Fidelity Active Trader

I'm going to talk to Fidelity at 1 pm and will ask about an agreement to keep it at their price. I will always have an account at TDA which they offered me $.50 plus the exchange fees which depending on the price will be about $.55.

Tasty Trade suggested using SPY on their platform. $1.00 in but no closing charges. I think they limit it to $10 per leg max and they will wave the $.10 exchange fee.
 
I talked to Fidelity and did a screen sharing with them. Their platform is similar but diff than TOS. One thing that is diff is if you are closing a position for less than $.65 on the options then there is no charge to close that. They also reduced the fee/commission from $.65 to $.50. They also give 1.2% and up to 1.6% on the money in the account. I have been pretty impressed. They also said that they thought that either TOS or the Schwab platforms would be eliminated due to the maintenance issues related to having two of them. They are impressed with the TDA mobile app.
 
I am just guessing here but I imagine they would close the Schwab platform that way all the traders from Schwab would be forced to use the TOS platform and pay the index fee Granted probably not many traders are doing index options but at least they don't loose anything by passing along the fees
That is still a lot better option than doing the opposite
 
They also give 1.2% and up to 1.6% on the money in the account.
Can you clarify? -- Are you talking about an account transfer incentive (Cash up front based on account size), or an annual interest rate on cash in account? I expect the latter, but have fingers crossed for the former!
 
I am sure he meant annual interest
I am getting about 1.9% so that's a good deal considering all the other brokerages I have don't add up to that
 
If you had the same commission rate and fees at Schwab and Fidelity, does anyone have any reasons to pick one over the other?
 
Can you clarify? -- Are you talking about an account transfer incentive (Cash up front based on account size), or an annual interest rate on cash in account? I expect the latter, but have fingers crossed for the former!

Annual rate. I think it's on cash sweep but not sure. They said if you run into margin issues the rate might drop. Of course you can always ask for an incentive.
 
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If you had the same commission rate and fees at Schwab and Fidelity, does anyone have any reasons to pick one over the other?

Anything can change but I have to think that TDA wouldn't be making traders mad by jacking the trading costs on SPX traders if they knew that they were going to lower the rate to Schwab's rate. But who knows. I think some traders will switch to RUT or SPY which might be their strategy and might be a good one for some of us. BTW Fidelity commissions on futures is $1.50 which is lower than TDA.
 
They told me that if you just concentrate on SPX then they are only going so low on transaction costs. If you also generate fees on other products that they might have more profit margin in then they might go a little lower on commissions.
 
I tried a test SPX trade at Fidelity - it was .65 plus .03 in fees.

TOS wouldn't budge on commissions or fees, so I moved a large portion of my account to Fidelity. TOS sent me a short survey. I have found Fidelity has much better fills with price improvement because they don't sell order flow like TOS does. The fixed income department doesn't cheat you on the spreads like TOS, and the sweep money market fund pays around 2% vs almost 0% at TOS. The Active Trader Pro platform is adequate but not great.
 
I tried a test SPX trade at Fidelity - it was .65 plus .03 in fees.

TOS wouldn't budge on commissions or fees, so I moved a large portion of my account to Fidelity. TOS sent me a short survey. I have found Fidelity has much better fills with price improvement because they don't sell order flow like TOS does. The fixed income department doesn't cheat you on the spreads like TOS, and the sweep money market fund pays around 2% vs almost 0% at TOS. The Active Trader Pro platform is adequate but not great.

Depending on your volume and amount of money you are transfering you can get better than $.65 per contract.
 
Depending on your volume and amount of money you are transfering you can get better than $.65 per contract.

I didn't realize that until I read the posts above. It is a very large retirement account and I am active, so I will be calling my rep today. Thanks!
 
@RandyS or others familiar with Fidelity..
Do you happen to know if Fidelity's platform supports the ability to "paste" a text string (like TOS does) allowing the syntax, positions, order type, lot size, legs, etc to be formed external to the platform to eliminate time/error constructing an order to issue? I may need to dig into this myself, but curious if someone may already know.
 
Do you think we can organize a Zoom meeting for interested people where those who have different trading platforms already installed show them to others and answer some questions in interactive manner? I don't want to do testing on my working machine and my spare comp is still unaccesible so for me such a meeting (or series of meetings) would be very helpful.
 
@RandyS or others familiar with Fidelity..
Do you happen to know if Fidelity's platform supports the ability to "paste" a text string (like TOS does) allowing the syntax, positions, order type, lot size, legs, etc to be formed external to the platform to eliminate time/error constructing an order to issue? I may need to dig into this myself, but curious if someone may already know.

That is not possible since you cannot export trades means you cannot import them either
 
Nope, Not there either I think TOS is pretty unique as far as that feature is concerned
Maybe IB has something like that I don't know since I don't have an account there otherwise I am not aware of any other brokerage that may have this feature
 
That is not possible since you cannot export trades means you cannot import them either
Ouch! But thanks! I have grown accustom to many of the features of TOS, and will have difficulty going "cold turkey" (going backwards on capabilities)!
 
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