Investing builds wealth. Holding cash doesn’t. While this is a radical simplification, it reflects a core investing principle: Over the long term, the more you have in the market, the more opportunity you have to earn returns.

Or, to put it another way: if you’ve allocated money for investment, then all of that money should always be invested, precisely in the way that you intend. At Betterment, we use fractional shares to make this happen. But in some investment services, that’s not the case. Some of your money may be sitting on the side, uninvested, and not working for you.

Let’s look at why that is, and how our consistent use of fractional shares puts you and your money in a more advantageous position.

### Never leave money out of the market

As you may know, trading on an exchange can only happen in whole shares, which is why many investing platforms only allow you to trade whole shares.

Ticker Price per share (from 10/31) Percentage in 70% stock portfolio Dollar value in $100,000 portfolio How many shares required? SHV$110.24 0 $0 0.000 VTIP$49.47 0 $0 0.000 AGG$107.9 10.4 $10,400 96.386 LQD$115.2 5.2 $5,200 45.139 BNDX$50.05 10.3 $10,300 205.794 VWOB$77.75 4.2 $4,200 54.019 VTI$91.39 12.9 $12,900 141.153 IVE$81.75 12.9 $12,900 157.798 IWS$63.7 4.1 $4,100 64.364 IWN$94.58 3.6 $3,600 38.063 VEA$40.85 30.1 $30,100 736.842 VWO$41.87 6.3 $6,300 150.466 Note: For clarity in the table, we’ve rounded to three decimal places, but our algorithms trade to six decimal places. ### What does our fractional share platform mean for you? • You are more likely to reach your goals faster because all the money you have available for investment is always working for you. If you want to invest$100,000 that’s what we do. Not \$99,987 or other smaller amount.
• You choose exactly how much to invest; we do all the math for you. You never have to think about the cost of any individual asset when you make deposits or withdrawals from your portfolio.
• Your goals are properly diversified on an ongoing basis. We’ve already discussed how Betterment strategically uses your cash flows (dividends, deposits) to rebalance your goals, keeping your tax bill low by minimizing the need to rebalance by selling. Betterment’s trading algorithms work with six decimal points of precision, using all incoming funds (even odd amounts like dividends) to shore up any imbalances in your positions, no matter how tiny.

And if you have an investment account with leftover cash just sitting there, ask yourself: If I didn’t want that money invested, why would I have put it there in the first place?