With Stake, you are able to buy and sell securities in fractional amounts.  This means that you can buy a whole dollar amount of a security (i.e. $1000 of Berkshire Hathaway Class A). 

Orders & execution

Fractional shares can only be traded on market and stop orders. 

When buying fractional shares, you set the dollar ($) amount you want to buy.  When selling, it's the number of shares you want to sell (i.e 4.3142 shares).

When you execute a trade for a fractional amount of more than 1 share (i.e 5.6513 shares), you will receive two confirmations: 1 for the whole share component, & 1 for the fractional part. 

Fractional orders are also subject to NBBO rules of the US market, so regardless of the size you trade, you'll be getting the best price in the market at the time. 

Ownership

Fractional shares are held in your name with our broker and kept in custody by Velox Clearing LLC & Citibank (the custodian), so full beneficial interest (things like dividends etc) are assigned to you. 

As the US market operates on a books and records basis, shares are grouped at the bank level, who then report the holdings to the exchange. The fractions are then split up between the broker’s clients (you and others on Stake etc). 

Dividends

You will receive any dividend of a share in proportion to your holding.  

For example, if you own 3.25 shares in a company that pays a $10 dividend, you will receive $32.50 in dividends. 

Voting rights

Whether you own whole or fractional shares, you'll have voting rights. 

To be eligible for upcoming votes, you'll need to have held the security as of the security's record date. Since the shareholders of a stock are constantly changing, record date is used as a cut-off point to determine who's entitled to receive voting rights and dividends when they are declared by the company. Cut-off dates for stocks are determined by the respective companies. 

Equally, the way in which each company counts votes may follow differing policies for counting fractional votes. For more information, please check out the company's Investor Relations site.

If eligible, you will receive an email from Stake via Say Technologies informing you about the upcoming vote. The email will contain a list of proposals up for your vote. Just follow the link in the email to have your say!

Transfers

Only whole shares can be transferred. If you want to transfer your shares to another broker, you can transfer your whole shares, but you will need to sell your fractional shares.