Today our customers have access to over 3000 fractional and non fractional stocks from US, EU and UK markets as well as access to global ETFs.

Due to differing regulatory obligations, access varies a little depending on where you reside. Find out exactly what you’ll have access to in our [“What services do you offer and who is eligible?”](https://golightyear.com/eu/help/getting-verified/what-services-do-you-offer-and-who-is-eligible) article.

Which markets do you currently offer

Orders, portfolio and general trading topics

Trading & investments

Yes, we pay out any dividends that you are eligible to receive.

**How do I know if I’m eligible for a dividend?**

You’ll usually need to own the relative stock or instrument on or before a specified date, known as the “ex-dividend” date. This date is announced by the company usually a few weeks before the dividend payment date. If you purchased the stock after this date, you won’t be eligible.

**When will I receive my dividend?**

We normally receive dividends within one business day of the payment date and allocate them as quickly as possible to your account. You don’t need to do anything, it will automatically be credited and you’ll receive a notification as well as a record in your activity feed. 

**Do you pay dividends for applicable fractional shares?**

Yes we do, rounded to the nearest cent. You’ll receive the relative percentage proportionate to the amount of the share you hold, e.g if you hold 0.5 of a dividend paying share, you’ll receive 0.5 of the dividend amount.

**Dividend taxes**

Dividends are usually subject to regional withholding tax which is automatically deducted. We display the relative tax rate and deducted amounts to you in the dividend activity.

For eligible non-US taxpayers, we have submitted the relative W-8 BEN form to reduce your dividend withholding tax rate from 30 to 15% for any US dividends you receive.

Do you pay dividends

This is a person that “day trades” :

- 4 or more times within 5 business days and 
- those activities are greater than 6 percent of their total trading activity for that same 5 day period

A “day trade” is defined as buying, then selling or selling short, then buying the same security on the same day. Just buying a security, without selling it later that same day, would not be considered a day trade.

There are certain requirements for persons designated as pattern day traders. These persons should have a $25,000 deposited and invested as a minimum equity requirement in their account prior to any day-trading activities. For Lightyear users, this means that they specifically need to have $25,000 USD in active US denominated instruments to fulfil the requirement needed to be a pattern day trader.

This total portfolio amount is to be maintained at all times. If the portfolio's sum of all open positions falls below the requirement, you will not be permitted to day trade until you re-open active positions, in US instruments to restore the account to the $25,000 minimum equity level. For more information about Pattern Day Trading, please visit: [Day-trading margin requirements | FINRA.org](https://www.finra.org/investors/learn-to-invest/advanced-investing/day-trading-margin-requirements-know-rules).

What is a pattern day trader

We don’t offer any of these right now but that could change in future. 

Do you offer options, CFDs, mutual funds or futures trading?

An “Order”, in investment speak, simply refers to an instruction that you place to your broker(in this instance, Lightyear). This instruction tells us to either buy or sell a security within a certain set of parameters, depending on the type of order you place.

All Lightyear users currently have access to both Market and Limit order types for submitting buy or sell instructions.

Each order type has its own pros and cons, let’s dive into how they work and what the tradeoffs are.

**How do Market orders work?**

This is the most basic type of order. A Market order set by you instructs Lightyear to either buy or sell a security at the current market price*. These orders are executed as soon as possible, meaning if created during market hours, execution time is usually seconds. There are some caveats to this, such as the size of the order, with larger orders generally taking longer to fill depending on the available liquidy. If buying a security that has low trading volumes, it could also take longer to execute your trade.

Market order pros:
- Simple and easy
- Fast execution

Market order cons:
- No guarantee on the fill price: You could receive a fluctuating price to what you expected, especially during volatile periods
- Setting a Market order while the market is closed exposes you to the generally increased volatility of the first few minutes of trade each market day

*Market price: it’s important to note that this term reflects the current real time price a security is trading for, and this changes intra-second. The price you see displayed in the Lightyear app or any investment platform (including google) is only ever an estimation.*

**How do Limit orders work?**

Here we start to get a little more complex, with Limit orders allowing you to dictate the maximum buy price, or minimum sell price, of an order. This means that your order will only be executed at your specified price or better, minimising the exposure to fluctuating market prices.

The tradeoff here is that unlike Market orders, which generally execute quickly, Limit orders risk never executing if the market price does not reach the specified price set by you.

Limit order pros:
- Lets you set a specific execution price

Limit order cons:
- Slow execution time vs Market orders
- Risk of never executing if your price is not reached
- Not available for fractional shares


Market vs Limit orders: What are they?

A fractional share is “a fraction of a share", i.e less than one.

Lightyear offers the opportunity to buy fractional amounts for a lot of the shares we have on our platform to create more equal access to investing. Not everyone has the capital to invest in companies whose share price is in the hundreds or thousands per share.

For example if a company had a listed share price of 1000 USD and it was available as a fractional share, you would be able to buy 0.1 of that share for 100 USD.

This isn’t available for all shares but we’re working on increasing this range.

**Do you pay dividends for applicable fractional shares?**

Yes we do, rounded to the nearest cent. You’ll receive the relative percentage proportionate to the amount of the share you hold, e.g if you hold 0.5 of a dividend paying share you’ll receive 0.5 of the dividend amount.

To find out more about what dividends are and when we pay them, see our [“Do you pay dividends”](https://golightyear.com/eu/help/trading-and-investments/do-you-pay-dividends) help article.


What are fractional shares?

About

Careers

Pricing

Blog

Help

Lightyear

Terms of Service

Best Execution

Privacy policy

Cookie policy

Complaints

Conflicts policy

Sign-up Promotion Terms

Refer a Friend Terms

Gift Voucher Scheme

Legal documents

Legal

Can’t find the answer you’re looking for? Get in touch with our support team.

Start searching for a keyword like account, fees, markets etc.

FAQs

Help centre

What's your issue about?

See here for updating your details, logging in or managing your preferences.

Managing my Lightyear account

Everything you need to know about signing up and verifying your account.

Getting verified

Find out more about affiliates, promotions and referral programs 

Promotions & referrals

Read more about managing your Lightyear multi-currency account

Trading & investments

Explore other topics

support@golightyear.com

Download the app and start investing now

Lightyear

Legal

Region

European / English

Get in touch

hello@golightyear.com

Press enquiries

press@golightyear.com