Seems to be a decent big safe company, with $7.95 commission and no autoliquidation, any comments? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidelity_Investments
I have an old account with them that I barely use anymore, and it seems very poor for short-term trading (although if you want to buy/hold their own mutual funds, it may be OK ). I can't direct orders, and they try to interalize my order flow to a point that beggars belief -- recently, I saw the NBBO ask cross my limit order by a large margin with no fill, at which point I cancelled it and gave up on the idea.
Don't count your chickens before they are sold off. Margin Calls "Fidelity reserves the right to meet margin calls in your account at any time without prior notice. *" "* Fidelity can sell assets in your account without contacting you. While Fidelity generally attempts to notify customers of margin calls, it is not required to do so. Even if you are notified, Fidelity can still sell assets before the time indicated in the notice, if it believes such action is warranted. You understand that if we contact you in advance in certain instances, we are not obligated to do so and such action will not be deemed a waiver of our rights under this agreement."
I had a real issue with them a few years back, when their margin system was completely broken. And not IB's "inconvenient" sort of broken... but can't do arithmetic kind of broken. Intraday buying power wasn't being restored correctly in their margin calculations, when you closed out a position. And they couldn't fix it, just told me to call in trades to their desk (not a great solution). And worst of all, they admitted the problem had existed for 3+ months at the point I stumbled across it. I have no idea if its been fixed since, but ... that's a pretty big warning flag of a firm that's not very serious/professional about this stuff.
I closed my account with Fidelity because in my opinion, based on the non Fidelity real time data feed I was watching, Fidelity was front running my orders. I would place limit buy orders at the ask and see them immediately filled on the non Fidelity data feed but could not get confirmation of the order fills from Fidelity for several minutes. If the trades went against me, the trade fills would show up in my account. If the trade fills were in my favor, the trades did not show up in my account. I did not have to be very smart to figure out what was going on with the orders. I would not open another account with Fidelity if they were the last and only broker choice on the Planet Earth.
Thanks for all the feedback, so have to stick back to using IB, hate the liquidation rule as sometime i would like to carry overnight but got auto liquidated, anyway there's a debate thread on this topic Almost all brokers using Penson, so no choice but to stick with IB
One of my brokers uses Pension. I would not open that account today knowing Pension's current situation. With Pension's share price now under a dollar, Pension could be de-listed which would bring on more problems and downgrades for Pension. I feel IB is the safest broker and I support IB's liquidation policy to help protect IB and all IB client accounts.
If IB give 3 to 5 days before auto liquidation, will be the best, just like other brokers , all other brokers can do it, why can't IB, just that I have not found 1 broker which can match IB commission, and so many other brokers linked with penson, only few left are Tradestation Etrade Fidelity Other like td just to expensive for active trading