Fidelity earnings surge as bull market, retail trading power growth

Fidelity Investments capped 2025 with record revenue and profits as a third straight year of rising markets and heavier retail trading pushed more assets and activity onto its platforms.

The privately held firm reported 2025 revenue of $37.7 billion, up 15% from the prior year, according to its annual report. Operating income climbed 24% to $12.7 billion, also a record.

All told, Fidelity ended the year overseeing $18 trillion in assets under administration, while assets in its own funds rose 19% to $7.1 trillion.

Those numbers reflect a powerful mix of rising equity prices, higher interest rates and renewed risk appetite among self-directed investors. Daily average trades at Fidelity hit 4.4 million last year, a 31% increase, as clients poured money into stocks, options, and digital assets. The firm brought in $657.3 billion in new assets for the year, underscoring how much wallet share is still in play for advisors and platforms focused on the mass affluent and emerging wealth segments.

In a letter to employees accompanying the report, chief executive Abigail Johnson framed the results as a function of both market tailwinds and the firm’s efforts to expand its footprint.

“While a resilient stock market and higher interest rates helped fuel our financial results, the more lasting determinants of long-term success are delivering exceptional customer service and growing market share,” Johnson wrote.

For US advisors – both those affiliated with Fidelity and those competing with it – the firm’s scale is increasingly hard to ignore. The Boston-based company is one of the country's largest retirement-plan providers and has sizable wealth management and self-directed brokerage businesses. It has benefited from a continuing wave of 401(k) millionaires, aging boomers looking for guidance on decumulation, while also capturing younger, more active traders who toggled back to risk-on behavior during the latest phase of the bull market.

By the end of 2025, Fidelity said just over one in five Americans who were at least 18 years old held an account with the firm, amounting to 57 million customers. Among those, it said over 1.7 million retail customers have come onto its unified managed household platform since it was launched in 2024.

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Fidelity’s growth is unfolding amid an arms race for assets across the wealth and brokerage space. Charles Schwab reported $519 billion in net new assets last year, with total client assets up 18% to $11.9 trillion. Morgan Stanley, which combines a large advisor force with digital brokerage E*Trade, drew in $356 billion in new assets to its wealth unit. 

Fidelity has been building out its own toolkit for active investors. The firm launched Fidelity Trader+ in September last year, a trading platform aimed at more engaged clients. Johnson said Fidelity Trader+ has been “well-received by customers,” and the company averaged about 1.4 million users by year-end. That emphasis on trading functionality mirrors efforts by Robinhood Markets and other rivals to keep higher-frequency investors inside their ecosystems.

On the product side, Fidelity continues to lean into ETFs. Just last month, it launched two active CLO ETFs, a move it said leans into its longstanding history in the CLO space while extending its presence into a growing slice of the investment fund space.