Online Broker Review

Updated Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Charts Grade: B

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Note: This is a review for Fidelity Active Trader Pro charts. For our review of the standard Fidelity charts please click here.

Overview:

The Fidelity Active Trader Pro charting application is head and shoulders above those offered to standard Fidelity account holders. There is a wide selection of customizable options, styles, colors and technical indicators. The weakest aspect of the application are the drawing tools, which are not as useful as they should be. The charts are reason enough for regular Fidelity account holders to upgrade to Active Trader Pro.

Details:

1 year chart for Research In Motion (RIMM) with quarterly earnings indicators (click on images for larger views):

5 year line chart comparing RIMM, PALM, NOK and AAPL:

3 month candlestick chart of BHP Billiton (BHP) with bollinger bands, volume showing up/down days by color and MACD momentum indicator:

Most of the various chart colors are customizable. Here is a 6 month candlestick chart of Sony (SNE) with some wild color choices:

There are 65 technical indicators that can be added to charts. Here is a 3 month candlestick chart of Merck (MRK) with stochastics, Keltner channel and Chaikan money flow indicators:

There are several drawing tools that can be used to mark up charts. Here is a 6 month candlestick chart of Best Buy (BBY) with trend lines and an annotation showing where a trend was broken. These drawing tools are poorly done compared to those found at the top brokers:

Finally, you can display multiple charts of varying sizes simultaneously. Here I created small charts at the top of the screen for Goldcorp (GG), Newmont Mining (NEM) and Royal Gold (RGLD) and then I added a large chart at the bottom for the gold ETF (GLD):

Fidelity Active Trader Pro Charts