Why do I see sell transactions of small amounts in my transactions or monthly statements?

You might notice small sell transactions in your statements. These are part of a routine portfolio rebalancing process that helps keep your investments aligned with their intended allocations. There are two main reasons for these small sales:

1. Keeping Your Portfolio Aligned (Portfolio Drift)

If one of the ETFs in your portfolio drifts more than 20% from its target allocation, we’ll rebalance by buying or selling that ETF to bring it back in line.

2. Facilitating Fractional Shares

We aim to offer fractional shares so that your portfolio can be invested as accurately as possible. However, some ETFs in our universe can only be traded in whole units (known as "lot sizes") with our broker.

This means we sometimes need to sell slightly more of a particular ETF than is needed to meet the required lot size for a trade. To mitigate the effect of this, we group together multiple client portfolios that also hold the same ETF and rebalance them together in the same trade.

Client portfolios are chosen based on how far their ETF allocation has drifted from the target, starting with those that are the most off-target. We also randomise selections to avoid repeatedly choosing the same clients.

This process does not affect the total value or long-term performance of your portfolio. These small sell transactions are simply operational and help us ensure we continue to offer fractional investing, even when certain ETFs must be traded in whole units.