Help please.

EbyA

I need to work out how much my shares were worth on a previous date. If I had 0.47 (fractional share in Walt Disney and baught it on the 25h of march what would my shares worth be on the 29th of march? Bare in mind First I baught 0.32 at a peice of £27.50 then I baught 0.15 at £12.31

Also if I had 0.1 (fractional shares) in telsa and baught it on the 24th of march what would it be worth on the 29th of march? Buying price was £42.31.
Any help would be extremely helpful. I have been struggling to work it or for atleast the last 1 hour.
Thank you.

eskbanker

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DIS/history/ lists the prices for each day, but obviously they vary throughout the trading day, so you can choose from opening, high, low, or closing prices*.  They're priced in dollars so the value in sterling will obviously be influenced by underlying exchange rate and also the actual rate you'd use, allowing for commission, spread, etc.

If you have 0.47 of a share then clearly you need to multiply the published price by 0.47.

You've presumably bought these via some sort of broker or platform, which should display prices in real time, but may not include historical analysis.

I'm sure I'd speak for many reading this who'd think: why?!  Why buy tiny fragments of shares and then be interested in value change over a very short period of time?

* Edit: since 29 March was a Sunday, you'd use the closing price from the Friday, namely $96.40, so your fraction would be valued at $45.308.  The typical raw exchange rate that day (from xe.com) was 0.8029075320 so that would equate to £36.38 if you were able to convert at that rate (you wouldn't).

Albermarle

I'm sure I'd speak for many reading this who'd think: why?!  Why buy tiny fragments of shares and then be interested in value change over a very short period of time?

First time poster , asking an unusual question with poor grammar . Makes you wonder how genuine it is 

bowlhead99

Albermarle said:
First time poster , asking an unusual question with poor grammar . Makes you wonder how genuine it is 

Be nice to newbies, he just needs to know what the shares in telsa were worth on a Sunday in late March. I'm sure we have all had such questions. Also, we need to bare in mind when he baught them, for some reason...

EbyA

eskbanker said:

lists the prices for each day, but obviously they vary throughout the trading day, so you can choose from opening, high, low, or closing prices*.  They're priced in dollars so the value in sterling will obviously be influenced by underlying exchange rate and also the actual rate you'd use, allowing for commission, spread, etc.

If you have 0.47 of a share then clearly you need to multiply the published price by 0.47.

You've presumably bought these via some sort of broker or platform, which should display prices in real time, but may not include historical analysis.

I'm sure I'd speak for many reading this who'd think: why?!  Why buy tiny fragments of shares and then be interested in value change over a very short period of time?

* Edit: since 29 March was a Sunday, you'd use the closing price from the Friday, namely $96.40, so your fraction would be valued at $45.308.  The typical raw exchange rate that day (from xe.com) was 0.8029075320 so that would equate to £36.38 if you were able to convert at that rate (you wouldn't).

Thank you for the reply. Very grateful to you. I would not have been able to work that out. So it would have been valued at £36.38. 

Also what about the Tesla share? I baught 0.1 (fractional shares) in telsa on the 24th of march, what would it be worth on the 29th of march? Buying price was £42.31. Thanks in advance.

YellowStarling

As outlined by eskbanker, you can find the historic share prices for stock you hold.  You can do this on many resources, but one has been provided to you already by eskbanker:  by finding the share on Yahoo Finance, and then clicking Historical Data.

The share price is the price for 1 unit/share. So if you have a tenth of a share for Tesla (as you indicate above), then your holding is worth a tenth of the price of a share on any given day you choose to look at whilst you held it (e.g. 29th March or, as eskbanker pointed out, the close price on Friday 27th March).

The closing price for a Tesla share on Fri 27th March was $514.36.  So your tenth of a share holding (0.1) was worth a tenth of $514.36 on that day (and on Sunday 29th March, for ease of illustration).  You calculate this by multiplying your holding (0.1) by the share price ($514.36), which is 0.1 * 514.36, or $51.436.  To convert to £, you then multiply that by an appropriate exchange rate - to use the one provided before, $51.436 * 0.8029075320, or £41.30.

Your buying price has no material effect on calculating your present holding's valuation - of course, it will have dictated how many units/shares you have, naturally, but its material use then comes in calculating what loss or gain you have made on your investment.  By doing the very same calculation above (0.1 * the buying price), you can subtract the product from your present valuation, which will give you your return (though you would also need to take in account the broker/platform's charges and fees, etc.).

badger09

OP would you care to tell us what trading costs you incurred on purchasing those 2 fractional shares?

bowlhead99

badger09 said:

OP would you care to tell us what trading costs you incurred on purchasing those 2 fractional shares?

You can't trade fractional shares through traditional UK brokers on a stock exchange for obvious reasons:
 
- companies won't deal with the rights and obligations of a single share in their company being split among multiple people that might change periodically (other than joint ownership with a small number of names that don't change very often e.g. Mr & Mrs);

- it would be impossible for unrelated parties with partial ownership to agree and coordinate when the share that they collectively own should be exited and sold to a prospective new secondary investor on the stock exchange.

As such - over this side of the Pond at least - the fractional shares concept is only offered by newer fintech brokerages that have their own proprietary method of buying shares on the market on a periodic basis and sharing them out among their investors. These companies know that investors trying to build a portfolio of stocks with small amounts of money who need to be able to access fractional shares, are not going to be able to pay transaction fees for each and every tiny transaction. So they offer commission-free trading and look to make their money elsewhere (or just make losses, until the customer base is big enough to sell on to a bigger player or make money from upselling value-added services).

So my guess is that if it was a broker operating in the UK it would be someone like Trading212 or Stake or Freetrade (though if it was March, it wouldn't be Freetrade) and so the trading costs would have been nothing