‘Alexa, buy Tilray shares.’ TD Ameritrade rolls out voice purchases

TD Ameritrade clients will soon be able to buy shares, including volatile pot stocks like Tilray Inc., through Amazon.com Inc.’s smart speaker.

“We are allowing trading through Amazon’s Alexa,” Tim Hockey, chief executive officer of the U.S. discount broker, said in a BNN Bloomberg television interview Wednesday. “You can make a trade by speaking to your smart speaker — that’s an industry first and would have been unheard of a couple years ago.”

TD Ameritrade Holding Corp., the Omaha-based firm that’s 41 per cent owned by Toronto-Dominion Bank, has seen a surge of interest in the pot industry from clients, according to Hockey.

Cannabis-related stocks were about six per cent of total trades in the most recent quarter, almost as high as crypto-related stocks, which accounted for about nine per cent of trades at the height of their popularity last year, Hockey said.

“Crypto has now abated and now it’s about one per cent level of our trades, just to give you a sense of how these sectors trade,” Hockey said.