Active Trader Pro Reviews

Pros

Customizable to display my information the way I want to display it. Clean, straightforward interface lets me quickly access information--from cursory overview of my portfolio to detailed tax information and statements. Also seems to have good security measures equipped

Cons

Some of the views start out the same way every time you load the software, where it would make more sense to start where you left off last time.

Pros

Free commissions on equity trades, quality of order fills, extremely extensive inventory of stocks available for short-selling.

Cons

The only negative issue with this product is the fact that if you want to initiate a short sale position at the market open, you must place the trade between 8:00 am and 9:15 EST as opposed to the night before with all other brokerage software that I've used in the past.

Alternatives Considered

thinkorswim

Reasons for Choosing Active Trader Pro

In order to take advantage of the free commission trading offered by Fidelity (but only after I was able to prove to myself that Fidelity was able to achieve good quality order fills, which they can, as explained above).

Reasons for Switching to Active Trader Pro

The Fidelity Active Trader Pro platform is easier to navigate, and the availability of stocks to short is far superior to what was available to me on thinkorswim.

Pros

Fidelity support is good. Active Trader Pro...not so much.

Cons

Lots of bugs. Will not update trades. I lose money because I cannot sell a moving security. Fidelity support is great - Active Trader Pro...not so much. Look for an alternative.

Pros

Easy to use and help is provided. I like being able to make decisions quickly

Cons

Nothing. It’s new to me so I like it so fat

Pros

Active Trader Pro gives you all the information you need to invest strategically in one place. After using other softwares, I was very pleased with the functionality. I would never go back to another company. One should never invest blind, and Fidelity gives you everything you could need to be knowledgable.

Cons

Fidelity gives you so much information on your investments that it can be overwhelming and the website isn't always easy to navigate, but once you get the hang of it, it's no big deal!

Pros

Easy to place trades.
Good foundation for what could be an excellent product.

Cons

- Drawings on charts do not save, so if you like to draw trend, support, and resistance lines, etc. you are out of luck. I am forced to do all of my charting in Think or Swim, but my trades in ATP, which is a real pain.
- Slooooooooooowwww
- No customer technical support - Fidelity does have a minimal support team on Reddit, if you can find it. Why you have to be a Reddit user to get support from Fidelity baffles me. I have tried many times to contact ATP support at Fidelity, but I have given up.
- Saved layouts are a mystery as are charts. You never know what you are going to see when you reopen a stock symbol to review.

Pros

The charts and features are excellent. This was a platform I had hoped to use. However, they failed to prove that they had functional software or that they could fix a simple issue. People like this do not get money from me.

Cons

For each of the 18 stocks in every portfolio I would have 9 personally configured separate chart TABS (1 Year SMA, 6 Month SMA, 10Day, 5Day, MACD, Bollinger, 2Day SMA, Today PSAR, LowBuyPoint). In 7 of the TABS for each stock there were 2 INDICATORS added (ADX, RSI). I drew a yellow horizontal line on both (@ 25 for ADX and @ 50 for RSI). For each 18 stock Portfolio this took several hours because each of the 7 TABS with these INDICATORS had to be saved after adding each horizontal line. In other words, you could not customize a chart and it's TABS for an individual stock and just SAVE the whole customized chart for the single stock. I was also instructed to save the Platform Layout each time. Log-out was always done correctly.

Yet every next day, opening the platform software, my horizontal lines were gone and my time was wasted. I called multiple times to speak with Electronic Channel Support about the fact that my chart customizations were never saved to their server. They could never correct the problem.

They also have an Investor Notebook where you can add personal notes. This too is hyper-dysfunctional. It will only let you type very slowly. So, I would actually create my notes on my PC then just copy/paste to the dysfunctional Platform Notebook.

There is more too, but this site will not allow....

Anyway, they did not get a $500,000.00 transfer of funds because of their failure. I have gone back to Ameritrade Think Or Swim which is far superior.

Pros

There aren't any pros about this software.

Cons

This is like the free AOL disks we'd get in the mail in the mid 90's, and likely hasn't been updated since. No hot keys, minimal customization, frequent streaming errors with invalid data. Seperate trade tickets for pre and post market orders that de-populate fields when one field is changed. Slow and buggy, this is an insult from one of the largest financial institutions. This is REALLY BAD SOFTWARE.

Pros

Lots of features and data available in real-time.

Cons

Software is buggy. Periodic lock-ups, lags, etc. Support is virtually non-existent. When you do get them, they always blame your computer or your configuration. I'm on my 3rd computer using this software, and have continuously had the same issues on each one. Hard to believe it's my PC.

Pros

The software is somewhat customizable…..

Cons

It frequently changes your trade strategy with poor defaults and is very clunky (not streamlined) to use.