Fidelity Active Trader Pro vs. Investors Vanguard

Fantastic for the planning and execution of trades, as follows: (1) Offers nearly 50 market filters, including technical, social sentiment, and custom options filters, (2) supports analysis of option market sentiment with volatility and open interest statistics, as well as the day’s biggest trades, (3) functionality to trade equities, ETFs, simple and complex option strategies with extended-hours and directed trading capabilities, (4) capacity to create and save up to 50 orders and place them at the right time, (5) helps manage risk and profit potential with conditional orders, (6) allows placement of a variety of simple and complex multi-leg option orders, (7) provides ability to monitor portfolio with streaming quotes, real-time gain and loss, streaming balances, and streaming order status updates, and (8) allows creation of personalized layouts to see the market and portfolio information that’s important to you Set trade defaults, create shortcuts, and use hotkeys to quickly and efficiently navigate through the platform.

Incentivized

Vanguard is a tried and true investment platform. They hold a large portion of people's wealth in the United States, so they have experience and the reputation to go along with it. Their customer service via phone is top-of-the-line, which is helpful for any retirement or investing-related questions. However, their website and app sometimes lack functionality, and it can be difficult to navigate. For users looking for an easy-to-use platform for investing, Vanguard might not be it.

Incentivized

• Accurate Data
• Ability to reach out for help
• Ease of use once trained

Incentivized

• Low cost
• High value index funds
• Very good exposure to all markets.

• The advanced charts have made improvements but are still behind Thinkorswim

Incentivized

• identifying source of stock receipts

Incentivized

Unlike Active Trader Pro, TD Ameritrade's advanced desktop platform thinkorswim has no frequent trader requirements. It is also very advanced, boasting 400 technical studies and 20 drawing tools. It offers paper money, a practice mode. Forex and futures can also be traded on thinkorswim. There are many useful features on thinkorswim, such as heat maps, live streaming of CNBC, an economic calendar, alerts, and more. thinkorswim is tailored to more sophisticated traders and it is not that user-friendly compared to Active Trader Pro.

Incentivized

I thought I would need Vanguard Predictive Planning, but the robot-investor style tool like that didn't fit my current needs. I have availability to learn and explore so I took the plunge to handle it myself without predictive planning in place. I do review quarterly, but I didn't need a separate tool for that.

• Objective is to make money, right? It definitely supports it.

Incentivized

• Vanguard has helped our employees invest their money
• Vanguard's broad offerings and low fees have made our benefits packages seem more appealing to potential hires

Incentivized