Fidelity Review: Top Broker With Extensive Research Tools

Fidelity might be for you if: You're looking for a broker with low fees and deep research tools. Fidelity offers $0 commission stock trades and thousands of $0 commission mutual funds. In short, it's big, smart, and affordable. In this Fidelity review, we'll cover everything you need to know to decide whether this brokerage is for you.

Author's note: My favorite brokers are those that make investing in stocks and ETFs easy and affordable. I've been investing for four years, and I plan on holding my investments for decades. Robinhood is my go-to platform. Top perks include an IRA match and a no-frills interface. I don't day trade or dabble in mutual funds, but I do invest in Bitcoin; it's a must-have option.

Fidelity offers basic and advanced investment types, plus fractional shares. You can even buy crypto on the Fidelity app, though you must open a separate crypto account.

Investments

• Bonds
• Crypto
• ETFs
• Foreign markets
• Options
• Precious metals
• Stocks
• Mutual funds

Brokerage accounts

• Crypto
• IRA
• Margin
• Robo-advisory
• Roth IRA
• Traditional brokerage
• 529 plans

Fidelity offers $0 commission trades. You can save big by sticking to no-transaction-fee funds. One thing to watch out for is Fidelity charges you $49.95 for redeeming No Transaction Fee (NTF) non-Fidelity funds within 60 days of buying them -- so hold onto them to save money.

Fidelity is as cheap as it gets when it comes to miscellaneous expenses like statement fees, closing IRA account fees, and returned check fees. Most of that stuff is free.

Margin rates

Margin rates are on the high side for small account balances, but if you borrow more than $500,000, rates begin to get competitive with the best brokers for options.

One area where Fidelity really shines is in research. The company boasts that it offers more research than other similarly sized discount brokerage firms. Here are a few of its research capabilities:

• More than 20 independent research firms: Fidelity offers access to in-depth research reports from more than 20 independent research firms. Simply look up a ticker and you'll see a list of reports ready to read for free.
• StarMine: Thomson Reuters StarMine is a unique tool that gathers analyst ratings and weights them by their historical accuracy. This can also be helpful for determining which research firms have been right about their past price targets for a particular stock, or whether the buy ratings on a company have historically been deserved.
• Upgrades and downgrades: Fidelity makes it easy to view the movers and shakers in the market on any given day, showing upgrade and downgrade activity from more than 89 research firms.

Fidelity also offers a number of stock, fund, and ETF screeners so you can quickly search for companies with rapidly growing earnings, funds with low expense ratios with long-tenured managers, ETFs that are highly correlated to another fund you own, and more.

Fidelity offers a web-based trading platform in addition to a platform for active traders. The advanced platform (Fidelity Active Trader Pro®) does not have any fees or additional costs associated with it and has no eligibility requirements.

Both its trading dashboard on the web and its mobile apps (available on iOS, Android, and Windows) offer the functionality you'd expect, with live streaming quotes, charting tools, and the ability to trade stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, and options right from your browser, tablet, or smartphone.

App

Fidelity's iOS and Android apps both receive high marks from users, mainly for the versatility that lets you manage your account on the go. Here are the current app store ratings.

• iOS rating: 4.8/5 stars
• Android rating: 4.5/5 stars

Discount brokers may forgo sending you a holiday card every year, but that doesn't mean they skimp on customer support. Fidelity has 24/7 phone support for brokerage accounts, plus an online chat service. (We used its live chat feature to ask about its support hours and received a response within 30 seconds.)

There are a few ways to contact customer service:

• Phone line open 24/7
• In-person locations at 197 branch offices
• Online chat is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. EDT to 10 p.m. EDT

Fidelity is a safe place to invest. All Fidelity accounts are covered by SIPC protection up to $500,000, so if Fidelity goes bankrupt, you're covered up to that amount. Plus, Fidelity offers a "Customer Protection Guarantee" that promises to refund you if someone messes with your account and it's not your fault. You can send encrypted messages to Fidelity through the platform, and Fidelity offers you the option to activate multi-factor authentication to further secure your account.

Fidelity is one of the biggest and most well-known investment platforms out there. It manages over $5 trillion in assets, a staggering number. As of writing, Fidelity operates 215 Investment Centers in the U.S. It's a one-stop-shop for beginners and advanced investors of all kinds.

Keep reading about Fidelity on these pages:

At The Motley Fool Ascent, brokerages are rated on a scale of one to five stars. We primarily focus on fees, available assets, and account types; however, we also take into account features like research, education, tax-loss harvesting, and highly rated mobile apps. Our highest-rated brokerages generally include low fees, a diverse range of assets and account types, and useful platform features.

See our full methodology here: Ratings Methodology