Fidelity Investments www.fidelity.com Review

401K plans are a popular means to save money for retirement and online access to a retirement plan makes investment management easier than ever before. Customers can access account information, check balances by investment, update personal information, and conduct research for better places to invest money. One of popular 401k mutual fund company is also quickly becoming a popular online brokerage service. The place I am talking about is Fidelity Investments, an investment company and online brokerage service.

Online Brokerage Commentary:

Fidelity Investments is one of the best- known names in financial services and it is a company that has been around for a long time. I first got to know about Fidelity many years ago when I was conducting research on mutual funds. I noticed that this place called Fidelity was consistently ranked among the best performing mutual fund families, but my 401k and other money was tied up in other places and I did not see any pressing need to move my funds to Fidelity. In later years, my former employer decided to transfer its 401k plan to Fidelity and I have been an active customer/investment researcher ever since.

My experience at Fidelity Investments has been positive so far and I have immediately recognized some plusses and minuses with this investment company. One positive point is the research tools. They are easy to understand, provided you know at least a little bit about investments, and there are many ways to conduct research and make a decision. Maybe you would like to read the stock picks of independent experts. Or maybe you would like to find your own investments by searching the Fidelity Investments database using your own defined set of criteria. Whatever way you would like to research, Fidelity is there to help you.

Another plus with Fidelity Investments is the sites investment information. Let's say I just used conducted research by defining specific criteria and I am now curious about a specific company. Fidelity Investments will start by showing the usual trading data like average volume, previous close, 52- week high and low, etc. Then, it will offer some analyst recommendations and scores, some extensive reports on a company, downloadable in PDF, valuation information, dividend payout, inside ownership, and so on. Fidelity wants its investors to know everything there is to know before they invest, so it offers a very large amount of factual data on each business. Most any financial information you can imagine, if it is included in public records, can be found at Fidelity brokerage's online web site.

Research tools are great, but for some investors, the bottom line is sales charges/commissions. Fidelity Investments might disappoint some investors because it is not considered an inexpensive discount brokerage company. However, Fidelity isn't the most expensive when it comes to fees, either. It actually falls somewhere in- between. One way that Fidelity helps ease your commission worries is by presenting special offers  that include commission free trades for a specified period of time. This is the special deal I was offered when I decided to roll over my 401K into an IRA account. I did not have to pay any commissions for several months.

I like the ease of logging into Fidelity Investments to check my portfolio and I like the cost comparison sheet that quickly shows my net gain/loss since purchase and the percentage gain or loss for each individual investment. But one thing I don't like is the arrangement of personal portfolio information. Often, I find myself on a "click and see" mission as I search for something I want to know about my portfolio. Some of the basics are easy to find, but others are not. For example, I can remember one time when I was trying to find out if any dividends from a common stock I owned had been added to my account. There is no direct link for this, so I was forced to use the tried- but- true trial and error method; clicking many different links until I found what I wanted.

Bottom Line Viewpoint:

Fidelity Investments is a very good online brokerage service that offers highly rated mutual funds for purchase as well as full- service brokerage accounts. I like the site's research tools and there are plenty of analysis tools for your own portfolio to properly evaluate your investments. The site could use some additional security measures (It allows the use of Social Security numbers as an alternative logon id, which is not safe) and a more intuitive design, but Fidelity Investments is still a very solid financial services provider and I am happy with my decision to utilize Fidelity Investments for my retirement account needs.