We need your help! Fractional Shares in ISAs

It means more crap rules. Basically ADR fractionals arent allowed butā€¦how are you supposed to do option 1 if you cant buy fractionals in ADRsā€¦i just tried this on Petrobras ADR. Will only let me add full shares.

Looks like only option is to sell the fractional component.

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In practice, this isnā€™t actually possible (and presumably neither is selling).

Iā€™ve just tried it on two separate ADR holdings I have, both of which are down to 8 decimal places. I entered in the precise amount of shares I needed to buy to make a whole number, however, when you actually buy those fractional shares they are rounded to 4 decimal places. This means it is literally impossible to remove the fractionals because anything we buy/sell will be rounded, the last 4 decimal places will forever be immutable. We have literally no choice other than waiting for Freetrade to handle this on the 18th November. It seems they havenā€™t quite thought this one through properly.

They are giving you the option to hold at least a share prior to that date then they will sell down the difference.

Hi all

We appreciate your help with this. The changes in the ISA rules to allow fractional shares introduced a requirement that an ISA manager (Freetrade) holds the underlying whole share to be ISA-eligible. For ADRs where weā€™re unable to purchase the underlying share listed on a non-US exchange, this means we wouldnā€™t be adhering to the updated ISA rules by offering fractions of ADRs. Itā€™s frustrating and something weā€™ve made clear could have been worded differently, but itā€™s where we got to in discussions.

Just a few bits of clarification on this communication. Thanks for flagging the issue with buying a specific fraction of a share. Weā€™ve raised a ticket internally to display to eight decimal places so that youā€™re able to be more precise in the amount you buy.

If you choose to sell down, you can select a fraction to eight decimal places to sell, reaching a whole share.

Best,
Alex

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you can buy to just above a full share and then sell the fraction down to 1 whole share

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Read Alexā€™s reply above. This is a bug which (I hope) they are now working on fixing.

The workaround of having to buy more than you need and then sell the remainder works, sure, but we shouldnā€™t have to do this when weā€™ve quite literally been told beforehand of the possible options that should not involve needing to do that. Better to flag the issue for the devs and have them fix it than force everyone to workaround it.

And besides, iirc this rounding issue (4dp rather than 8dp) has been present for a while now. Iā€™ll be honest, it was pretty much a non-issue until these new rules, but now itā€™s potentially forcing people to make unnecessary multiple transactions I think itā€™s well worth raising the issue in the forums.

EDIT: Also, @acamp just to clarify my above post, when buying fractional shares you can already input all the way to 8dp, but when you go to the confirmation screen to actually buy said shares is when the amount gets rounded to 4dp, which of course messes up the precise amount needed in cases like this. Itā€™s not just an issue of it displaying to 4dp, it is actually rounding it to 4dp.

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