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.
In practice, this isnāt actually possible (and presumably neither is selling).
Iāve 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 havenāt quite thought this one through properly.
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 weāre unable to purchase the underlying share listed on a non-US exchange, this means we wouldnāt be adhering to the updated ISA rules by offering fractions of ADRs. Itās frustrating and something weāve made clear could have been worded differently, but itās 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. Weāve raised a ticket internally to display to eight decimal places so that youāre 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.
Read Alexās 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 shouldnāt have to do this when weāve 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. Iāll be honest, it was pretty much a non-issue until these new rules, but now itās potentially forcing people to make unnecessary multiple transactions I think itās 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. Itās not just an issue of it displaying to 4dp, it is actually rounding it to 4dp.