Correct. The actual logistics (if you read the terms and conditions) are you make your trade, and Stash lends you the stocks/ETF for your account immediately. Then they process the bank transfer like normal, which takes the normal time (3 days or so). Then, once everything clears, the stock is officially in your account. Robinhood does similar. If you unlink your bank account, swap to a new account, or ever have a transfer denied – Stash will shutdown this feature for your account and charge you $34 for NSF.

Oh also, as far as Stash is concerned with purchases, I have a pretty diverse portfolio with stash and I have been with them for many years, and I never once have I ever had to pre-fund my account. It’s possible that they have other products where you have to do that (not sure) but as for purchasing individual stocks or any ETF available on the platform, I’ve never had to move funds from my bank to stash prior to making a purchase. I just wanted to let you know 🙂 Definitely not debating or anything. Thanks again for the info. 🙂

There are no fees at Fidelity. There is no $4.50 fee or anything remotely similar for buying or selling stocks, ETFs, options, etc. It’s commission free (meaning $0). And there are no monthly fees. Simply switching to Fidelity would save you lot’s of money!

And for your question, you cannot buy anything on the fly without money in your account OR having a margin account setup where you’re borrowing money from Fidelity to trade. But you can setup automatic deposits that will purchase things automatically (such as via direct deposit or direct debit).

I understand what you are saying but I love the ease and flexibility of Stash. The downside of fidelity is the I believe $4.50 fee for sales.
I just have to get used to fidelity. I wish you could just purchase stock shares on the fly Like Stash.
And stash is adding more and more investments in ETFs everyday. And now they have traditional and Roth IRAs as well. I’ve wanted to get with Fidelity for a long time but I think that’s the initial thing that turned me off – fact that I have to “tie up my money” buy pre-funding my account. I guess finality is better if you have more liquid income to play with so to speak. I do agree with the $3 stash fees. And I do understand what you’re saying. It used to be only $1 a month!

But to confirm, are you saying that I can invest in ETFs with Fidelity on the fly without pre-funding my fidelity account?

Thank you for the answer and the quick response! It’s nice that you are responding to this article all these years later.

-Chris

Fidelity allows automatic investing, such as direct deposit or automatic transfers which automatically buy whatever ETF you want. However, one-off purchases do require a transfer of funds into whatever account you want. Stash operates in basically the same way, but I believe they give you the money as “float” until your transfer clears. The big downside to Stash is the monthly fee – $3 on the low end doesn’t seem like much, but it adds up, especially on low-dollar investments. $3 per month is $36 per year, or 36% of a $100 investment, 3.6% for a $1,000 investment, or 0.36% for a $10,000 investment. That’s huge fees (relatively). At Fidelity, you don’t pay any type of monthly fee like that.