Fidelity is a US-based broker that gives you access to a wide range of assets, free use of cutting-edge platforms, and all the tools you need to locate the best opportunities and make educated decisions.
Fidelity can make your cash go even further since there are no account fees, no commission trades, and no minimums to start an account.
(With the exception of crypto or CFDs! Which Fidelity doesn’t offer.)
Thanks to an amazing mix of instructional information and a cutting-edge mobile app that makes trading and investment online easily available to everyone, I believe that this broker might be a top pick for regular investors, even newbies.
An internal team of experts provides you with reliable tools and the most recent expert views. They provide everything from wealth management services to digital investment and counselling. We take a deeper look in this Fidelity review.
At a Glance – Pros and Cons
So what are the benefits and drawbacks of Fidelity? Overall, they’re worth a look for anyone looking to utilise their money to trade online in a varied and secure manner. As long as you don’t want to trade cryptocurrencies!
Pros
✔️ Several options for investing are available
✔️ UK and foreign stock markets
✔️ Powerful systems
✔️ Expert advice and investment instruments
✔️ US stocks and ETFs without commission
✔️ Extremely affordable rates
✔️ Several base currencies for accounts
✔️ Excellent round-the-clock client support
Cons
❌ Now do not support CFDs and cryptocurrencies
❌ Fewer possibilities for financing accounts
❌ Long process of creating an account
❌ Some account perks need higher deposits
❌ High margin rates and mutual fund costs
Fidelity Review – Overview
Traders may invest in stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and options online at no cost to them through the US stockbroker Fidelity. They use the most recent smart trading technology and offer affordable fees for Mutual Funds, Bonds, Initial Public Offerings, Metals, and Certificates of Deposit (CDs).
What is Fidelity? 🏛️
Fidelity, founded in 1946, is well known for regularly offering investors competitive rates and excellent customer service. A variety of potent trading platforms, tools, and instructional materials are also available, in addition to independent expert research. Regardless of your hobbies or degree of expertise, there are many opportunities available for everyone.
Manage your funds on your own with a Fidelity brokerage account or ask them to do so for you using their financial advising services. There are several different account kinds to accommodate various financial objectives.
I appreciate how they have clear, transparent offers that may be tailored to the specific requirements of each customer. It doesn't take long to create an account, whether you need a trading account, a rollover, a traditional, or a Roth IRA.
They can assist you with personal finance for everything from intricate capital management to your pension requirements. Low-cost robo-advisor solutions provide you access to expert investment management, from digital-only investing to a hybrid robo service with adviser access as needed.
Or cooperate with a committed adviser who will work with you and for you, offering concise advice intended to help you increase and safeguard your money.
Learn more about Robo Advisors.
Regulations
One of the first things I consider when selecting a brokerage is regulation (read: FSCS UK Regulations). This is due to the fact that I always prefer to use a licenced broker, since they are required to abide by certain policies and guidelines designed to assist safeguard investors.
The fact that Fidelity is subject to American securities legislation, registered with the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), and a part of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority pleases me (FINRA). Additionally, they are traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
Personally, I think this is top-notch regulation, thus I would have no issues giving them my money.
Funds
Customers of Fidelity are protected by the Customer Protection Guarantee, which will compensate qualified customers for damages resulting from suspicious activities in their accounts.
To assist deliver the finest services available to clients, they are furthermore taking part in asset protection programmes like the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
Security and privacy for clients are top priorities for Fidelity.
They use cutting-edge technology and industry-leading security standards to help protect your assets.
Countries
Fidelity is a US-based broker that mainly serves US clients, although it also accepts investors from foreign nations through its subsidiary firms. While Fidelity International offers its products and services across Europe and South-East Asia, Fidelity Investments Canada serves Canadian investors.
The services, including the tradeable goods and account kinds, can distinguish between nations. Please feel free to read our broker recommendations for some alternative possibilities if you find that they do not serve clients in your area for any reason.
Platforms Fidelity clients have access to a variety of state-of-the-art desktop and web trading platforms. As long as you have an internet connection, you can keep up with all of your accounts, research, news about the state of the UK economy, and trading from anywhere in the globe.
The platforms are incredibly simple to use, and the completely customizable design makes everything easily accessible. I had no trouble finding my way around and believe it to be the best arrangement for hassle-free internet trading.
Pro – Active Trader
Fidelity's sophisticated trading platform, Active Trader Pro, includes features that can aid in making knowledgeable decisions before, during, and after the deal. You can obtain advanced trading tools, real-time analytics, and visual snapshots to track your assets.
The Daily Dashboard, a themed stock screener, personalised newsfeeds, locate clever entry and exit locations, and other tools are among the available resources. In just a few easy steps, you can download Active Trader Pro and begin using a predetermined setup.
Use the setup tool when first logging in to select a layout, view instructional movies, and gain fast tips. From that point on, you may create a personalised layout using your favourite tools, colours, and font sizes to make it uniquely yours.
Features of Fidelity Active Trader Pro:
- Direct access to streaming, real-time market information within the platform
- An interface that is fully customizable may be set up to be as basic or sophisticated as needed
- Advanced order types make it easy to place and manage deals
- View current insights to support thorough market analysis
- Real-time investment monitoring via visual snapshots
- Powerful trading tools built-in that allow for in-depth chart analysis
- Expert market knowledge to aid in making trade decisions
- More than 20+ independent suppliers of free research
- With real-time notifications, locate prospective trade opportunities
- Tools for portfolio management to speed up the procedure
- Keep track of economic developments that can affect your portfolio
Fidelity Mobile Apps
For individuals who need to access and manage their account while on the road, the mobile platform is helpful. From the palm of your hands, you can see your portfolio, create watch lists, do research, and trade numerous assets.
Additionally, you receive news, videos, real-time quotations, and sophisticated charting, allowing you to stay informed about the markets from any location with an internet connection.
Both iOS and Android-compatible smartphones can download the mobile platform.
I enjoy how your online broker accounts, investments, budgeting, and spending are all conveniently located on your home screen, providing a more contemporary and simplified experience.
Identify trading opportunities in real-time using Real-Time Analytics' clear, actionable notifications. Know when a stock makes a new high or low, passes over a significant technical threshold, suffers an exceptional increase in intraday volume relative to its historical average volume, and more.
With Trade Armor, you may choose entry and exit strategies, see a trade's potential risk and return on a chart, and set an alert to keep track of price changes. This enables you to get knowledge that will assist you decide when to purchase and sell in accordance with your own plan.
Use the all-in-one Daily Dashboard to get data you can use to make decisions. It provides real-time news, earnings releases, and economic events that are pertinent to your investments.
Features of the Fidelity mobile app:
- Delivered easily to your mobile device, real-time market quotes
- Personalized feed to provide you the most relevant information
- While travelling, you may simply and quickly see and manage your invesments
- Trade stocks, options, ETFs, and mutual funds anytime, anywhere
- Always have access to professional market research
- Watch webinars and podcasts online
- To simply keep track of your favourite instruments, create watch lists
- Receive personalised news and push alerts
Fidelity Review – Platform and Tools
The platforms that are offered, in my opinion, should have enough tools for the majority of people to get by with. To aid you with your research and to assist you to plan, review, and keep track of your money so that you may make better choices and realise your full trading potential, Fidelity offers a variety of simple-to-use yet comprehensive online trading tools.
They provide shrewd tools and technology to help you find and seize fresh trading possibilities whether you're operating alone or with a financial adviser.
How does Fidelity’s platform work?
Like most other investing platforms, Fidelity Fundsnetwork functions similarly. If you have these things, opening an account online is rather simple.
- If you intend to invest a large sum, your debit card information and your national insurance number
- Bank information if you intend to make recurring investments via direct debit.
You must decide what to invest in after selecting the type of account you choose (ISA, SIPP, Junior SIPP, or Junior ISA). Fidelity offers a Pathfinder tool to assist you in finding a ready-made fund solution if you need assistance deciding what to invest in.
Fidelity has a history of creating user-friendly tools that assist visualise ideas like investment risk and potential returns.
Unfortunately, Fidelity's website revamp in 2018 had a negative impact on user experience, making tools like the pathfinder tool less user-friendly than they may have been. The good news is that since then, advancements have been made.
It may nevertheless create attractive fan-charts of your potential future profits based on the attitude you've chosen toward investing risk. But after that, it forces you into either a more expensive passive Fidelity fund or an actively managed Fidelity fund.
Given the variety of robo-advice options available, like Nutmeg, Wealthify, and Moneyfarm. Fidelity will have its hands full trying to outcompete these offerings. These robo-advisers' web and mobile app interfaces are much smoother, in part because to their frequent lower prices.
For instance, the Fidelity Pathfinder tool might recommend the Fidelity Multi Asset Open Adventurous fund if you were investing for growth and wanted someone to handle your money.
Before we take into account the underlying transaction expenses inside the fund, which may be as high as 0.35% annually, this has an overall annual cost (including Fidelity's service charge) of 1.42%. Contrast this with the equal yearly cost of 1.02% for a fully managed portfolio at Nutmeg. and you can see how pricey Fidelity's managed service is.
The relatively affordable passive fund option from Fidelity invests primarily—though not exclusively—in its selection of ETF trackers to keep expenses around 0.60% per year (plus extra transaction charges of about 0.06% per year).
However, Vanguard's Lifestrategy funds, purchased through the Vanguard investing platform, cost 0.37% a year (if you have under £250,000), plus extra transaction expenses of 0.11% a year, if you are particularly interested in straightforward, inexpensive fund alternatives.
However, if you have more than £80,000, Interactive Investor is the most affordable option to invest in Vanguard funds. Read our review of Vanguard Investor for additional details.
When it comes to choosing your own investments, Fidelity excels. Fidelity creates its Select 50 fund selection of funds it evaluates based on internal research for people in need of some direction. It is comparable to AJ Bell's Favorite list or Hargreaves Lansdown's Wealth 50 list from Fidelity.
As an alternative, you might elect to use the Fidelity Investment Finder to investigate your own investments. 3,197 funds, 196 investment trusts, 383 exchange-traded funds, and 1,778 UK and foreign shares are just a few of the many alternatives available.
Screening options include investment firm, asset type, Morningstar rating, fees, management approach, fund size, yield, and geographic area.
However, compared to other platforms, this is where Fidelity's website falls short. It's still a little difficult and annoying to compare funds and conduct research. Much of these hassles may be avoided if, like me, you conduct your own investing research and just utilise your investment platform to check fund facts before to transaction.
The 2018 site design appears to have been created more for tablets and mobile devices than for desktop computers. However, a lot of investors prefer to make judgments and execute trades on a PC. From Fidelity's perspective, this problem was made worse by the fact that Hargreaves Lansdown relaunched its website about the same time and made it even more user-friendly.
Online investment platforms strive to provide a polished online experience while concealing the army of operators working behind the scenes. With Fidelity, though, you get the impression that you are battling administrative and technological legacy difficulties, which makes the online service a little bit clunkier than it has to be.
As a devoted Fidelity user, this may make utilising what is otherwise a solid platform frustrating. However, familiarity with them progressively reduces some of the first user annoyances, similar to many other online retail websites (like Amazon), and since its initial overhaul in 2018, improvements have been seen.
Many consumers will learn to bear with some of the online annoyances that you hope would be resolved over time since Fidelity offers one of the most cost-competitive platforms, as I will address in the following couple of sections.
Now for the most useful tools 🔥🔨-
Research Dashboard for Stocks ⚙️
You may search for and locate prospective investment possibilities using the stock analysis dashboards using tools for data visualisation and third-party expert research. This combines fundamental and technical analysis, trends, price activity on advanced charts, technical occurrences from Social Sentiment Score, news feeds, Recognia, and other factors.
Stock Asset Screener ⚙️
Use the stock screener on a desktop or mobile device to quickly and easily locate assets that meet your specified criteria. To limit your possibilities, you may search stocks and ETFs using countless different parameters. You may also do a search utilising impartial expert techniques.
Score Summarising the Equity ⚙️
The asset validation instrument equities summary score from Thomson Reuters Starmine is exclusive to Fidelity. This provides you with stock ratings from a few independent experts who have been carefully chosen, which are then combined into one score.
Strategy Testing ⚙️
Before making an investment, Fidelity lets you back-test several investment strategies on Fidelity.com and Wealth-Lab Pro using historical market data spanning 20 years. Of course, past performance is in no way indicative of future results. Investors who trade a minimum of 36 times annually are eligible to use Wealth-Lab Pro's automatic trading tool, subject to additional terms, restrictions, and eligibility criteria.
Calculators ⚙️
The calculators may assist you in strategizing, assessing, and monitoring your money so that you are constantly informed.
Integrity Go ⚙️
As mentioned earlier, a robo-advisor like Fidelity Go may automatically manage your assets in accordance with your preferences, risk tolerance, and overall goals.
Personalized Planning & Advice ⚙️
This hybrid robo-advisor combines online planning, personal savings and investment management with the help of a qualified adviser when necessary.
Fidelity Review – Education and Markets
An internal team of experts can also provide you with the most recent professional insights. In order to help clients with their various trading techniques, they provide investment research and analysis.
To assist traders in making wise investment decisions, Fidelity Viewpoints offers articles and some of the most recent financial comments.
Learning Center
For all levels of experience, the Fidelity learning centre offers a huge selection of helpful articles and online courses on a wide range of topics. Trading, investment, goods, and other topics are discussed. Everyone can learn something because there is a tonne of knowledge available.
Live Webcasts
The brokerage frequently offers free webinars where you may participate from the convenience of your home and gain insightful information. Users can register to get alerts when new webinars are scheduled.
Interactive Lessons
Customers who want to get a better understanding of a range of trading and investment-related issues, including technical analysis, trading platforms, risk management, strategies, and more, can join the Trading Strategy Desk.
View
You may receive a weekly email from Fidelity Viewpoints outlining the experts' current views on financial markets, investment methods, and personal finance. This might be a terrific method to stay informed about market developments and be inspired about new prospects.
Markets
With Fidelity, you may invest and trade with affordable fees in a wide range of securities, including stocks, mutual funds, options, spread betting, bonds, CDs, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
Before creating an account, you should carefully examine their cost schedule because there could be restrictions and extra fees might be involved. Although these costs are current as of right now, you should check to see if they have changed because fees are, of course, continuously changing.
Fidelity Wealth
This service provides wealth management with individualised planning and expert adviser guidance.
Options & Stocks
REITs, IPOs, and share trading from the UK and abroad, and more. With leverage rates as low as 5.00%, there is no fee for trading stocks or options, plus £0.50 per contract for options.
Exchange-traded funds (ETFs)
All ETF trades cost nothing. Find 5 bond ETFs, more than a dozen factor ETFs, and 11 sector ETFs from Fidelity.
Bonds & Certificates of Deposit (CDs)
Bonds and CDs totalling 40,000 in new issues and 60,000 in secondary market offers. In secondary trading, bonds or CDs cost £1, but US Treasury securities are exchanged freely.
Investment funds
10,000+ mutual funds, both Fidelity and non-Fidelity, covering international firms. Index mutual funds with no minimum investment and zero expenses. There are no transaction costs for Fidelity ETFs and scores of other funds.
Fidelity offers a wide range of self-directed and managed accounts that are appropriate for various investor objectives and investment philosophies. Fidelity accounts offer no fees and may be started with no minimum deposit necessary, in contrast to certain other online brokers.
Depending on how much each client trades, different service levels are provided. An active trader is one who does 120 or more deals annually and has access to special resources and services. Active trader VIPs are those that make 500+ transactions or more annually and are thus entitled to the highest degree of service for wealthy people.
The following are some of the popular Fidelity account types:
- Personal Account (one person)
- Mutual Account (two or more persons)
- Commercial Account (for legal entities)
- Pension Accounts (Roth IRA, Traditional IRA, Rollover IRA)
- Managed & Automated Account
- Accounts for trust, estate, and charitable planning
- Checking account
- Custodial and Education Savings Accounts
Fidelity Review – Experience
The Fidelity customer care team is accessible via phone, email, and online chat around-the-clock. This gives you handy ways to get in contact with a financial expert for assistance with your technical, general, or account issues. They also welcome visits in their Investor Centers, which are spread around.
Fidelity is there to help on your terms with any financial concerns you may have.
When working with certain other brokers, it's not always the case that they are accessible whenever and however you need them. In terms of significance, I really rank customer service right up there with regulation. I don't care if you have the finest trading circumstances in the universe if your support isn't up to scratch.
Fidelity account funding
Wire transfers, ACH, checks, and online digital payment processors are among the financing methods offered by Fidelity. Please be aware that not all methods are accessible for both deposit and withdrawal, and some may only be available to certain countries.
When utilising specific payment methods, various costs could be charged. Based on the payment source and method, the withdrawal period might change. In contrast to certain ways, bank transfers may take a few business days to settle.
On their individual websites, several payment systems may list any transaction limitations, requirements, or restrictions. In some nations, you might have to validate your account in order to get the restrictions on specific methods removed.
Third-party payments are categorically not accepted by Fidelity. Your Fidelity trading account must be named exactly the same as any money placed into it.
A wide range of currencies, including EUR, GBP, USD, DEN, HKD, CAD, AUD, JPY, NZD, NOK, MXN, PLN, SGD, ZAR, SEK, and CHF, are available for opening accounts. The availability of other currencies is advantageous since there are no currency translation costs when using an account in your own currency.
Fidelity Review – Verdict
Fidelity offers a wide range of assets, cutting-edge trading platforms, and cutting-edge tools.
This popular online brokerage has a wide range of accounts and investment services to meet the demands of diverse investors, and their prices are relatively reasonable.
Despite this, they do not provide CFD or crypto trading, and the account opening process is more drawn out than typical.
Since they try to simplify the difficulty, I would say they are appropriate for beginners. Their aim is to be clear and assist with your particular needs in everything from investing to financial planning and pricing. The market-leading investing research and analysis that is freely accessible to assist you with all of your trading techniques truly pleased me.
Overall, I believe they are a wonderful option for any American wishing to trade and invest with a market leader in a regulated environment. If not, you might want to think about Charles Schwab as a different choice.
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