The Current State of Buying

There are a lot of twists and turns in this saga and lessons learned a long the way. I believe the best people analyze information and adjust processes to achieve the best outcome. I used to buy directly thru Computershare, but I now no longer believe that to be the best way.

After Heat Lamp DD dropped, I looked at my situation and saw I needed to make a change. Buying thru Computershare gave me fractionals and enrolled me in the Plan. I have more than one account at Computershare, but if one account gets enrolled in the Plan the other accounts may also be at risk of having shares messed with because of Operational Efficiency that Paul Conn of Computershare has discussed on video.

Yes, I could have kept buying thru Computershare each time and then terminated the Plan to sell the fractionals. This is a possibility, but the sale of the fractional would all be taken as a "fee" by Computershare for selling a fractional. If my fractional was a .8 or .9 fractional, that sale could cost me around $17-21 at current share prices. I buy generally every week so I don't want to give up $20 each time just to get out of the Plan. I also don't want to stay enrolled in the Plan and put my shares at risk. What to do?

I have accounts at Vanguard and Fidelity so I bought thru them and will share how that went.

Vanguard: Vanguard has always required Limit purchases of GME since the sneeze. They used to allow me to buy stock and then transfer money from my bank after the purchase. As long as the money was at Vanguard within two days, it was fine. That is no longer the case

Vanguard currently puts a seven day hold on my funds from the bank. I can't purchase stock until the cash settles.

DRS from Vanguard: There is an online form to DRS from Vanguard. I intended to leave 20 shares at Vanguard which I have owned for more than a year which gives them Long Term Capital Gains status for taxes (taxed at a lower rate when I sell). The only way to leave these shares at Vanguard if I want to DRS newly purchased shares is to transfer "Last In First Out". The online form doesn't allow you to select LIFO for the transfer so we had to call a Vanguard rep. The rep took the information and was told Last In First Out to transfer only the newly purchased shares. The DRS from vanguard took another seven days to complete and they messed up the transfer. They DRS my Long Term Capital Gains shares and some newly purchased shares while leaving 20 Short Term Capital Gains shares behind at Vanguard.

Fidelity: Same situation. I was leaving 20 Long Term Capital Gains shares behind at Fidelity. I have to make a bank transfer to Fidelity before purchasing new shares, but they don't put a seven day hold on my funds. As soon as the bank transfer is input, I can buy shares.

DRS from Fidelity: Fidelity also has where you can DRS online without speaking to anyone, but in order to do LIFO you still have to call them. We called to DRS newly purchased shares. Fidelity did this correctly and left our Long Term Capital Gains shares behind at Fidelity just like we wanted. The DRS took just a few days.

++++++ To add to this, Vanguard won't let me buy bbbyq at all. Fidelity will let me buy it, but the cash has to be settled in the acct to buy shares that are <$3 each.

TL/DR: Based on what I've learned from Heat Lamp and the new SEC announcement about how to hold shares, I have no fractionals at Computershare, I am NOT enrolled in the Plan, and I'll be buying thru Fidelity and DRS from there for the greatest protection of my shares from shfs. Book and Plan are not the same and that's the bottom line because the SEC said so.