Choosing the right stock broker is crucial for investing success. With many options like Ally Invest, Robinhood and Fidelity available today, it can get overwhelming for beginners. This article provides a detailed comparison between these top 3 brokers across areas like fees, investments offered, platform ease of use, research availability and account types supported to help you select the best fit as per your needs.
Ally Invest offers robust functionality but lags Robinhood in ease of use and Fidelity in breadth of investment options
Ally Invest provides an extensive suite of investment options beyond stocks like options, mutual funds, forex and futures. It also has strong research capabilities and data. However, the interface is not as intuitive as Robinhood while the availability of account types is not as diverse as Fidelity. For active traders though, Ally Invest presents a good choice.
Robinhood pioneered free stock trades but has faced controversies, lacks retirement accounts
Robinhood made waves by pioneering zero commission stock trades, fractional share purchases and cryptocurrency investments with an extremely simple mobile interface. However it has faced issues like trading outages, lack of customer support and questionable order flow practices. Robinhood also does not offer retirement accounts for long term buy-and-hold investors.
Fidelity leads in breadth of investment products, research and account choices
Fidelity is the clear leader when it comes to the variety of available investment products from stocks and ETFs to options, futures and forex. Their platform also provides best-in-class research capabilities and data to help inform your investing decisions. Lastly Fidelity allows you to open different account types like brokerage, IRA and HSAs that suit both active traders and passive index fund investors.
While all three stock brokers have their merits, Fidelity edges out as the best choice with its unparalleled investment variety, research and account flexibility followed by Robinhood’s mobile ease-of-use and Ally Invest’s active trading functionality.