Should i use fidelity

List of Partners vendors. Fidelity was founded in and made its internet debut nearly 50 years later, in The company has evolved into a significant force in the online brokerage space. Fidelity has consistently offered investors high value with excellent research, useful tools, and extensive educational resources. Most importantly, the company has continued to improve its platforms and is committed to lowering costs for investors. If you're interested in Fidelity's robo-advisory services, we've reviewed Fidelity Go separately from the main brokerage offering.

As one of the largest brokers in the United States, Fidelity services all types of customers—from novice to expert and from self-directed to those seeking highly personalized advice.

For the casual, buy-and-hold investor, Fidelity provides a broad selection of tools, research, and resources coupled with easy order entry.

For more serious investors and traders, Fidelity offers Active Trader Pro, a downloadable program with streaming real-time data and a customizable trading interface. While the company supports a decent range of offerings, a few popular trading products—namely, futures, commodities, and cryptocurrencies—are missing from its lineup. Opening a brokerage account with Fidelity is simple, especially if you already have another type of Fidelity account e.

If you want to add account features such as options trading or margin, you'll need to fill out additional paperwork that can be time-consuming. Overall, Fidelity. If you have trouble finding what you're looking for, there's a handy search bar at the top of most pages.

Casual investors who stick to buy-and-hold strategies should find Fidelity's web-based platform adequate for their needs. You'll find quotes, charts, watchlists, and other tools packed into a basic, no-frills platform. Order entry isn't fast, and this is one reason the web-based platform is better suited for long-term investors. You have to hover your mouse over "Accounts and Trade" on the main menu and choose "Trade" to get an order ticket.

Alternatively, there's a sub-menu with one-click access to the trade ticket in the account view. Designed for active investors and traders, ATP is fully customizable, so you can set up your workspace to suit your preferences.

You can monitor relevant news streams, get real-time insights, set custom alerts, and trade directly from the chart. Except for bonds, you can trade the same asset classes on mobile as on Fidelity. You'll find streaming real-time quotes and news on the app, plus a limited array of charting and research tools.

Custom watchlists are accessible across all Fidelity platforms. The web platform has a relatively easy workflow, and you can link to news and research from symbols in your portfolio or watchlist.

Quotes and news don't update automatically, so you must click the refresh button at the top of the screen to see up-to-date information. However, you can view streaming quotes in a watch list by toggling the streaming button on. You can set a few trading defaults on the web, such as whether you want a market or limit order, but you have to make most choices when you place the trade. Active Trader Pro is more robust than the web option and it's also more customizable. You can create personalized layouts to view the information that's most important to you.

You can also set trade defaults, create shortcuts, and use hotkeys to navigate through the platform and speed up order entry. The platform supports chart trading, and you can stage orders for later and place basket trades.

There's streaming real-time data across the platform, including in watchlists, charts, order entry tickets, and options chains. The platform also provides a probability calculator, options analytics, measures of cross-account concentrations, and much more. On Fidelity's mobile app, you can trade stocks including fractional shares , ETFs, options, and mutual funds—but not fixed income.

The mobile offering is comprehensive, with much of the same functionality as desktop. That said, fundamental analysis and charting are limited, and you can't place conditional orders. Fidelity has recently introduced an opt-in beta experience for mobile that delivers on many of the most requested features from new customers, including:. Fidelity offers a good selection of assets, including stocks, ETFs, options, fixed income, forex, and mutual funds.

If forex is your preferred trading instrument, it's best to call Fidelity for information—forex details are not available anywhere on the Fidelity website. The mobile app has all the same asset classes as Fidelity's web and Active Trader Pro platforms, making it easy to place and manage trades from anywhere.

Missing from Fidelity's range of offerings are futures, futures options, and cryptocurrency. Search Icon Click here to search Search For. Credit Cards Top Picks. Banks Top Picks. Looking for a place to park your cash? Brokers Top Broker Picks. Robo Advisor and Crypto Picks. Mortgages Top Picks. Insurances Auto Insurance. Loans Top Picks. Thinking about taking out a loan? Knowledge Knowledge Section. Recent Articles. Ratings Methodology Fidelity.

Rating image, 5. Bottom Line A clear top stock broker, particularly for mutual fund investors wanting to buy Fidelity mutual funds with no commissions. Full Fidelity review. Cons Higher-than-average options contract fees. International trading Fidelity is one of a handful of brokerages that offer access to international markets. Branch offices Being able to drop into one of Fidelity's offices to speak to a representative can offer a lot of peace of mind, especially when you have issues that can't easily be solved over the phone.

Fractional share investing Fidelity is one of the few mainstream brokers that allows investors to buy and sell fractional shares of stock. Highly-rated mobile app Fidelity's iOS and Android apps both receive high marks from users, mainly for the versatility that allows investors to manage an array of account needs on the go. Margin rates Fidelity is better suited to investors who aren't actively trading on margin.

Alternatives to consider. Read TD Ameritrade Review. Read Interactive Brokers Review. Buying mutual funds and ETFs. Total mutual funds More than 10, No-load mutual funds More than 8, No-transaction-fee mutual funds More than 3, Fidelity fees you should know about.

Many brokers have such fees to discourage investors from actively trading in and out of mutual funds. The only cost associated with the debit card is an international currency exchange cost. This, along with other features, makes Fidelity one of the best stock brokers for IRAs. Fidelity's trading platform. Fidelity margin rates. For example, charting is clean and includes after-hours charts, which is nice; however, only seven indicators two in Android are available — well below the industry average of over The app experience is also built primarily around investors.

Fidelity provides all the benefits of what an investor would expect of a full-service brokerage, including the entire spectrum of investment services, from stock trading to retirement guidance. Fractional shares: Fractional shares trading enables investors to buy a fraction of a share instead of a whole share.

In , Fidelity is our favorite broker for fractional shares trading thanks to its meticulously designed order ticket and dedication to providing customers the lowest cost executions. Other investments: While futures , forex trading , and crypto bitcoin trading are not offered, international trading is, which enables customers to trade in 25 countries and exchange between 16 currencies.

In the international trading department, only Interactive Brokers , which is built for professionals, offers more global access. Fidelity does a great job of organizing content into roadmaps with progress tracking, as well as sorting by experience level, category, and content type. Articles, videos, webinars, infographics, courses, and even podcasts are made available to customers. There is even an AI-driven recommendation engine to suggest educational content to you.

Retirement education: Fidelity really stands out with its retirement education. Over the years, I have compiled an entire folder of bookmarked Fidelity Viewpoint articles on money-related topics. Fidelity also offers a variety of in-house tools to provide you with a proper diagnosis of your financial position. Fidelity truly embraces no-fee banking, offering retail service centers and delivering a reliable experience. That said, Fidelity offers no loyalty rewards for using multiple products, an area in which Bank of America Merrill Edge reigns supreme.

Having reviewed Fidelity Investments for the past ten years and being a client myself, what impresses me most is the drive to provide the best possible customer experience year after year. Our Take 5. The scoring formula for online brokers and robo-advisors takes into account over 15 factors, including account fees and minimums, investment choices, customer support and mobile app capabilities.

Jump to: Full Review. Learn More. Large selection of research providers. Strong customer service. Expense-ratio-free index funds. Highly rated mobile app. Cons Relatively high broker-assisted trade fee. Compare to Similar Brokers. Sign up now. Full Review Where Fidelity shines. Fidelity is best for:. Frequent traders. Beginner investors. Research and data. Retirement planning assistance. Account minimum. Stock trading costs. Options trades. Tradable securities. Crypto offering. Trading platform.

Mobile app. Free and extensive. More detail about Fidelity's ratings. Account minimum: 5 out of 5 stars.