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If you're discussing Fidelity (FIDO), please allow me to mention that I have a Spartan account at Fidelity which I use as a backup. Fidelity has some advantages, but, imho, is not suitable for most types of daytrading.
Often, when buying 1,000 shares of CSCO or something like that, I get filled in 1-5 seconds, not too bad. But, on a new IPO or anything tricky, they kill you.....takes maybe 10-15 minutes to find out if your order got accepted. If it did, you probably already lost a week's worth of profits because you should have sold it five minutes ago, but didn't know you had it.
If you ever want to enter an order, then cancel or replace it, you could be in for big surprise. Fidelity is just not made for quick-quick type daytrading. Okay for IRA's and position/swing trading over days, but when minutes count, don't count on Fidelity. They are good some or most of the time, but the times you get messed up are too severe and costly.
Their new Fox Plus software for Windows 95 is nice, but relatively worthless compared to what MB and those type brokers offer. One would be at a severe disadvantage. Besides, using Fidelity's Fox Plus, it seems you keep getting disconnected every few minutes (without any warning) and you have to re-logon. There is no indication you're not logged on, but you can't do anything and finally must assume you're off. The minutes it takes to get back on can, again, be extremely costly. NOT the way to daytrade. Besides, calling them on the phone and dealing with them is just about as bad as dealing with Datek, if anything can be so pointless. But Fidelity is polite, for all that's worth. Just not fast. I once asked a Fidelity Spartan broker if he had access to Instinet. He had no idea what I was talking about. Kinda scary, huh? Unless one wants to try daytrading mutual funds (which I imagine is pretty much impossible), I would leave Fidelity for the IRA.
Bill |
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