Not so much a tax question I suppose, but I believe it would relate to this board’s expertise.
I am fairly certain I am okay here, but just wanted to be sure:
I assume I am not violating rules by essentially wanting to move a stock from one Roth to another at a different brokerage. I want to sell stock in one Roth account, then buy it immediately in another, different account, separate brokerage. Why? The other one allows for me to add whenever I want to, fractionally, and I want that advantage. (I also plan on taking one that is in the account that allows fractional trading and moving it to the non-fractional account…it will allow me to do the swap without adding money right now, and I don’t care on that one to add to at the moment).
Rubic, that didn’t really occur to me to be honest; but thinking about it, I would assume doing it by selling/re-buying would be simpler/faster.
A direct transfer would be simpler (but not faster). What’s the need for speed? If you are looking to add to a position without contributing new money to the Roth IRA, you will need to have cash in the account where the new shares will be held. You can “find” the cash now (either already present or by selling some other holding within the account) and make your incremental purchase while waiting for the “old” shares to transfer.
I would assume doing it by selling/re-buying would be simpler/faster.
Faster, yes. Simpler? Maybe. If you are selling either stock at a loss (not uncommon these days) and re-buy it in less than 30 days, you have the potential to create a wash sale - even though it’s in your IRA. The wash sale would occur if you also have purchased the same stock in a taxable account within +/- 30 days of the loss sale in the IRA. So if you are, for example, purchasing the same stock on a regular basis in a taxable account, you would need to pause those purchases to avoid a wash sale. If you don’t want to puase the purchases, then doing a transfer would be simpler.