My (soon to be) first purchases

The Questrade account is my first attempt at self-directed investing.  I understand that I will make many "rookie mistakes" or even some totally dumb decisions, but it is all part of the learning process.  I opened the account this past Friday and have set up some purchases to automatically go through on Monday when the markets open.  I can't wait for things to get started!

Here is what I did:

XIC.TO Buy 12 Units Market ($19.40/share @ last close) [Canadian Exposure]
XWD.TO Buy 10 Units Market ($24.27/share @ last close) [International Exposure]
XBB.TO Buy 8 Units Market ($31.46/share @ last close) [Bond Exposure]
HBM.TO Buy 20 Units Limit @ $9.90/share Day ($9.93/share @ last close)

So why is HBM in that mix?  I want to try playing the market a bit with a small amount of cash.  If I get this stock I will set up a sell limit @ $10.89 (10% rise) and get a quick profit of $19.80 (my first 10 trades are free).  This is an experiment only to see if I fully understand how all this works before I get big money involved.

I'll make a follow up post once the purchases go through listing what exactly ends up happening.

Here we go

I am in the healthcare field and up until now the entirety of my investment experience has been through mutual funds with Investors Group.  I have minimal investment experience but I have been doing a lot of self education of late.  I have been reading books, reading blogs, and fiddling with stock market simulators all with the goal of breaking free from the constant fees of a managed portfolio and eventually transitioning to a self directed one.

This is the extent of it.  Maybe in the future I will go into more details about my other assets and my liabilities but that is a good start.

Current Investment Assets

Cash: $4000 (plus or minus some, that is the rough average)

TFSA through Investors Group: $9700 (50/50 between my wife and myself)

TFSA through Questrade: $1000 (in my name)