Does anybody find Fidelity Investments hard to work with as a Self-directed investor?
Web-site is slow and does not auto update
Everything I ask for they have a hard time providing or they can’t provide. Web-site is hard to use when entering orders (lots of room for mistakes) seems like you have to push all kinds of buttons to make a trade. Can not do a Day+ you have to reenter after market closes or try to use ATP (BTW ATP does not work on weekends). Another example I could not get the Lot cost detail from the web site on a position with over 14,000 shares NO download, No Print of cost. TDA could give me everything, IT WAS GREAT!!
2 Likes
Excellent comment—thank you for sharing your experience! 
In general, TD Ameritrade & thinkorswim platforms are on a much different level than Fidelity’s platform. Thinkorswim has more advanced tools and better functionalities, making it better suited to more users’ preferences. I completely agree with your assessment.
However, Fidelity does have some areas to be proud of. For example:
- Fidelity doesn’t rely on revenue from payment for order flow in equity trading, resulting in higher execution quality. In contrast, TDA earns a significant amount from PFOF.
- I appreciate that uninvested cash put into money market funds at Fidelity earns 5%, while it’s only 0.35% at TDA.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Also, I’m curious to know what others think about the platforms.
I agree with you, I hope somebody buys the TDA web technology and tells the world they have it, so I can stop the research for a company that can give me what I want.
Fidelity is so weak on customer service, every time I call they spend so much time talking and saying sorry they never fix the problem so I call back and do it all over again…Sad
Recently I had reinvested dividends and they told me they don’t add the cost of new shares to the cost basis because it was an IRA account. Seems to me your average cost would be misleading if they add shares with zero cost!!
Here is another crazy problem, Fidelity does not give you the correct cost basis of your positions. They told me the website and ATP only display 3 digits (.000) but when you sell your position they use the correct data which is 4 digits! It is very difficult to reconcile my personal data to what Fidelity lets me see or have access too. It is an easy fix but they don’t seem to care about the Self directed Investor needs.
I have no choice but to put up with all these problems until I can find a firm that is closer to what TDA provided like Gainskeeper.
If anybody has a good firm like TDA please respond and let me know!
1 Like