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@Zettour@gearlandia.haus @sun@shitposter.world back in the day you used to have to use mutual funds if you wanted to buy in a certain dollar amount (like from a paycheck) instead of a certain share amount, and they started trying to charge outrageous annual fees that basically decimated people's retirement accounts. however, due to vanguard creating 0 cost etfs and then fidelity also jumping in with their etfs, any decent broker will either have their own no fee etfs or at least let you buy vanguard/fidelity's. And so you can see that adding in fractional trading with these no-fee etfs would basically re-create mutual funds except you're not locked into the mutual fund (useful for transferring accounts or basically just getting your money out). imo etrade and other brokers that don't let you do fractional trading know that this is how it'd be used and don't offer it intentionally because then they know that they'd cut a major source of their revenue (i.e. stealing from people's retirement accounts) and just hide it behind "we don't want those daytraders on our platform" or something idk. they also will charge fees to trade non-platform mutual funds which is another source of revenue. basically if you have a non-taxable account I'd encourage you to double check your mutual fund fees and if needed, move to another mutual fund with a lower expense ratio or ideally, use fractional trading with an etf so that you can always sell instantly and don't have to wait for the mutual fund to settle, but first make sure you aren't getting raked over the coals with 2% annual fees or whatever that can be common in shitty corporate 401k accounts

tldr it's more than just a marketing gimmick