The Busiest Broker on Earth

摘要

FIDELITY INVESTMENTS,the privately held mutual-fund giant,has quietly built one of the biggest brokerages on the planet.Operating almost entirely online,it has added more than 1 million retail accounts in the past two years,giving it 9.9 million customers at the end of 2004.That's 40% more than Charles Schwab Corp.and 10% more than even Merrill Lynch & Co.Fidelity ended the year with us1.13 trillion of assets in its customers' brokerage accounts,muscling aside Schwab for the first time and closing in on Merrill's us1.36 trillion."Fidelity was always big,but they were viewed as a sleeping giant," says Richard H.Repetto,an analyst at securities firm Sandier O'Neill & Partners."Now they're seen as in the game."