You can get a little jealous when every year Berkshire shareholders make the pilgrimage to Omaha for the annual general meeting to celebrate the legendary investor Warren Buffett and his investment success.

But only real shareholders get an invitation.

And the entry hurdle is high: an A share, the most expensive share in the world, currently costs the equivalent of 419,000 euros.

Daniel Mohr

Editor in Business.

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Trade Republic, a Berlin neo-broker with the claim to simplify investing and make it more accessible to new investors, wants to put an end to the closed society of expensive shares.

From now on, fractions of shares can also be traded on the platform.

This means that shares in Berkshire Hathaway, Booking.com or Chipotle Mexican Grill are also accessible to investors who do not want to spend thousands of euros on a single share.

However, the first thought of Trade Republic, which was founded in 2015, was not for the expensive stocks that should be made accessible: "We keep looking at which points in the investment process people get stuck or even fail," says Christian Hecker, founder of Trade Republic .

In the beginning, it was the selection of a stock exchange, which is why all Trade Republic transactions are now forwarded to the Hamburg Stock Exchange.

But that was also the indication of the desired number of shares.

"People want to invest 1,000 or 3,000 euros and not have to calculate which number of shares corresponds to that," says Hecker.

18.7 times Mercedes

His company has been working to avoid this hurdle for a year and a half.

Now, Trade Republic is the first provider in Europe to allow trading of fractional shares.

If an investor wants to buy Mercedes shares for 1,000 euros, he gets 18.7 shares according to current prices, 24.1 for BASF and 45.5 for Zalando.

"This simplifies the investment enormously, the denomination was confusing for many," says Hecker.

Trade Republic, already Bafin-regulated as a securities trading bank, has now acquired a new license for proprietary trading.

If an investor buys just a fraction of a share, Trade Republic takes the remaining fraction of the share onto its own books.

This is a significant difference from other providers who track fractional shares through Contracts for Difference (CFDs).

These are derivatives, not real shares, and they have no voting rights at general meetings, no dividends and are not special assets, but bearer bonds of the issuer and thus part of the insolvency estate in the event of insolvency.

At Trade Republic, however, investors acquire real shares with voting rights, dividend rights and the status of a special fund, which in the event of insolvency is not part of the insolvency estate, but remains the property of the shareholder.

However, this will not be possible with Swiss shares, as these are generally no longer tradable in Germany.

Cheap trading fees under discussion

Even transactions with fractional shares will only cost one euro at Trade Republic, like all other transactions.

The Neobroker finances the favorable trading costs through commissions, which he receives from trading partners for the forwarding of orders (payment for order flow).

This business model is controversial, but Christian Hecker sees good chances of continued existence: "The Czech Council Presidency has just written a position paper that supports our view that our model is in the interests of investors." Opponents are the large stock exchanges, such as Deutsche Börse , which is a monopolist with its Xetra trading platform and demands monopoly prices, which the customer ultimately has to pay for in the form of higher prices.

Since it was founded, Trade Republic has been able to inspire many young investors for the stock market for the first time.

In the past few months, they have experienced their first really tough test with significantly falling share prices.

"We are primarily a savings plan product," says Hecker.

Trade Republic has as many savings plan customers as all other banks in Germany put together, says the founder, without wanting to give specific figures.

“We attach great importance to the education of our investors and we now see that they have understood the connection between inflation, interest rates and share prices.

They continue to invest in savings plans and are more happy about the lower entry prices than panicking.” Unlike the American provider Robinhood, which also benefited particularly from the hype surrounding the Gamestop share,

Trade Republic continues to develop positively.

"We continue to grow and have inflows in terms of investment volume," says Hecker.

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) can now also be purchased in fractions, which has always been possible in savings plans.

However, at least one whole share is still required to attend a general meeting.

So the Omaha visit will have to wait until the success on the stock market also makes it possible to buy an entire Berkshire share.