Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

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passive101
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Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by passive101 »

Am I missing something here? I’m in my Roth IRA and trying to buy an ETF. It’s currently $80/share and I have $241. It won’t let me buy a fractional share. I’m beginning to think that I need to move away from Vanguard. I’ve had a lot of issues with them lately and it seems like it would actually be cheaper and easier to just move it at this point. I’m still going to ask if I’m missing something first. I was told that M1 Finance lets you automatically buy ETF’s which is great and something Vanguard doesn’t allow. Do they also do fractional shares? Does Fidelity do any better with this? (I already have my HSA with them)

If Vanguard doesn’t let you do any of these things, how did they get so big and popular? Did they use to be more user friendly or modernized?
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by stan1 »

You should be able to buy in dollars ($241) which will give you fractional shares, but only if it is a Vanguard ETF. You cannot buy 3.1 shares though.

I'd be careful with M1 Finance, they are popular with some people but aren't a "full service broker". If you want a "full service broker" I'd go with Fidelity.

Vanguard's platform is best at buying Vanguard mutual funds and ETFs, once you have needs beyond that they are at best an average broker.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by SmileyFace »

Some people have reported being able to buy fractional shares of ETFs at Vanguard but seems like it's been Beta for years. Maybe that changed recently.
Fidelity allows it (and has for quite some time). The best of both worlds IMO is to buy fractional VTI shares at Fidelity. You get a better brokerage but can still buy Vanguard funds.
Your second question has been discussed in various threads here ad nauseum. Summary: Yes - they used to be better although they have never been on the cutting-edge of modernization.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by stan1 »

SmileyFace wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:50 am Some people have reported being able to buy fractional shares of ETFs at Vanguard but seems like it's been Beta for years. Maybe that changed recently.
Supposedly everyone with a modernized brokerage account has ability to buy in dollars now for Vanguard ETFs. They don't support it for stocks or ETFs offered by other asset managers like iShares.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by passive101 »

I just wanted to switch my small cap value fund from Vanguard to Avantis. I thought this would be easy to do and would stay convenient. I guess it’s not the end of the world, but I’m

1) impulsive
2) like things easy and automatic

I guess it won’t be that much cash sitting around, but I would prefer it not sitting around ideally.

I already don’t like something with my HSA at Fidelity, because it automatically takes the money from my checking account, but I still have to login every month to buy the fund that I want. I’m just more surprised that these multi trillion dollar companies can’t do what startups do with a fraction of their money :confused

I use Betterment for my taxable account for this reason. Now that I type this I realize I’m lazy, but the automatic stuff keeps me hitting my goals :sharebeer
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by White Coat Investor »

I'm always amazed at the things people are willing to switch brokerage accounts over. What does leaving $20 in the settlement fund really cost you long term? How much is your time worth?I regularly use brokerages at Schwab (401k), Fidelity (401K, HSA), and Vanguard (Roth IRAs, Taxable). Fidelity and Schwab answer the phone faster on average. Otherwise they seem to work exactly the same for me. Literally flawless. All of them. I do like the convenience of fractional shares. But it's pretty far down my list of priorities.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by ruralavalon »

passive101 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:42 am Am I missing something here? I’m in my Roth IRA and trying to buy an ETF. It’s currently $80/share and I have $241. It won’t let me buy a fractional share. I’m beginning to think that I need to move away from Vanguard. I’ve had a lot of issues with them lately and it seems like it would actually be cheaper and easier to just move it at this point. I’m still going to ask if I’m missing something first. I was told that M1 Finance lets you automatically buy ETF’s which is great and something Vanguard doesn’t allow. Do they also do fractional shares? Does Fidelity do any better with this? (I already have my HSA with them)

If Vanguard doesn’t let you do any of these things, how did they get so big and popular? Did they use to be more user friendly or modernized?
If buying a Vanguard ETF share class of a fund, why not simply use the Vanguard mutual fund?
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by Wiggums »

This article suggests that you can buy fractional shares of Vanguard ETFs

https://investor.vanguard.com/investor- ... guard-etfs
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by Wiggums »

White Coat Investor wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:57 am I'm always amazed at the things people are willing to switch brokerage accounts over. What does leaving $20 in the settlement fund really cost you long term? How much is your time worth?I regularly use brokerages at Schwab (401k), Fidelity (401K, HSA), and Vanguard (Roth IRAs, Taxable). Fidelity and Schwab answer the phone faster on average. Otherwise they seem to work exactly the same for me. Literally flawless. All of them. I do like the convenience of fractional shares. But it's pretty far down my list of priorities.
+1
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by retired@50 »

passive101 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:55 am ... I’m just more surprised that these multi trillion dollar companies can’t do what startups do with a fraction of their money...
Keep in mind that the "trillions" don't actually belong to Vanguard, that's investor money.

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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by passive101 »

Wiggums wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:58 am This article suggests that you can buy fractional shares of Vanguard ETFs

https://investor.vanguard.com/investor- ... guard-etfs
I’m trying to buy an Avantis ETF
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by exodusNH »

passive101 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 11:07 am
Wiggums wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:58 am This article suggests that you can buy fractional shares of Vanguard ETFs

https://investor.vanguard.com/investor- ... guard-etfs
I’m trying to buy an Avantis ETF
Correct, they don't support fractional purchases of ETFs except for their own. The one exception is dividend reinvestment for a subset of the available ETFs.

Fractional shares aren't supported widely. They're not a "real" thing -- cross broker, only full shares can be traded.

If a broker offers it, they wind up holding the remainders, effectively being forced to invest by their clients. There's simply not a lot of upside to the broker to offer it, especially if they're not charging you account fees or commissions.

From Vanguard's perspective, if you're not paying for PAS, you, as a brokerage client, are a cost center. They'd rather you go to another brokerage and hold their ETFs there. They earn the same money and now have none of the compliance, customer support, and infrastructure expenses.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by increment »

passive101 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:42 am If Vanguard doesn’t let you do any of these things, how did they get so big and popular? Did they use to be more user friendly or modernized?
In the old days, there were no ETFs and no Vanguard brokerage accounts. And also in the old days, at regular brokerages you couldn't buy fractional or even single shares of stocks (without exorbitant fees). There were dividend reinvestment programs sponsored by the actual public companies, but this was done through specialists, not at any brokerage you would deal with normally. The prosaic things that you can do at Vanguard today were really quite different from how investing used to be "normally" done.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by Broken Man 1999 »

stan1 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:53 am
SmileyFace wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:50 am Some people have reported being able to buy fractional shares of ETFs at Vanguard but seems like it's been Beta for years. Maybe that changed recently.
Supposedly everyone with a modernized brokerage account has ability to buy in dollars now for Vanguard ETFs. They don't support it for stocks or ETFs offered by other asset managers like iShares.
Definitely doable.

Last October I bought a fractional share of Vanguard ETF VTI by clearing out my settlement account of $5.92. Sadly the settlement account has bloated again to $.03.

passive101 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 11:55 am
"... I’m just more surprised that these multi trillion dollar companies can’t do what startups do with a fraction of their money...


A better statement would be "...these multi trillion dollar companies choose not to do..."

Not sure how fractional purchases of non-Vanguard ETFs would benefit Vanguard. They probably would be happier if their own ETFs were housed elsewhere.

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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by ruralavalon »

passive101 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:42 am
. . . . .

If Vanguard doesn’t let you do any of these things, how did they get so big and popular? Did they use to be more user friendly or modernized?
In the past Vanguard was alone in offering low cost mutual funds. Low cost index funds are the most important innovation in investing for ordinary retail investors. So Vanguard was user friendly and modernized, and still is in my opinion.

In my opinion exchange traded funds (ETFs), and transactions in fractional shares of ETFs, are comparatively trivial innovations for the ordinary retail investor.

Some other fund companies and brokerages have now caught up with Vanguard in offering low cost index funds or ETFs, so there is now some competition.

As others have pointed out Vanguard does allow fractional purchase of Vanguard ETFs, and reinvestment of distributions using fractional shares of ETFs.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by burritoLover »

passive101 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:42 am Am I missing something here? I’m in my Roth IRA and trying to buy an ETF. It’s currently $80/share and I have $241. It won’t let me buy a fractional share. I’m beginning to think that I need to move away from Vanguard. I’ve had a lot of issues with them lately and it seems like it would actually be cheaper and easier to just move it at this point. I’m still going to ask if I’m missing something first. I was told that M1 Finance lets you automatically buy ETF’s which is great and something Vanguard doesn’t allow. Do they also do fractional shares? Does Fidelity do any better with this? (I already have my HSA with them)

If Vanguard doesn’t let you do any of these things, how did they get so big and popular? Did they use to be more user friendly or modernized?
What I do is just put the rest in similar Vanguard mutual fund which you can purchase by amount. So if you had Avantis AVUV, then just put it in Vanguard VSIAX or whatever. $1 to $79 or whatever it is, isn't going to make a difference.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by CyclingDuo »

passive101 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:42 amI was told that M1 Finance lets you automatically buy ETF’s which is great and something Vanguard doesn’t allow.
Yes, if you are looking to purchase non-Vanguard ETFs in fractional shares, M1 allows that for no charge. You could create your own pie with your AVUV and whatever else you would want to hold in your portfolio there with a minimum investment of $100 to open an account ($500 for an IRA account). Then set up automatic investment from your bank account for each subsequent week/month/quarter or however you want to do it.

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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by Robert20 »

stan1 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:48 am You should be able to buy in dollars ($241) which will give you fractional shares, but only if it is a Vanguard ETF. You cannot buy 3.1 shares though.

I'd be careful with M1 Finance, they are popular with some people but aren't a "full service broker". If you want a "full service broker" I'd go with Fidelity.

Vanguard's platform is best at buying Vanguard mutual funds and ETFs, once you have needs beyond that they are at best an average broker.
agree.. M1finance uses market order for all transactions.

I use fidelity. I can put a limit order with dollar amount.. - Thats all I want actually.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by PersonalFinanceJam »

As has been noted already Vanguard is limited to their own ETFs for fractional share investing. I'm guessing based on your opening post and subsequent post in this thread you are solely focused on ETFs because with respect to your Fidelity HSA you can totally automate the investing if you use mutual funds. As far as startups are concerned they can focus on a few things and choose to ignore others. For example M1 doesn't allow you to buy mutual funds or individual treasuries. That may not be a big deal to you or many others, but there is still more money in mutual funds than in ETFs. There have also been numerous threads here on the advantages of creating your own bond ladder. None of the brokerages are perfect, so you choose the one or combination that works for you.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by passive101 »

PersonalFinanceJam wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 3:59 pm As has been noted already Vanguard is limited to their own ETFs for fractional share investing. I'm guessing based on your opening post and subsequent post in this thread you are solely focused on ETFs because with respect to your Fidelity HSA you can totally automate the investing if you use mutual funds. As far as startups are concerned they can focus on a few things and choose to ignore others. For example M1 doesn't allow you to buy mutual funds or individual treasuries. That may not be a big deal to you or many others, but there is still more money in mutual funds than in ETFs. There have also been numerous threads here on the advantages of creating your own bond ladder. None of the brokerages are perfect, so you choose the one or combination that works for you.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by nalor511 »

Fidelity gives you fractional shares of want ETF you want, plus better service (live chat). No benefit to VG these days for an ETF holder
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by passive101 »

nalor511 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 5:09 pm Fidelity gives you fractional shares of want ETF you want, plus better service (live chat). No benefit to VG these days for an ETF holder
Dos Fidelity keep track of how much you've contributed and can it automatically figure out the max contributions I can put in based on how much I already have it set to? I do like that feature of Vanguard since I get paid every 2 weeks and sometimes have to change what I contribute.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by nalor511 »

passive101 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 5:16 pm
nalor511 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 5:09 pm Fidelity gives you fractional shares of want ETF you want, plus better service (live chat). No benefit to VG these days for an ETF holder
Dos Fidelity keep track of how much you've contributed and can it automatically figure out the max contributions I can put in based on how much I already have it set to? I do like that feature of Vanguard since I get paid every 2 weeks and sometimes have to change what I contribute.
Contributions to HSA/IRA/Roth, yes
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by placeholder »

White Coat Investor wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:57 am I'm always amazed at the things people are willing to switch brokerage accounts over.
My main reason for changing is cash bonuses so I haven't been with vanguard in quite some time.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by Gaston »

I came across this thread a few days ago, and I thought I'd try buying some fractional shares of a Vanguard ETF on the Vanguard website, just to see how it works.

The bottom line, it didn't. If I enter 1.3 in the shares field, an error message appears that says something like "whole share values only." And if I enter $50 in the dollars field (when the share price is $47.12), the system converts my dollars to 1 whole share, not 1.0576 shares.

FYI I didn't try using the app. Maybe there is a difference?
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by exodusNH »

Gaston wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 1:42 pm I came across this thread a few days ago, and I thought I'd try buying some fractional shares of a Vanguard ETF on the Vanguard website, just to see how it works.

The bottom line, it didn't. If I enter 1.3 in the shares field, an error message appears that says something like "whole share values only." And if I enter $50 in the dollars field (when the share price is $47.12), the system converts my dollars to 1 whole share, not 1.0576 shares.

FYI I didn't try using the app. Maybe there is a difference?
It's working for me on the website.

There is a bug where if you click "transact" from from your account summary screen and are brought to the buy/sell page with the ticker prepopulated, you don't get the ability to buy dollar amounts. You need to click into the ticker field, hit backspace, then type the character you just deleted, then go into the amount field.

You'll then have "shares" and "dollars" on the right-hand side of the text box.

Alternatively, from the top menu, hit transact, then buy & sell, then from that pointless interstitial screen, hit "trade ETFs & stocks". You're finally at a blank order screen. When you key in VTI and then click into the Amount field, you'll see the Shares/Dollars option

You can't buy fractional shares directly. You specify a dollar amount. Once the order executes, you'll see what you actually got. As you can only submit market orders for whole dollar amounts, you have no way to know exactly what you're going to get.
Last edited by exodusNH on Thu Mar 30, 2023 2:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by rob »

increment wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 11:49 am
passive101 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:42 am If Vanguard doesn’t let you do any of these things, how did they get so big and popular? Did they use to be more user friendly or modernized?
In the old days, there were no ETFs and no Vanguard brokerage accounts. And also in the old days, at regular brokerages you couldn't buy fractional or even single shares of stocks (without exorbitant fees). There were dividend reinvestment programs sponsored by the actual public companies, but this was done through specialists, not at any brokerage you would deal with normally. The prosaic things that you can do at Vanguard today were really quite different from how investing used to be "normally" done.
In the old days prices were not decimal but fractions - made excel harder :D

This is another advantage to mutual funds, so if it bothers you use the MF version.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by Gaston »

exodusNH wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 2:00 pm Alternatively, from the top menu, hit transact, then buy & sell, then from that pointless interstitial screen, hit "trade ETFs & stocks". You're finally at a blank order screen. When you key in VTI and then click into the Amount field, you'll see the Shares/Dollars option

You can't buy fractional shares directly. You specify a dollar amount. Once the order executes, you'll see what you actually got. As you can only submit market orders for whole dollar amounts, you have no way to know exactly what you're going to get.
Great, thank you. I'll give it a try when I'm next on the site.

Above, you note that it's not possible to buy fractional shares directly. Is it possible to sell fractional shares directly?
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by exodusNH »

Gaston wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 3:50 pm
exodusNH wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 2:00 pm Alternatively, from the top menu, hit transact, then buy & sell, then from that pointless interstitial screen, hit "trade ETFs & stocks". You're finally at a blank order screen. When you key in VTI and then click into the Amount field, you'll see the Shares/Dollars option

You can't buy fractional shares directly. You specify a dollar amount. Once the order executes, you'll see what you actually got. As you can only submit market orders for whole dollar amounts, you have no way to know exactly what you're going to get.
Great, thank you. I'll give it a try when I'm next on the site.

Above, you note that it's not possible to buy fractional shares directly. Is it possible to sell fractional shares directly?
Oh, their sell screen is a nightmare IF you want to do spec ID.

When you go to sell, you first specify how many shares you want to sell. This can only be a whole number.

Then, you get to the lot selection screen. You enter in how many shares you want to sell from each lot. You can only enter in a whole number.

Once you're done selecting the lots, if you haven't chosen the correct number, you have to make note of the total, back out of the screen, enter in the new total, and then go back through the selection screen.

For any particular lot that you've specified the entire whole number of shares, the fractional shares will be auto liquidated at the end of the day.

I don't know if it's possible to spec ID sell a lot who's existing total is less than one share. I.e., you can sell a lot with 1.5 shares by specifying 1 for that lot -- the 0.5 should liquidate already automatically. However, I don't think it's possible to sell a lot that is only 0.75 shares.

I've given up on fractional purchases. I only buy whole shares now.

Their developers clearly have never sold a lot in their lives. It is a bafflingly bad interface.
Last edited by exodusNH on Thu Mar 30, 2023 6:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by Gaston »

exodusNH wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 6:01 pm I've given up on fractional purchases. I only buy whole shares now.
Interesting. Thanks again for the education.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by exodusNH »

Gaston wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 6:06 pm
exodusNH wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 6:01 pm I've given up on fractional purchases. I only buy whole shares now.
Interesting. Thanks again for the education.
You're welcome.

The irony is that I was one of the first people on this site to get the feature. It's a shockingly bad implementation.

Though the fractional sale thing is independent of being able to buy exact dollar amounts. Those small lots can also happen from dividend reinvestments.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by placeholder »

I got rid of all fractional shares by moving assets around to collect transfer bonuses and not instituting dividend reinvestment anywhere these days.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by mggray17 »

I recently has success buying fractional shares at Vanguard. I'm preparing to move my taxable brokerage account to Schwab and wanted to reduce my settlement account holdings as this money, I believe, will follow my ETF shares to Schwab at a later date. I was fine with buying whole shares of one of my ETF's to reduce my settlement fund to less than $50, but was able to buy the ETF in dollars. I waited for the March dividends to be paid to the settlement fund and I had for example 3,250.57 in my settlement fund and bought $3250.00 worth of my ETF. Now my 57 cents can follow whenever, it gets there with no concern.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by exodusNH »

placeholder wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 6:31 pm I got rid of all fractional shares by moving assets around to collect transfer bonuses and not instituting dividend reinvestment anywhere these days.
Tangential to this thread, but something that I've been wondering:

Did you have more than one lot with fractional shares? If so, what was the net transfer?

E.g., if you had

100.3
12.9
10.5

Did you wind up transferring

100
12
10
1 share at a weighted average
0.7 shares liquidated

Or did you wind up with only the 122 whole share and each original lot's partial share liquidated individually?
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by the_wiki »

passive101 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:42 am
If Vanguard doesn’t let you do any of these things, how did they get so big and popular? Did they use to be more user friendly or modernized?
Honestly nobody did fractional shares until recently and when it cost $10-20+ per trade, nobody would have wasted that on such small transactions anyway. Small time investors had to use mutual funds and had to get an account at the company that ran the mutual fund, or they were destroyed by trading fees. I remember trading with $1000 when I was very young and i'd make a very solid 5% upside on a short term trade for $50 and then I lost $12 on each side for trading fees, another buck in bid/ask spreads and then maybe another $10 in taxes. So now it's like 1% gain. I gave up and went back to just mutual funds.

The investing world was a very different place until 5-10 years ago when Robinhood turned it upside down. As much hate as they get, they are really the reason we have free trades everywhere and any of these nifty brokers that allow things like partial trades.
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by gtrplayer »

Robert20 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 2:42 pm
stan1 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:48 am You should be able to buy in dollars ($241) which will give you fractional shares, but only if it is a Vanguard ETF. You cannot buy 3.1 shares though.

I'd be careful with M1 Finance, they are popular with some people but aren't a "full service broker". If you want a "full service broker" I'd go with Fidelity.

Vanguard's platform is best at buying Vanguard mutual funds and ETFs, once you have needs beyond that they are at best an average broker.
agree.. M1finance uses market order for all transactions.

I use fidelity. I can put a limit order with dollar amount.. - Thats all I want actually.
M1 seems ideal for a 3 fund portfolio… how much are you losing by the way they place orders for transactions?
placeholder
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Joined: Tue Aug 06, 2013 12:43 pm

Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by placeholder »

exodusNH wrote: Fri Mar 31, 2023 8:19 am
placeholder wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 6:31 pm I got rid of all fractional shares by moving assets around to collect transfer bonuses and not instituting dividend reinvestment anywhere these days.
Tangential to this thread, but something that I've been wondering:
[several questions about transferring fractionals]
I couldn't tell you because I stopped reinvesting long ago.
sycamore
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Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by sycamore »

exodusNH wrote: Fri Mar 31, 2023 8:19 am
placeholder wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 6:31 pm I got rid of all fractional shares by moving assets around to collect transfer bonuses and not instituting dividend reinvestment anywhere these days.
Tangential to this thread, but something that I've been wondering:

Did you have more than one lot with fractional shares? If so, what was the net transfer?

E.g., if you had

100.3
12.9
10.5

Did you wind up transferring

100
12
10
1 share at a weighted average
0.7 shares liquidated

Or did you wind up with only the 122 whole share and each original lot's partial share liquidated individually?
Here's one experience I had. This was in a Roth IRA.

Originally I held VSIAX (small cap value) at Vanguard brokerage. Several contributions plus numerous dividend reinvestments.
I converted it to the ETF VBR and then transferred it to Merrill Edge.
Before the transfer I had a total of XXX.050 shares.
Exactly 0.050 shares were liquidated by Vanguard and the proceeds transferred as cash.
The XXX whole shares were transferred.

At Edge I got four more lots of dividend reinvestments.
A year or so later I transferred to ETrade.
Before the transfer I had a total of YYY.637 shares.
Exactly 0.637 shares were liquidated by Edge and the proceeds transferred as cash.
The YYY whole shares were transferred.

Looking at my ETrade records now, those four lots bought at Edge still show the exact same number of whole + fractional shares as before the transfer.

The lots originally bought at Vanguard also still show a fractional amount at ETrade. If I went to the trouble I expect the oldest lot doesn't have the same exact fractional amount now as when it was at Vanguard

From one data point :) I conclude
a) The number of shares liquidated will be the fractional portion of the total ETF shares.
b) It's not the case that any and every lot with a fractional share amount will have its fractional portion liquidated.
c) Likely the only lot to be affected (i.e., have any portion of it liquidated) is the oldest one.
Robert20
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Joined: Fri Apr 10, 2020 10:51 pm

Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by Robert20 »

gtrplayer wrote: Fri Mar 31, 2023 11:22 am
Robert20 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 2:42 pm
stan1 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:48 am You should be able to buy in dollars ($241) which will give you fractional shares, but only if it is a Vanguard ETF. You cannot buy 3.1 shares though.

I'd be careful with M1 Finance, they are popular with some people but aren't a "full service broker". If you want a "full service broker" I'd go with Fidelity.

Vanguard's platform is best at buying Vanguard mutual funds and ETFs, once you have needs beyond that they are at best an average broker.
agree.. M1finance uses market order for all transactions.

I use fidelity. I can put a limit order with dollar amount.. - Thats all I want actually.
M1 seems ideal for a 3 fund portfolio… how much are you losing by the way they place orders for transactions?
over 20yrs period, it will be a lot!!
hkcj
Posts: 151
Joined: Wed Dec 21, 2016 1:53 pm

Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by hkcj »

Robert20 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 2:42 pm
stan1 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:48 am Vanguard's platform is best at buying Vanguard mutual funds and ETFs, once you have needs beyond that they are at best an average broker.
...

I use fidelity. I can put a limit order with dollar amount.. - Thats all I want actually.
Having just swapped into a relatively low volume (but liquid / low-spread) ETF at both Vanguard and Fidelity this is a big deal.u price was better at Fidelity because the ask size was less than my purchase at Vanguard (and so I paid some higher prices). Still worked out OK by EOD... (NAV & MP of what I sold < NAV & MP of what I purchased so I could justify that it was "as good as" an old-fashioned EOD MF transaction.) But not as well.

The next time I do an ETF purchase/sale at Vanguard and want a dollar amount I will do most of it as a share-limit order and just the remainder as a dollar-market order. Fidelity does it much better.

Too bad... I like Vanguard. But it seems like they are pushing toward ETFs and now have some ETF-only funds. With that trend they need to improve their transaction offering.
wander
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Joined: Sat Oct 04, 2008 9:10 am

Re: Vanguard doesn’t let you buy fractional shares of ETFs?

Post by wander »

stan1 wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:48 am You should be able to buy in dollars ($241) which will give you fractional shares, but only if it is a Vanguard ETF. You cannot buy 3.1 shares though.

I'd be careful with M1 Finance, they are popular with some people but aren't a "full service broker". If you want a "full service broker" I'd go with Fidelity.

Vanguard's platform is best at buying Vanguard mutual funds and ETFs, once you have needs beyond that they are at best an average broker.
+1. I have not bought a non-Vanguard ETF in VG brokerage account but it does allow purchase of fractional shares of VG ETF.
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