Fractional Shares and Fractional Orders (US Stocks)

1. What Is a Fractional Share?

In one sentence

A fractional share = a holding of less than one full share. You don't have to buy 1 or 2 shares — you can hold just 0.3512 shares.

How is the value calculated?

Its value moves proportionally with the stock. If the stock rises 10%, your 0.3512 shares also rise 10%. We support up to 5 decimal places on both quantity and holdings.

Where do fractional shares come from?

Fractional holdings come from fractional orders. For example, buy $50 of a $300 stock and you receive about 0.16667 shares.

2. Which Stocks Support Fractional Shares?

What's supported

Only a subset of US stocks and ETFs support fractional shares.

What's not supported

Saudi stocks, options, and paper trading are not supported. Very low-priced US stocks are generally not eligible either, because the fractional part of a cheap share is worth very little.

How to check on the Sahm App if a stock supports fractional share trading?

Open a buy order ticket, switch to the quantity keypad, and see whether it accepts a decimal point. If it does, the stock is fractional-eligible.

3. Which Order Types Support Fractional Shares?

Supported order types

Market and limit orders, for buying to open and for selling to close a position that already carries a fraction.

Not supported (whole-share only)

• Conditional order types, such as stop and stop-limit
• Attached take-profit or stop-loss legs
• Opening a short position

4. Three Limits to Know Before Placing a Fractional Order

Limit 1: No modification

Once submitted, a fractional order cannot be modified. To change price or size, cancel it and place a new order. This covers swipe-to-modify and dragging the order line on the chart.

Limit 2: Regular trading hours only

Fractional orders execute during RTH. If you set a limit order to a pre-market, post-market or overnight session, the ticket will ask you to switch back to RTH.

Limit 3: Whole-share and fractional orders cannot be converted into each other

You cannot turn a working whole-share order into a fractional one, and you cannot turn a fractional order into a whole-share one. To change the type, cancel the original order and place a new one.

5. The Amount Mode of Fractional Orders

What is a dollar-based order?

A fractional order is not placed by "how many shares" but by "how much money." You enter the amount you want to spend, and the system calculates the share count at the fill price, so the share count shown before the fill is only an estimate.

How to recognize a dollar-based order

You can check in two places:

• On the order ticket, the estimated share count carries a approximation sign (≈) in front of it.
• In your order list, the order shows an amount where a quantity would normally be.

What does the amount represent?

It is the order amount, before fees. Fees are charged on top, so the total debited from your account is higher than the figure you type.

Minimum amount requirement

An order below the minimum notional amount is rejected. The current minimum is $1, before fees.

How to place a dollar-based order

Switch the order ticket to Amount mode and type the amount you want to spend.

But note: not every case places an order by amount. A dollar-based order is generated only when all three of these conditions are met:

• US stock
• Fractional-eligible
• Buying to open, and it is a market order

In any other case, the system converts your amount into a share quantity and submits it as an ordinary order.

Before you submit, the confirmation screen tells you whether you are about to place an order by amount or by share quantity.