No previously if you put in Ā£100 it would round down to the nearest share, perhaps leaving Ā£8.30 in your account. Now that will go into a fractional share so youāll own exactly Ā£100 of the company.
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In my opinion, Freetrade fractionals are much superior to those of other platforms.
Only in Freetrade you can specify exactly the value you want to buy by stock.
Eg, Trading212 doesnāt allow you to do that, it simply gives you the option to buy number of shares with 1 or 2 decimal point, which means that the actual value that you can invest will still be impacted by the price of share (0.1 shares of Tesla =$70 while 0.1 shares of Cisco =$4).
Not to mention ALL platforms offering fractionals have exactly the same limitations when it comes to transferring them - none supports transfers of fractionals.
Whilst I agree it would be nice to buy by whole shares as well, I donāt agree with the overreaction of the bast 2 days. The community has been asking for fractionals for ages. Now you have them and they work really well.
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IMO, fractionalās for UK shares make sense due to reinvesting dividends.
US dividends are taxed at 15% am I correct?
I personally would be more focussed on dividends in my own country.
Seems to make more sense having fractionalās for UK.
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For me dividend reinvestment will be the main advantage. Especially for something expensive like AZN at Ā£80+ per share where the dividend isnāt enough to buy one share unless you have a few grands worth.
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Yes but the country shouldnāt really impact your decision to invest in the company. The US have some amazing dividend payers offering consistent growth.
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Yeah surely it can only be a positive when DRIP (automatic reinvested dividends) comes along as well. Right now I get just a few pounds worth of dividends, so looking forward to being able to just buy the companies Iām interested in!
I think most are not doubting the benefit of fractional shares, just a bit of confusion at the details. Hopefully the AMA will clear things up. Weāre still in the beta as well- this is all part of the process. Itāll be interesting to see how Freetrade uses this feedback going forward.
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What about if you request to transfer out a holding where you own 10.2 shares (for example)? I see a few possibilities of how Freetrade might treat this but no clarification from a Freetrade rep on how it will actually be treated.
Possibilities
A. Freetrade block/ignore the transfer request because other platforms donāt support fractional shares.
B. Freetrade liquidate the entire holding (10.2 shares) and transfer as cash because other platforms donāt support fractional shares.
C. Freetrade transfer 10 shares and retain 0.2 shares on Freetrade platform
D. Freetrade transfer 10 shares and liquidate 0.2 shares and transfer this portion as cash alongside the 10 shares transfer.
I would hope it is either possibility C or D.
A or B would mean user would have to manually ensure they have integer number of shares before making transfer request.
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Sorry, that isnāt quite right - you can buy 15p of Tesla shares on T212 if you want to. You cannot do that on Ft with the Ā£2 minimum. Ft implementation works but is considerably more clunky - at the moment - I am sure it will improve through and after the beta
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It is C or D. That has been confirmed above by Freetrade
Edit: In the beta test thread
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Iāve just re-read all the posts from Freetrade staff in this thread and canāt see the confirmation.
Eden has hit the nail on the head here. Regardless of what FT wants to believe we have been able to buy exact numbers of shares using this method.
It shouldnāt be forgotten that a lot of people who have signed up to test fractionals have been eagerly awaiting them for a while. However, for those of us with no interest in fractionals, please donāt dismiss our comments.
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Here
This bid and ask prices here are nice too
Edit: I wonder how many of these features people request are going to be available in Alpha accounts. Maybe thatās the plan. 
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Agreed. I donāt want anyone to think Iām shilling etc. because Iām not. Iām just trying to drive a discussion around what Freetrade could move to.
The execution style on Freetrade with the lack of bid/ask spread, lack of live pricing, lack of whole shares (if I ask anyone I know they always talk in number of shares) and the lack of more sophisticated orders means I have had an extremely tough time getting people I know to sign up for the platform.
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I agree that might be the plan but then the issue is if I have to pay for that why would I not just go to a competitor who offers it for free?
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Ah, thatās from a different thread. But also, I donāt see that (or further existing discussion in that thread) as confirmation that the process will be automated, or clarification of exactly how the Freetrade system would respond if a transfer request is made for a holding comprising non-integer number of shares.
The only thing I see confirmation of is that we can sell fractional shares to bring it down to integer number to enable transfer (seems possible based on what has been said that we may have to do that manually), and that an integer number of shares is treated as such regardless of whether it was purchased as an integer number or a combination of fractional shares.
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Fractionals are the basis of a next gen trading/investing platform that allows for DRIPs and what Adam called Autopilot (AMA: Ask our CEO Adam your questions about our upcoming crowdfunding round š£ - #71 by adam). With these 3 features, Freetrade would be a massive financial innovation disruptor and ready for the future of investing. I assume that is the plan with this fractional-first approach.
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They havenāt implemented transfer at all yet, so maybe we should wait for that first
Agree 100% that this seems like a rushed solution to what everyone has asked for which is fractional shares. As both an investor and end user, my thoughts are that this new functionality didnāt look at what it was going to break by being implemented.
Ultimately users and investors canāt control what FT decide to prioritise and demand the way the business operate, but it would be good to get clarification on if this will be in the roadmap or not.
Selling back a fraction to round up/down isnāt a great experience and it means additional FX cost.
a) Will the option be available to purchase shares as a whole in the future?
b) What will happen if a fractional share converts into a full share and a user wants to port/transfer out?
Looking forward to the AMA.
This is the reason why we have these communityās so everyone can express views on what they would like and how FT can support to create a win win situation.
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FYI, if you buy enough fractionals and you get to whole shares, you will be 100% able to transfer the whole shares out if you want to. Viktor has mentioned this multiple times.
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