Fidelity Go review – The transparent robo-advisor
Moneywise.com / Moneywise.com
Updated: December 28, 2023
3.8
3.8
Commissions and fees3.8
Customer service4.3
Ease of use4
Tools and resources3.5
Investment options3.5
Asset Allocation3.5
Fidelity's robo investing platform, Go, makes sense for existing customers and has a clear pricing model. However, it lacks some of the features of other players in this space and won't allow new customers to transfer assets from existing accounts.
Like the popular “Pokemon Go” game, Fidelity Go is attempting to target Millennials with their new robo investing platform. Though the similarity ends there. Instead of trying to collect virtual creatures, you're saving real money toward some future goal. Fidelity Investment's robo-advisor is helping individuals who were previously savers transition into investors. Fidelity likes to call them “Emerging Investors.”
To the Millennial crowd, however, Fidelity is anything but hip. Fidelity is a very conservative company, a plus for a financial firm. But it's not typically thought of as a “go-to” company by people under 35 years old. Fidelity Go is trying to change this image.
As you can see from my Fidelity Investments review, we recommend them as your one-stop-shopping investment firm. They offer not only traditional brokerage accounts but also banking, credit cards and advisory services. In some respects, Fidelity is hoping you start with this product and grow into Fidelity's other higher-end services.
Fidelity Go features
Portfolio
Fidelity Go portfolios now consist primarily of Fidelity Flex Funds. These funds have zero expense ratios, which is good news for investors. This means that with a taxable portfolio made of Fidelity Flex Funds, your fees will be all-in — no guessing games.
The list of funds includes proprietary active and passive funds across fixed income, equity and specialty categories. Here are some of the funds you might find in your Fidelity Go portfolio:
Taxable portfolio
| Sector | Fund | Ticker |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. large-cap stocks | Fidelity Flex 500 Index Fund | FDFIX |
| U.S. mid-cap stocks | Fidelity Flex Mid Cap Index Fund | FLAPX |
| U.S. small-Cap stocks | Fidelity Flex Small Cap Index Fund | FLXSX |
| Foreign stocks | Fidelity Flex International Index Fund | FITFX |
| Muni bonds | Fidelity Flex Municipal Income Fund | FUENX |
| Short-term bond | Fidelity Flex Conservative Income Municipal Bond Fund | FUEMX |
| Short-term bond | Fidelity Government Cash Reserves | FDRXX |
Retirement portfolio
| Sector | Fund | Ticker |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. stocks | Fidelity Flex 500 Index Fund | FDFIX |
| U.S. mid-Cap stocks | Fidelity Mex Mid Cap Index Fund | FLAPX |
| U.S. small-cap stocks | Fidelity Flex Small Cap Index Fund | FLXSX |
| Foreign stocks | Fidelity Flex International Index Fund | FITFX |
| Bond (taxable) | Fidelity Flex U.S. Bond Index | FIBUX |
| Short-term bond | Fidelity Flex Gov't Money Market Fund | FLGXX |
| Short-term bond | Fidelity Government Cash Reserves | FDRXX |
Fidelity Go is very transparent with their fees, unlike some firms we've reviewed. They include not only the fees that they charge annually for using Fidelity Go, but also the fees of the mutual funds selected. Besides telling you only a percentage, they also tell you in dollars the annual fee you will be paying for their service. I wish all services did this, as I wrote in my article “The true costs of robo advisors.”
| Highlights | Empower | Betterment | Fidelity Go |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rating | 4.8/5 | 4.5/5 | 3.8/5 |
| Minimum to open account | $100,000 | $10 | $10 |
| 401(k) assistance | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Two-factor auth. | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Advice options | Automated, human assisted | Automated, human assisted | Automated |
| Socially responsible investing | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Read reviews | Empower review | Betterment review | Fidelity Go review |
| More info | Sign up | Sign up | Sign up |
Fidelity Go sign-up process
The best way to think of Fidelity Go is as a wrapper of their brokerage service. Fidelity Go will recommend an allocation of mutual funds and ETFs based on a series of seven questions, similar to what other robo-advisors do. At the end of the questionnaire, out pops your recommended asset allocation. Unlike the other firms, however, the questionnaire also uses demographics (date of birth, income, etc.) to determine your risk profile. They do this because by default Go assumes that you're planning for retirement.
If you are saving for other goals, don't worry; Fidelity Go does have an advanced option to input more details to help them determine your asset allocation.
Fidelity's questionnaire is available to anyone with no obligation and gives you the full details of recommended funds and percentage of allocation. If you want, you could take their asset allocation and implement it yourself via an existing Fidelity account that you have with them, although that would defeat the purpose of the ongoing adjustments in allocation.
The interesting aspect of this service is that, unlike the other robo-advisors, Go will prevent you from getting into assets that are too risky. The service will prevent you from manually adjusting the asset allocation to one it deems too risky, based upon your profile. For many with little to invest, this might be a good thing, but if you have money in other accounts, including Fidelity itself, Fidelity Go doesn’t take that into account. So for some wanting to, say, supplement an existing 401(k) plan with more savings via an IRA, Fidelity Go's recommended asset allocation might be too conservative. This isn't a defect of this robo-advisor alone, and it may take some work to get an asset allocation you desire.
Until recently, Fidelity Go required a minimum of $5,000 to start investing. However, the company wanted to welcome a broader range of investors to its robo-advisor product and lowered this to $10. To open an account, there is a $0 minimum.
Fidelity Go’s annual fees
Unlike other robo advisors, Fidelity lays out the fees during the portfolio allocation process. You'll get an estimate of how much Fidelity Go will cost. Depending upon the type of account you'll pay 0.35%–0.40% in fees per year.
A robo/human hybrid
It's becoming common in the robo-advisor space to incorporate the input of human managers. For better or worse, there's a crop of robo-advisors that employ a hybrid of computer algorithms and human assistance. Fidelity Go is among them.
The company's independent partner Geode Capital Management monitors Fidelity Go accounts and uses a risk-based algorithm to determine whether or not to rebalance an account. The algorithm calculates predicted active risk and drift, and the portfolio management team has the final say when making changes, based on their review of the data.
While investors who are leery of leaving their money 100% in the care of computers might find this reassuring, those who would rather see robotic precision when it comes to rebalancing their accounts might view this as a negative.
Summary
Overall, the service is no-frills, and the front-end questionnaire is the bulk of Fidelity Go's robo advisor service. While we like the upfront transparency of fees, the selection of funds and the low annual fees, we feel it lacks some of the functionality that the other robo advisor services currently have. You’re not paying much for Fidelity Go, which is a good thing, but you’re also not getting much service in return.
I like Fidelity Go's fee transparency and opportunity cost that's not lost through the large cash allocation Schwab forces you into for their “free” service.
Is Fidelity Go better than Betterment or Wealthfront? I would have to say no and rate Fidelity accordingly. Both competing robo-advisors have retirement planning and tax-loss harvesting, whereas Fidelity Go does not. Betterment has a superior goal-setting functionality and is the reason we recommend them as the best robo-advisor service.
However, since Betterment and Wealthfront are independent firms, they lack the “one-stop-shop” advantage that Fidelity has to offer. While not perfect, if you have existing Fidelity accounts or just want low annual fees, Fidelity Go is a service you might want to consider.
Larry Ludwig is a freelance contributor for Moneywise.
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