A new era for fractional trading is here
Wealthsimple is the first in Canada to offer commission-free, real-time fractional trading for CAD & USD securities. Buy pieces of shares instantly.
We’re always looking to make investing simpler and more accessible for everyone. Today, we’re rolling out a major upgrade to one of our most popular features: fractional trading is now real time for our self-directed investing accounts.This upgrade means you can now buy and sell pieces of shares instantly. No more waiting for the order to fill while missing market moments, giving you more control and flexibility over your portfolio. Nice.
What is fractional trading?
Buying a fractional share is exactly what it sounds like: you get a piece of one share of a stock. This unlocks two powerful ways to invest.
Why fractional shares are a game-changer
- Invest in your favourite companies, no matter the price. The main reason to buy a fractional share is to invest in a company whose full shares might be trading at a price that’s out of your reach (for now…). It’s a meaningful way for newer investors to dip their toes in the market and diversify their portfolios, even without a lot of funds to invest.
- Make your money work with dollar-cost averaging. Say you invest $200 CAD each month into your TFSA. Without fractional shares, maybe a stock you want costs $120 per share. You could only afford to buy one share, leaving $80 sitting in your account—doing nothing until you’ve saved up enough for another full share. Fractional shares let you invest the full $200 every single time. This means 100% of your contribution gets put to work immediately, helping your money grow instead of waiting on the sidelines.
- Invest precise amounts with ease. Instead of buying a certain number of shares, you might want to invest exactly $5,000 CAD into a specific company. Fractional shares let you do that, purchasing the exact dollar amount you want, no matter the stock’s price per share.
- Get the benefit of real-time dividend reinvestments. If the stock pays dividends, you still get your proportional slice. This is great for investors who practice dollar-cost averaging because you can keep growing your wealth by reinvesting 100% of your dividend earnings - in-real time.
The upgrade: from delayed to real-time
Previously, when you placed an order for a fractional share, the execution was delayed. We know this was frustrating for some, since it meant you couldn’t always act on market moves as quickly as you wanted and might have missed out on opportunities. And that’s just not how we do things.
So we made it better.
With real-time fractional trading, you can now buy and sell fractional shares instantly during market hours, and we’ve optimized our order execution to help you get the best price. This means you can react to market news and make investment decisions in the moment — with the same speed and flexibility you know from full-share trading.
And yes, we’ll be the first brokerage in Canada to offer real-time fractional trading for both CAD and USD securities, commission-free.
What this means for you
This upgrade is all about giving you more power over how you build your portfolio. No more waiting, no more missed chances — just simple, instant access to the markets.Investing should be for everyone, and this change brings us one step closer to that reality. We can’t wait to see what you do with it.
Happy investing!
