the two all-in-one funds named above each lost about 11 percent in a single year. They recovered. But a teen who put in $1,000 and watched it become $890 needed a kind of patience they may not have expected to need.
The rule that matters: if you need the money in the next two years, it should not be in stocks.
If you're saving for tuition that starts in September, that money belongs in a high-interest savings account, where a bad month in the market cannot touch it. Day trading and short-term speculation are a different category entirely, and worth understanding before you're tempted by them.
Investing is for money you can leave alone for five or more years. Money you can let sit when the market drops without panicking and selling at exactly the wrong moment.
That patience is the actual skill, and it counts for more than any stock pick or any attempt at timing the market. You buy broad index funds and you leave them there.
One Move to Make Today
If you're 17: open a savings account and start building what you'll invest the day you turn 18. Have the money ready to move.
If you're 18 or older: open a TFSA today. It costs nothing to open, and the room you leave unused this year carries forward into the next. Every month you wait is a month your money isn't growing tax-free.
The account will be waiting for you the day you come of age. Now you know what to put in it.