Hello all tech types,
I trade with Fidelity and they use Microsoft for the trading platform. If I buy a Mac, is there a program that I can buy for the mac that will allow trading that Fido uses.
Thanks
Sam
Mac Computer
Re: Mac Computer
Not sure I understand the question. I have a Mac, and I process transactions on my Vanguard accounts using a web browser called Firefox. You can download Firefox for free. It's a general, all-purpose web browser, and I'm using it right now.
Re: Mac Computer
My guess is that they are talking about the ActiveTrader Pro Desktop application or something similar.
It's available on Windows and I'm guessing they are wondering if it's available for a Mac.
Can you clarify? How about naming the specific Windows app you are referring to that you currently use and did it come from Fidelity - or where did it come from?
It's available on Windows and I'm guessing they are wondering if it's available for a Mac.
Can you clarify? How about naming the specific Windows app you are referring to that you currently use and did it come from Fidelity - or where did it come from?
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Any overconfidence in your ability, willingness and need to take risk may be hazardous to your health.
Re: Mac Computer
If you mean ActiveTraderPro, it will run in a web browser, as long as you have Flash and Silverlight and OS 10.7 or above, I believe.
Of course the standard caution is that you don't need it to buy basic mutual funds or ETF's.
Of course the standard caution is that you don't need it to buy basic mutual funds or ETF's.
Re: Mac Computer
What a great question to ask Fidelity. I read on this forum that they have great customer service, but maybe not.exoilman wrote:Hello all tech types,
I trade with Fidelity and they use Microsoft for the trading platform. If I buy a Mac, is there a program that I can buy for the mac that will allow trading that Fido uses.
Thanks
Sam
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nisiprius
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Re: Mac Computer
How to Access Active Trader Pro
Reading between the lines, I think you will be able to use Active Trader Pro OK from the website with a Mac, but it may be clunkier and not as "feature rich" as the actual Windows application. As is usually the case with web-based "applications."
Speaking as a dyed-in-the-wool Mac fan, who bought my first Mac in February 1984 (took me a whole month to decide) and has bought nothing else since for my own use... I love Macs (and am quite familiar with Windows from work and from my wife's Windows 10 machine... which she loathes, incidentally...)
...the sad truth is that although Macs are fine, nevertheless you will have a slightly higher percentage of nuisance and compatibility issues using them with mainstream corporate America.
I would guess that there are probably at least a few features in the Windows desktop application that are missing from the web-based version. I would also guess that every time Apple updates the OS or the Safari browser, there's maybe a 10% chance that it will cause some kind of glitch with the web-based version... and that Fidelity's tech support will turn out to be savvier in resolving problems with the Windows desktop application than with the web-based application.
If I had a nickel for every time I called a "Mac tech support" line, started the conversation by saying "I'm using Mac OS X version so-and-so," and had the rep say "OK, go to the Start menu at the bottom of your screen..." I'd have sixty or seventy cents, easy.
Reading between the lines, I think you will be able to use Active Trader Pro OK from the website with a Mac, but it may be clunkier and not as "feature rich" as the actual Windows application. As is usually the case with web-based "applications."
Speaking as a dyed-in-the-wool Mac fan, who bought my first Mac in February 1984 (took me a whole month to decide) and has bought nothing else since for my own use... I love Macs (and am quite familiar with Windows from work and from my wife's Windows 10 machine... which she loathes, incidentally...)
...the sad truth is that although Macs are fine, nevertheless you will have a slightly higher percentage of nuisance and compatibility issues using them with mainstream corporate America.
I would guess that there are probably at least a few features in the Windows desktop application that are missing from the web-based version. I would also guess that every time Apple updates the OS or the Safari browser, there's maybe a 10% chance that it will cause some kind of glitch with the web-based version... and that Fidelity's tech support will turn out to be savvier in resolving problems with the Windows desktop application than with the web-based application.
If I had a nickel for every time I called a "Mac tech support" line, started the conversation by saying "I'm using Mac OS X version so-and-so," and had the rep say "OK, go to the Start menu at the bottom of your screen..." I'd have sixty or seventy cents, easy.
Last edited by nisiprius on Wed Jul 13, 2016 5:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness; Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.
Re: Mac Computer
I have a couple MBP's and use them to trade using Fidelity's Active Trader Pro.
All you need to do is click the "Active Trader Pro" link which is located under the "Accounts & Trade" menu or
down at the very bottom of the Fidelity webpage under the FIDELITY name.
If you need to update/install additional programs, it should tell you what is needed.
You can always call them for help (IMHO they are very good) if you need it.
I don't trade hardly at all, but I do watch market/stocks activity and Bloomberg TV from the news link located within ATP program.
Hope this helps...Good Luck.
Don
All you need to do is click the "Active Trader Pro" link which is located under the "Accounts & Trade" menu or
down at the very bottom of the Fidelity webpage under the FIDELITY name.
If you need to update/install additional programs, it should tell you what is needed.
You can always call them for help (IMHO they are very good) if you need it.
I don't trade hardly at all, but I do watch market/stocks activity and Bloomberg TV from the news link located within ATP program.
Hope this helps...Good Luck.
Don
Re: Mac Computer
Are you able to wait a few months, or do you need a new computer right now? Apple should be releasing the next round of Macbooks in the next couple of months. May be worth the wait if your purchase isn't urgent.
Re: Mac Computer
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac is a great place to check on whether an update for Mac hardware is upcoming.Ninnie wrote:Are you able to wait a few months, or do you need a new computer right now? Apple should be releasing the next round of Macbooks in the next couple of months. May be worth the wait if your purchase isn't urgent.
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abner kravitz
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Re: Mac Computer
You can use the web-based Active Trader Pro on a Mac. I found it to be extremely fussy and often would not work, and then only with certain browsers and by changing a lot of settings. I finally determined that it wasn't worth the hassle for me, but it really didn't bother me because I was using it only as a curiosity. A ton of Mac users have complained to Fidelity, but apparently not enough for them to care.
Re: Mac Computer
You can always dual boot and run Windows on the Mac . After all, day traders make huge amounts of money so the investment in buying Windows for the Mac would be well woth it! 
http://www.howtogeek.com/187359/5-ways- ... -on-a-mac/
http://www.howtogeek.com/187359/5-ways- ... -on-a-mac/
Re: Mac Computer
can i use chrome book to use fidelity pro trading system ??
Re: Mac Computer
Dual booting is certainly an option, however it's easy to run Windows applications on a Mac fairly seamlessly within macOs. You need software called VMware Fusion or Parallels, and a copy of Windows. You also will want a Mac with at least 8 GB of RAM (and more RAM would be better).
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nisiprius
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Re: Mac Computer
Again, I'm a committed Mac fanboy and over the years I have tried many different ways of running Windows on a Mac... and frankly I've given up.
Those ways have included SoftWindows, Virtual PC, an actual Apple-manufactured "MS DOS card" that went into a bus slot and had an Intel processor and its on RAM right on it, Parallels (virtualization software) and Bootcamp (dual boot). Not one of them ever turned out to be worth the aggravation.
All of them seemed great at first and ran well and smoothly. That lasted for, oh, six to twelve months. But then glitches, problems, and version skew set in.
And of course support is problematical. If it doesn't "just work," who exactly is responsible for supporting Windows under Bootcamp? And although Windows bundled with PC hardware has an effective cost of maybe $25, it costs you something like $200 to buy a retail version.
One typical example. I think this was Virtual PC 3.0, and it cost a meaningful amount of money... low three digits. It worked like a charm, a miracle, it was great. Then there was a rev on the Mac OS, and, well, many things on it still worked but one big thing didn't: the printer support was kaput. No way to print. A full year elapsed of occasional support calls, forum chat, and assurances from the company that they were working on it. Eventually they announced that a) it was fixed, and b) the fix was available in Virtual PC 4.0, and c) if you wanted it you would have to upgrade at a cost of about 3/4 the full price of the product.
What was the problem with Parallels again? Admittedly this was a while ago... Oh, yes. First, there was a lot of weirdness about screen support. I always seemed to be stuck staring at Windows virtual screens that were either tiny, like 800x600, or too big for my physical screen! And the other, which was actually a dealbreaker, was that I bought it in order to save my employer the cost of one more PC because I was doing some development involving a custom USB device... and it turned out that the layers of software that are supposed to pipe the physical USB ports into the virtual USB ports are problematical--they worked on common USB devices, but not unusual ones.
Basically the problem with virtualization is that it works very well for pure software, because they can virtualize the processor itself, but virtualizing the hardware environment surrounding the processor is a lot trickier and they only get it 98% right.
Very seriously, if you need Windows I would shop around for a cheap, compact-form-factor PC and a KVM switch.
Those ways have included SoftWindows, Virtual PC, an actual Apple-manufactured "MS DOS card" that went into a bus slot and had an Intel processor and its on RAM right on it, Parallels (virtualization software) and Bootcamp (dual boot). Not one of them ever turned out to be worth the aggravation.
All of them seemed great at first and ran well and smoothly. That lasted for, oh, six to twelve months. But then glitches, problems, and version skew set in.
And of course support is problematical. If it doesn't "just work," who exactly is responsible for supporting Windows under Bootcamp? And although Windows bundled with PC hardware has an effective cost of maybe $25, it costs you something like $200 to buy a retail version.
One typical example. I think this was Virtual PC 3.0, and it cost a meaningful amount of money... low three digits. It worked like a charm, a miracle, it was great. Then there was a rev on the Mac OS, and, well, many things on it still worked but one big thing didn't: the printer support was kaput. No way to print. A full year elapsed of occasional support calls, forum chat, and assurances from the company that they were working on it. Eventually they announced that a) it was fixed, and b) the fix was available in Virtual PC 4.0, and c) if you wanted it you would have to upgrade at a cost of about 3/4 the full price of the product.
What was the problem with Parallels again? Admittedly this was a while ago... Oh, yes. First, there was a lot of weirdness about screen support. I always seemed to be stuck staring at Windows virtual screens that were either tiny, like 800x600, or too big for my physical screen! And the other, which was actually a dealbreaker, was that I bought it in order to save my employer the cost of one more PC because I was doing some development involving a custom USB device... and it turned out that the layers of software that are supposed to pipe the physical USB ports into the virtual USB ports are problematical--they worked on common USB devices, but not unusual ones.
Basically the problem with virtualization is that it works very well for pure software, because they can virtualize the processor itself, but virtualizing the hardware environment surrounding the processor is a lot trickier and they only get it 98% right.
Very seriously, if you need Windows I would shop around for a cheap, compact-form-factor PC and a KVM switch.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness; Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.
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randomizer
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Re: Mac Computer
Don't try to time the Mac market. Just buy and hold like a good Boglehead and stay the course.Ninnie wrote:Are you able to wait a few months, or do you need a new computer right now? Apple should be releasing the next round of Macbooks in the next couple of months. May be worth the wait if your purchase isn't urgent.
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nisiprius
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Re: Mac Computer
I forgot one big issue with using anything other than a real, physical, dedicated PC for Windows: dongles and license servers.
If you are using any dongle-protected software, dongles are high on the list of "things that don't work right" in a virtualized or emulated environment. That's probably because dongles are doing tricky low-level hardware stuff, maybe even nonstandard and undocumented tricky stuff.
Now before everyone chimes in and says "just don't use any dongle-protected software, problem solved..." in my heart I agree with you... but in the real world it's often not that simple.
And it's an arms race for any kind of restricted software. In theory, a virtual environment provides a perfect duplicate--you can have several PCs with absolutely identical virtual hardware. That means that virtualization can be used to evade licenses that tie the software to one machine. Naturally, then, people with that kind of software are very vigilant in trying to find out ways of detecting that they're running in a virtualized environment... and refusing to run in it.
If you are using any dongle-protected software, dongles are high on the list of "things that don't work right" in a virtualized or emulated environment. That's probably because dongles are doing tricky low-level hardware stuff, maybe even nonstandard and undocumented tricky stuff.
Now before everyone chimes in and says "just don't use any dongle-protected software, problem solved..." in my heart I agree with you... but in the real world it's often not that simple.
And it's an arms race for any kind of restricted software. In theory, a virtual environment provides a perfect duplicate--you can have several PCs with absolutely identical virtual hardware. That means that virtualization can be used to evade licenses that tie the software to one machine. Naturally, then, people with that kind of software are very vigilant in trying to find out ways of detecting that they're running in a virtualized environment... and refusing to run in it.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness; Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.
Re: Mac Computer
You should call their technical gurus at 1-800-544-7595. They are open now.exoilman wrote:Hello all tech types,
I trade with Fidelity and they use Microsoft for the trading platform. If I buy a Mac, is there a program that I can buy for the mac that will allow trading that Fido uses.
Re: Mac Computer
No.looking wrote:can i use chrome book to use fidelity pro trading system ??
Minimum browser requirement for ActiveTraderPro.com: Internet Explorer 8, Safari 5, Adobe Flash Player v10.1, Firefox 11
Re: Mac Computer
Except unlike the stock market, you CAN predict events in the Mac lifecycle with a high degree of accuracy. Occasionally the rumors and predictions will be wrong, but they're never dramatically wrong, and they're right more often by a wide margin.randomizer wrote:Don't try to time the Mac market. Just buy and hold like a good Boglehead and stay the course.Ninnie wrote:Are you able to wait a few months, or do you need a new computer right now? Apple should be releasing the next round of Macbooks in the next couple of months. May be worth the wait if your purchase isn't urgent.
Re: Mac Computer
Don't even need the KVM switch. Just install Remote Desktop Connection (free from Microsoft) on your Mac and run the PC headless. I'd recommend an Intel NUC (Next Unit of Computing). Full desktop PC the size of an external hard drive.nisiprius wrote:Very seriously, if you need Windows I would shop around for a cheap, compact-form-factor PC and a KVM switch.
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randomizer
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Re: Mac Computer
You seem to have missed my attempt at humor. I should probably reconsider quitting my job to become a stand-up comedian, after all.lazydavid wrote:Except unlike the stock market, you CAN predict events in the Mac lifecycle with a high degree of accuracy. Occasionally the rumors and predictions will be wrong, but they're never dramatically wrong, and they're right more often by a wide margin.randomizer wrote:Don't try to time the Mac market. Just buy and hold like a good Boglehead and stay the course.Ninnie wrote:Are you able to wait a few months, or do you need a new computer right now? Apple should be releasing the next round of Macbooks in the next couple of months. May be worth the wait if your purchase isn't urgent.
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nisiprius
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Re: Mac Computer
Remote screen software isn't half bad, and unlike virtualization or emulation software there are no hardware issues at the remote end... and if the remote screen software doesn't work for any reason you can always fall back on moving plugs around or using a KVM switch.lazydavid wrote:Don't even need the KVM switch. Just install Remote Desktop Connection (free from Microsoft) on your Mac and run the PC headless. I'd recommend an Intel NUC (Next Unit of Computing). Full desktop PC the size of an external hard drive.nisiprius wrote:Very seriously, if you need Windows I would shop around for a cheap, compact-form-factor PC and a KVM switch.
However, in the past, Microsoft has played peekaboo with Remote Desktop Connection. It's on so many Windows systems you think of it as part of Windows, but it's not. I was shocked once, when I was trying to view my wife's Windows computer from my Mac, At that time and place and Windows product line, her version of Windows appeared to contain Remote Desktop Connection, but she couldn't follow the directions I was giving her, and it turned out that it contained the client, but not the server.
Stuff like that. It's quite possible that you need Windows Pro if you want to view a Windows system from a Mac. Plus, of course, you want to be sure your PC is happy to boot up and automatically re-establish the connection if it doesn't see a screen and keyboard connected to it.Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness; Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.