Fidelity Review
- Martin S.
- Read time: 16 minutes
- Updated March 1, 2022
Fidelity
Trading Platforms
- MT4
- MT5
- Web Trader
- cTrader
- Mobile App
- Proprietary
Available Assets
- Forex
- Crypto
- Stocks
- Indices
- Commodities
- Futures
Funding Options
- Bank Wire
- PayPal
- Visa/MC
- Crypto
Company Information
- HQ: United States
- Excluded: Outside US
- Founded: 1946
Pros
- Free deposit & withdrawal
- Wide range of assets
- Great support
Cons
- US Excluded
- Quite new broker
- No zero spread accounts
General Information
- Min. Deposit: N/A
- Max. Leverage: N/A
- Average Spread: N/A
- Demo Account
- 24/7 Support
- Free Withdrawal
Overview
Fidelity was established in 1946 and came online 50-years later in 1995. Fidelity Investments is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in US and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Fidelity offers access to international stock markets and provides a range of trading instruments, including options, bonds, and futures. Fidelity provides in-house fidelity.com and Active Trader Pro trading accounts. It is also offering a mobile trading platform for instant order placement. Fidelity offers margin trading in ETFs, options and equities. However, the broker doesn’t really explain the leverage offered.
Trading Platforms
Fidelity’s trading platforms include Fidelity.com and Active Trader Pro. Both are provided free of cost to all customers. The Active Trader Pro platform is available for a downloadable desktop version and a web-based alternative. Investors may seamlessly toggle between the two. The site is fully customisable, with easy shortcuts, a prebuilt market, technical and options filters, complex options tools, and a multi-trade ticket to save orders for later and place up to 50 orders at once.
Active Trader Pro
Active Trader Pro includes a comprehensive set of “options” tools for tracking market trends, fine-tuning strategies and executing basic and professional options trades. You may trade single-leg and multi-leg options directly to the exchange of your choice. Otherwise, you can let Fidelity’s smart order routing discover the best prices for you. It enables you to design up to four-legged options strategies using a multi-leg trading ticket. The Option Trade Builder allows you to “build” your option trades in three phases. You may easily create a trade by selecting your outlook, strategy, expiration date, and strike price, with instructional features to support individuals new to options trading.
A short video tutorial explains how Option Trade Builder may assist you in confidently placing an options trade. Strategy Ideas will assist you to identify which strike price and expiration have performed the best in the previous two years for covered call and cash-secured put strategies. The Key Statistics and Today’s Biggest Trades might assist you in analysing market mood. Using the probability and profit/loss calculators, you may assess and evaluate your trading ideas or existing positions using the probability and profit/loss calculators.
Fidelity.com
Fidelity.com offers comprehensive options research, analytics, and idea generation tools integrated with an easy-to-use trading ticket. With the Key Statistics and Today’s Biggest Trades, you can swiftly assess current market conditions. You may also use prebuilt or custom Market Scanners to search the market for unique trading opportunities. If you have any concerns, use the probability and profit/loss calculators to validate your strategy. Connect to a pre-filled trade ticket to review and submit your single or multi-leg options trade.
Fidelity Mobile
Fidelity Mobile application allows you to manage your “options” portfolio from your iPad, iPhone, Android, or Windows Phone 8 device. The app allows you to trade options anytime and from any location. You may receive real-time quotes for a single option or examine them all by using the options chain. More significantly, you can keep track of your account positions and preferred securities and acquire the latest market news and views.
| Platform | |
|---|---|
| MetaTrader 4 (MT4) | ✖ |
| MetaTrader 5 (MT5) | ✖ |
| cTrader | ✖ |
| Proprietary | ✔ |
| Desktop | ✔ |
| Web | ✔ |
| Mobile | ✔ |
| Social Trading | ✖ |
Fees
Here is the structure of trading and non-trading fees of Fidelity.
Commission and Spreads
| Fee | Brokerage Account |
|---|---|
| Commission (per standard lot per side) | $0 |
| Spreads from | N/A |
Deposit and Withdrawal Fees
Fidelity funding options include wire transfers, ACH, and online digital payment processors such as PayPal, Apply Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay. Please note that some methods may only be available to specific countries, and not all are available for both deposit and withdrawal. Moreover, deposits and withdrawals are free of cost; however, the intermediary or financial institution may charge you.
Some payment systems may have transaction limits, restrictions, and requirements that are indicated on their respective websites. You may need to verify your account to remove limits on particular methods in some countries. Fidelity does not accept third-party payments. All funds deposited into your trading account needed to be under the same name as your Fidelity trading account.
Accounts can be opened in USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD, DEN, HKD, JPY, MXN, NZD, NOK, PLN, ZAR, SGD, SEK, CHF. The different currency options are beneficial as currency conversion fees do not apply when using an account in your currency.
Inactivity Fees
Fortunately, Fidelity does not charge any account inactivity fees, and it implies that you will not be penalised even if you don’t trade for long.
Trading Instruments
Fidelity offers a wide range of trading instruments. You can trade Stocks, ETFs, Mutual Funds, Bonds, and Options. The broker does not offer key conventional trading asset classes like forex, CFDs, and cryptos. So, to invest in those, you have to look for an alternative broker.
| Instruments | Availability |
|---|---|
| Forex | ✖ |
| Stocks | ✔ |
| Indices | ✔ |
| Commodities | ✔ |
| Cryptocurrencies | ✖ |
| Options | ✔ |
| Bonds | ✔ |
| ETFs | ✔ |
| CFDs | ✖ |
Customer Service
To satisfy your queries or address your issues, you can contact Fidelity via live chat, phone, or email. Fidelity claims to have their live chat support response time as low as 5 minutes. The phone support is super active, and email gets a response within 24-hours.
On a downside, not every customer support is 24/7. Besides this, it is only restricted to the English language only.
Usability
The Fidelity’s online trading, mobile, and desktop platforms are user-friendly and deliver a good user experience. However, they are not customisable. You may use Day, Fill or Kill, Immediate or Cancel, On the Open, End of Day, and Good ‘Til Canceled (GTC) order time limits.
On Web Platform, you can place the following order types:
- Trailing stop
- Market
- One Cancels the Other (OCO)
- One Triggers the Other (OTO)
- Trailing stop limit
- Stop
- Multi-contingent
- One Triggers a One Cancels the Other (OTOCO)
- Stop Limit
- Limit
It allows you to configure a range of alerts and notifications. Account Services, Research and Market Monitoring, Products & Offerings are the three primary sections where you can discover a variety of notifications ranging from price to research alerts. Notifications may be sent to you by email or text message. You may also configure push notifications if you download the mobile trading app. Fidelity provides detailed portfolio and fee reports. These may be found under ‘Account Positions’ in the ‘Accounts & Trade’ section.
Research & Education
When you create a Fidelity account, you have access to a suite of simple-to-use online trading tools. It helps you with your analysis, and to help you plan, evaluate, and track your finances to maximise your trading potential.
An in-house team of professionals can also provide you with the most recent expert insights. They provide investment research and analysis to help customers with their different trading strategies. Fidelity Viewpoints offers articles and some of the most recent financial commentary to assist traders in making informed investment decisions.
Stock Research Dashboard:
Using the stock research dashboard’s third-party expert research and data visualisation tools, you may search for and identify potential investment opportunities. This covers fundamental and technical analysis, social trends, advanced charting with price action, recognia technical events, social sentiment score, and more.
Stock Screener:
The stock screener, which can be chosen through desktop or mobile, makes it easy to identify assets that meet your criteria. You may also use independent expert strategies to conduct your search.
Equity Summary Score:
The investment validation instrument equity summary score from Thomson Reuters Starmine is unique to Fidelity. This provides stock ratings from chosen independent analysts, which are then consolidated into a single score.
Strategy Testing Tools:
Fidelity offers backtesting strategies on Fidelity.com and Wealth-Lab Pro that use historical market data spanning 20 years to analyse how different strategies might have performed previously before you invest. Of course, historical performance is not a guarantee of future performance. The automated trading feature of Wealth-Lab Pro is available to investors who trade at least 36 times per year and is subject to additional terms, restrictions, and eligibility requirements.
Fidelity Go:
Fidelity Go is a robo-advisor that can digitally manage your assets based on your preferences, risk tolerance, and overall objectives.
Fidelity Personalised Planning & Advice:
This is a hybrid Robo-advisor that combines digital planning, investment management, and a professional advisor’s assistance when necessary.
Fidelity Wealth Services:
This service provides wealth management via personalised planning and assistance from a professional advisor.
Fidelity Learning Centre:
The Fidelity learning centre contains a wealth of valuable information and online courses on a different range of topics ideal for users of all experience levels. Trading, investing, products, and other topics are covered.
Live Webinars:
The brokerage hosts free webinars regularly, allowing you to get valuable insights from the comfort of your own home. Users may subscribe to get notifications about upcoming webinars.
Active Investor eNewsletter:
Traders may sign up to receive the latest news and offers sent straight to their email.
Interactive Coaching Sessions:
Clients may attend the Trading Strategy Desk to learn more about trading and investment topics such as technical analysis, trading platforms, risk management, strategies, and more.
| Resources | |
|---|---|
| Market Analysis | ✔ |
| Guides | ✔ |
| Videos | ✔ |
| Webinars | ✔ |
| Autochartist | ✖ |
| Trading Central | ✔ |
| Economic Calendar | ✔ |
Safety
Fidelity investment is a regulated broker and it is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in US and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
Broker is regulated by some top-level institutions. This implies that the broker is somehow reliable. Besides this, the broker has secure funding and withdrawal system to keep your funds in safe hands. On a downside, the broker’s financials are not publically available, not it owns a banking license. Additionally, it is not listed on the stock exchange, and there is no negative balance protection. So, overall, it has above average safety score.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- No inactivity fee
- Availability of US and international stocks
- Clear fee report
- No minimum deposit
- Free deposit & withdrawal
- Commission-free US stocks and ETFs
- Free stock and ETF trading
- Several account base currencies
- Great trading platforms and research tools
Cons
- High fees for non-free mutual funds
- MetaTrader Platforms not available
- High margin rates
- Slow account verification
- Not fully digital in some cases
- Credit/Debit card not available
- Slow live chat
Conclusion
Fidelity is one of the most well-rounded brokerage firms, and it may be a good match for individual investors and traders of all levels of experience. Buy-and-hold investors are likely to find all of the tools they want on the online platform. Active Trader Pro, which offers additional customisation options, can be used by more active investors and traders. Overall, Fidelity stands out for its low costs, robust screeners, excellent trade executions, and diverse educational offerings. However, Fidelity may not be the best option for everyone. Anyone looking to trade forex, futures, commodities, CFDs, or cryptocurrency must seek elsewhere. While there are tools for options traders, competing platforms do a better job of assisting you in locating trading opportunities. On the other hand, Fidelity makes a strong case for being the online brokerage of choice for the average investor, thanks to its deep feature set and commitment to making and saving you money.