
Get free $AAPL stock from Stockpile for #AppleEvent - crozzfire
https://get.stockpile.com/apple-event-2017/?utm_source=stockpile&utm_medium=hackernews&utm_campaign=stklg-apple
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Communitivity
This title appeared misleading to me, and may to others.

When I first wrote this I did not know what Stockpile's pitch is, i.e.
fractional stocks. I still think it is misleading, but it now makes more
sense.

At first blush, if you are not familiar with fractional stocks, they are
advertising $5 of Apple stock and this appears strange since Apple's share
price at the time I write this is $160 per share. This would appear to mean
they are giving approximately a 3% discount on one share of Apple stock that
you buy, which does not take into account fees (there seems to be a $0.99 fee,
at a minimum).

However, apparently Stockpile pitches the ability to buy fractional shares of
stock, "buy fractions of expensive stocks instead of one full share". I'd
encourage people to read the Investopedia article on fractional shares, at
[http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fractionalshare.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fractionalshare.asp).

Granted I am not an expert on stocks, but this does not seem like buying stock
as much as it is buying shares in a share of stock. Questions that come to
mind include: who gets to vote the share, who gets the dividends, do you have
to sell through Stockpile, etc. Actually, thinking about it more, it sounds to
me like a mutual fund where the fund only contains one stock.

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namrata13
great question! With Stockpile's fractional share platform you OWN the stock.
you have all the voting rights, you get the dividend for the fraction of the
share you own. So, this is a REAL stock, not a share of a share. This is not a
crowdsourcing model, you get the ownership in the company stock with voting
rights and dividends.

Re $5 apple stock, you are getting 0.03 apple stock ($5 worth of stock if the
stock price is $160/share). You don't need to pay $0.99 for getting this free
stock. The trading commission of $0.99 cents is only when you buy or sell more
shares.

There are no account minimums or monthly fees.

Hope this answers your question!

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cscoville
It's also worth noting that Stockpile and fractional shares aren't only for
people who want less than one share of stock. The benefit of fractional shares
allows you to buy stock in whatever dollar amount you're comfortable with. For
example, if you want to buy $100 worth of SNAP stock, which is about $15 per
share, then you'd get 6.6667 shares of stock. Your shares go up and down with
the market fluctuations just like owning stock in whole share amounts.

