Fidelity Investments reviews, ratings, pros and cons, complaints from brokerage customers

Fidelity Investments Ratings

Fidelity Investments average user rating: brokerage firms reviews

Fidelity Investments BrokerageReviews.org rating: 3-star brokerage firm rating

Fidelity Review: Stocks, ETFs & Options Trading Commissions

Stocks and ETFs: $7.95
Options: $7.95 + $0.75 per contract
Mutual Funds: no transaction fee when trading over 1,400 Fidelity and non–Fidelity mutual funds; $75 for all others
Bonds: U.S. Treasury Auctions, incl. TIPS Auctions, U.S. Treasury Bills, Notes, Bonds, incl. TIPS - free
GSE (Agency Securities), secondary CDs, Municipals, Corporates (BBB- or higher), CATS/TIGRS, Corporates (BB+ or lower): $1.00/bond, $8 minimum, maximum $250

Minimum To Open Fidelity Online Brokerage Account

A minimum balance of $2,500 is required, with the exception of mySmart Cash Account®. If applicable, you will have 60 days to meet the minimum balance requirement.

Fidelity Promotional Code/Offer/Bonus 2012

(no promotional offers at this time)

Fidelity Investments Reviews


by Kathy K, 11/22/2011 Pros: Cons: Fidelity has 1400 NTF mutual funds and their required hold is now down to 60 days from 180 days. I've been very happy with them for both a general account and my rollover IRA for 15 years.
by brokerage-review.com, 5/8/2011 Pros: Great research tools with largest selection of independent research Cons: Extremely high commission ($75 per transaction) on non-Fidelity mutual funds Fidelity's mutual fund commissions are still some of the highest of all online brokers - $75 per transaction. There are also plenty of free Fidelity and non-Fidelity mutual funds to choose from. Keep in mind, that there is a short term redemption fee for mutual funds sold less than 180 days after being purchased. There is also $12 annual Low Balance Fee for any noncore Fidelity fund under $2,000. Read full review at Fidelity review.
by nartad, 11/13/2010 Pros: Easy account set up, IRA, Premier customer service, All reps very polite, Trade online quickly, Fact-laden site for easy research, Low admin. costs, Mutual Funds, Roth IRA, buy CD's, Traditional brokerage, variety of offering Cons: No one responds when you have a problem, they can not fix their software, multi-leg option software a joke I have had accounts with them for more than 10 years and their service is generally excellent. The brokerage commission is low if not the lowest. The option trades you can do in an IRA account are limited to Covered Calls some of the other broker allow more option strategies. Their software for multileg options trading is exceptionally poor. When you make a net credit transaction the credit can not be used to buy any other stock or option. The most frustrating thing is that after bringing this to their attention through their account reps and e-mails over more than 6 months no changes have been made. If you are interested trading options especially multileg options keep away in spite of their good customer service in other areas.
by TheTaskMaster, 10/29/2010 Pros: Cons: No one responds when you have a problem, Site Not the Most Intuitive I am both a Buy and Hold investor and End of Day swing trader. I have had accounts with Fidelity for about 20 years but never a brokerage account. I moved my brokerage accounts from TD AmeriTrade to Fidelity about 3 months ago. Reason for the move was the savings per trade. The savings would add up when you are doing several trades a night. The first problem was that Fidelity did not have any report that allowed me to review all the Date Acquired on my positions, only the Quantity and Cost Basis. They had received the information and it was properly recorded when I Closed Positions, but there was no way for me to get a report to review that the information was correct. I had to individually check each account on line and go back about 5 sceens after each one. Next there is no test account available and no Trading Log to maintain record of trades along with information of, methods, targets, stops, risk, comment, etc. Not even an Excel template. I am use to a complete Balance & Positions Summary being available for each account. No such thing is available. I have to go to four (4) different places and print four reports and then manually compile the information. Position acquired cost with acquired date was never available. This had to be maintained separately. A high waste of my time. They said I needed Active Trader Pro. I tried it and it was worse. For a day trader the live information was nice, but the charts had no scanning abilities. The Active Trader reports still do not have all necessary information and now the reports print across two landscape sheets that do not maintain line spacing between sheets or even repeat the Symbol column. Fidelity does not provide the information required by an active trader in a convenient manner and some information like Purchase date in only available by scanning all order history Forget Fidelity Brokerage if you day trade or end of day trade.
by Ankin, 10/13/2010 Pros: Cons: Does not value their customers, No one responds when you have a problem, trades unreliable, busy signals on bad days, Reps Need more training I am Fidelity Investment customer since more than 10 years. I always take care of my trading by WEB/internet. On one incident, I did not have web access and I wanted to have one time sensitive, critical order placed within last 10-15 minutes and it was critical that it gets executed as earning announcement for that security was due that evening. I ended up with Fidelity rep who was not properly trained and had not sufficient knowledge to assist customers. He did not pass it to other more knowledgeable person and I ended up $4000/5000 loss. So be careful this may happen with anyone out there.
by rocky3400, 10/13/2010 Pros: Easy account set up, IRA, Premier customer service, All reps very polite, Trade online quickly, Fact-laden site for easy research, Mutual Funds, Roth IRA, solid quick execution Cons: Sales people prefer to sell their funds I have worked with Fidelity for more than twenty years, having personal, business and retirement accounts there and at other brokerages, too. I have found Fidelity to be consistently above average. The ability to keep my business account there has saved me considerable amounts, when I consider the fees my bank charged for everything - even for deposit tickets - and the interest Fidelity pays on the balances (compared to no interest for my bank's business account product). I have also taken advantage of Fidelity's relationships with various banks to open a cash account that I can access overseas using an ATM card, and Fiedlity reimburses all of the bank ATM fees I am charged. Can't beat that, and since I travel overseas regularly, it gives me an easy way to obtain local currencies at a low spread. (That alone has saved me hundreds of dollars of commissions and spread from the currency exchanges in airports.)
by rabbiyodah, 10/13/2010 Pros: Cons: I had previously been with an investment firm that charge a hefty fee for advice that was mediocre. I am not an expert investor, but I am willing to do my homework. I was first impressed with the Fidelity web site. There you could do various kinds of homework and research. It gave all the statistics but also gave information such as fund managers, how long they had been with the fund, and what other funds that had managed. The site also allow you to choose the parameters for your choice, including safety and risk, how stocks fair in bull and bear markets. Once you have your portfolio you can track your investments in various ways. It gives you the data since purchasing a fund and the particular distribution between stocks and bonds and what type of each you have, Many of the transactions may be done on a computer, but there was also a local representative with whom you can converse. The representative looked at all our assets, both those with Fidelity and those invested elsewhere. He pointed out the strengths and weakness of funds in which I was iinterested. With all this support, there are many no load funds with small operating expenses which are sound investments. Due to the help from both the representative and the web site, we were able to find stocks with small risk which brought us through the financial crisis , It is good to have so much quality help with for so little money. A solid company to work with and I am very pleased with the results
by Guest, 9/23/2010 Pros: Cons: Rock solid platform and lightning fast trades. Tons of research tools as well as plenty of great charting tools and backtesting software.
by RE1 Consumer, 5/10/2010 Pros: Cons: Convoluted processes, no exception pocesses. Once they have your money hard to get it back within reasonable amount of time. Do not do what promised. Constant follow up on them is required. Not a consumer efficient company.
by KimK9724om, 4/16/2010 Pros: Cons: An excellent website. Very easy to navigate, and great customer service.
by Papa Owl, 4/2/2010 Pros: Cons: They don't know they are in the people business. It is through the best employees ( that you can trust) that help grow a company. They have car salesmen trying to operate in the finacial world. Then they lie to try and cover their ass.
by TheTruthAboutFidelity, 3/16/2010 Pros: Cons: Fidelity will hold your money for extended periods of time before making it available to you. Even a cashier's check needs to go through an extended collection period. Workers are offered all kinds of training and perks until you actually ask for them. Always a condition, always another lie.
by VoodooMMI, 2/25/2010 Pros: Cons: Fidelity provides quality tools for traders and good customer service. However, they charge $8 per equity trade. I imagine that you would have a tough time beating Fidelity's services but you may be able to match them at a lower cost.
by Heech, 1/13/2010 Pros: Cons: Range of Services Training & Tech Support Commissions & Fees Overall Reliability I started off on Fidelity, but quickly moved on when I realized how poor/broken their active trader services were. It's not clear to me at all that they're serious about getting into this space. I will say their ATS trading group is very helpful, at least as much as they can be. You can have someone on the phone within 30 seconds of picking up a phone, and they can place/cancel orders for you. However... bad news: I programmed with Wealth Lab Pro for some time, but quickly found it to be completely broken vis-a-vis integration to Fidelity. (Can't short, horrible execution tracking, can't reliably cancel orders, etc, etc...) Worst of all, I quickly found their entire margin calculation back-end is broken. There was a known bug (as of 11/08) in the way buying power was calculated, but a known bug which no one at Fidelity informed their traders about, and which no one could help me bypass. Basically, buying power wasn't being released as stocks were sold... meaning you quickly found yourself deprived of margin intra-day. This absolutely killed my long/short strategy, directly cost me tens of thousands of dollars... and I never even got a call/email of apology from anyone there. Use Fidelity if you're trading a few times a month... but stay away if you're actually active.

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Fidelity Investments reviewed by BrokerageReview.org users. 14 customer reviews. Rating: 3.

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