I’ve been investing with Fidelity for 35 years and I’ve never been on hold more than 15 minutes.
Now my account is part of the Fidelity Premium Services and my calls are usually picked up within 2 minutes. On very heavy trading days, there may be a lag, but they offer to call me back when my time in the que is ready.

Regarding options trading. I laughed at that if you only knew well I’ll tell you. Fidelity is the most conservative firm I have ever come across in 30 years of trading. I have attained the highest level of option trading at other brokerages but never got past level 3 at Fidelity because of their subjective standards. In fact when I complained about not getting level 4 or 5 after an application for a higher level they knocked me down to level 2. I was really upset and they later knocked me down to level one and shortly later banned me from Fidelity and later my family members in my household in retaliation who had nothing to do with it. They claim it’s not because I lost my temper during a call but won’t tell me the reason. No one in my household has ever worked for any of the other companies rated on the site so I not trying to get you to go elsewhere for that reason. I recommed you avoid Fidelity you might be sorry some day because they will tie up your money, remove your rightful trading authorizations, or even illegally remove your online access to your 401k, block your govt. checks from coming into the account, restrict your trading so you can’t buy or have to call a broker to sell something. Why don’t you leave? Why should we leave we have been clients for longer than most of their employees. We are stuck too because we are stuck there some of the securities can’t be transferred. Also, any inherited iras have to be opened at the firms that holds the original IRA. I like the services and the lower level employees it’s the upper management that acts so arrogantly because they can get away with it. They do this to hundreds if not thousands of account holders. If you don’t believe me just do a search on how Fidelity bans young and new investors because they made a simple mistake or long time customers that have made a similar mistake or minor mistake. Oh and no one in my household has ever been banned or sanctioned from another brokerage or bank. We even sued one before and they didn’t ban us!

If you trade options frequently, go with TD Ameritrade. You can negotiate down the option contract fees.

Their only weakness is they are a bit restrictive on option trading. This isn’t a concern for long-term investors.

No! Fidelity offers fractional shares for all ETFs and stocks.