What reverse-split round-up trading actually is.
No charts to read. No direction to call. Just a rounding rule that sits at the end of a corporate action — and a decision your broker makes about five hundredths of a share.
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Step 01 · The setup
A company under a dollar has a problem.
Major exchanges require a listed stock to keep its bid above $1.00. Drift below it for long enough and the company gets a deficiency notice, then a deadline to fix it.
There is one lever that raises a share price without selling anything, without earning anything, and without asking anyone's permission: a reverse split. So the company announces one. This happens constantly, and it is announced in advance, in public, on a schedule.
The supply side of this trade is a compliance deadline. Nobody is guessing which company will split. They tell you, weeks ahead, in a filing.Same company. Same market cap. New price tag. -
Step 02 · The mechanic
Twenty shares become one. The price multiplies by twenty.
In a 1-for-20 reverse split, every twenty shares you own are exchanged for one. To keep the company worth what it was worth a second earlier, the price per share is multiplied by twenty. A quarter becomes five dollars.
Held four hundred shares at 25¢? You now hold twenty shares at $5.00. A hundred dollars, before and after. Nothing has been created and nothing has been destroyed.
This is the part everyone already knows, and the part that makes no money. The money is in the remainder.1-for-20 · value in = value out -
Step 03 · The remainder
But you didn't own twenty shares. You owned one.
Divide one share by twenty and you get 0.05 of a share. That is what the split leaves in your account: a sliver worth about the quarter you paid, and worth nothing to anybody as a tradeable object.
Companies don't issue fractional shares. Transfer agents don't want to track them. So the corporate action has to say something about what happens to yours — and your broker has to decide how to apply it to a position it holds in street name on your behalf.
Every reverse split in history has produced these slivers. Somebody has to resolve them. That resolution is the entire trade.This is what lands in your account -
Step 04 · The fork
Three things can happen to a sliver. Only one of them pays.
Rounded up. The fraction is bumped to a whole share. You now hold one share marked near $5.00, having paid 25¢.
Cash in lieu. The fraction is sold and you're handed its value in cash — roughly what you put in. You break about even, minus your time.
Rounded down. The fraction is cancelled. The position is gone and so is the quarter.
Which one you get depends on the issuer's split terms and on your broker's own fractional-share policy — two things you do not control, and neither of which is promised to you in advance. Policies change without notice. This is the real risk in the strategy, and it is why the trade is spread across ten brokers instead of concentrated in one.Not every position rounds up -
Step 05 · The trade
When it rounds up, you sell the share you were handed.
You paid 25¢ for one share. The split turned it into 0.05 of a share. The broker rounded that back to 1.00. You now hold a whole share of a company that trades near $5.00, and it cost you a quarter.
So you sell it. $5.00 in, minus the $0.25 you spent, is $4.75 realized — in that one account, from that one split. Not a paper gain. A closed round trip with a confirmed fill on both ends. That is the only number RSAMAXXED will ever call profit.
Post-split prices often fade in the days after the effective date, and thinly traded names may have no real bid at all. The $5.00 is where it should trade, not where it will.Illustrative · one account, one split -
Step 06 · The multiplier
The rule doesn't care how many accounts you have.
$4.75 is not a living. But the round-up isn't applied to you — it's applied to a position, in an account, at a broker. Hold one share in ten brokerages and there are ten positions, ten fractions, ten decisions.
Doing that by hand means ten logins, ten order tickets, twice — once to buy, once to sell — inside a window that closes. That is the job RSAMAXXED does: one click, ten accounts, every fill journaled.
Spreading across brokers isn't only about volume. It's the hedge. When one broker pays cash in lieu, the other nine are unaffected.$4.75 × accounts · illustrativeRealized if every one rounds up+$47.50
A worked example.
One ticker. One 1-for-20 reverse split. One share bought in each of ten brokerages, assuming every one of them rounds up.
| Leg | Per account | × 10 accounts |
|---|---|---|
| Buy 1 share pre-split | −$0.25 | −$2.50 |
| Position after 1-for-20 split | 0.05 sh | 0.50 sh |
| Broker rounds the fraction up | 1.00 sh | 10.00 sh |
| Sell 1 share post-split | +$5.00 | +$50.00 |
| Realized | +$4.75 | +$47.50 |
Illustrative example, not typical or promised results. It assumes all ten brokers round up, that the post-split share can be sold near $5.00, and it ignores commissions, settlement delays, and taxes. Real splits miss on all three assumptions regularly.
Why this isn't free money.
If you only read one section on this site, read this one. Everything above describes the good case. Here is the rest of the distribution.
The round-up may not happen
Many corporate actions specify cash in lieu outright. Many brokers round down or pass through whatever the issuer says. Round-up is a policy, not a right, and no broker owes you one.
Policies change without telling you
A broker that rounded up last quarter can settle the next split in cash. What worked for the last ticker is evidence, not a promise.
The post-split price often fades
A company reverse-splitting to survive a delisting is usually not a healthy one. The theoretical $5.00 can be $4.10 by the time you can actually sell it — or lower.
Some of these names barely trade
OTC tickers can have no honest quote and no real bid. A share you cannot sell is not $5.00 of anything, which is why unrealized P/L is never shown anywhere in this product.
Your broker's terms of service
Automating a brokerage account — including with this software — may conflict with that broker's terms of service. Accounts have been restricted for less. Read them and decide for yourself.
It is still the stock market
Positions can be halted, delisted, or cancelled between your buy and your sell. You can lose money on any leg of this. Nothing here is investment advice.
Questions people actually ask.
Is this legal?
Buying a share before a corporate action and selling it after is an ordinary securities transaction. The mechanism is public and the outcome is decided by the issuer and your broker, not by you. That said, we are software authors, not your lawyers: opening accounts specifically to multiply a broker's round-up policy may conflict with that broker's terms of service, and enough of it may get an account closed. You are responsible for your own compliance.
Why ten brokerages instead of one big position?
Because the round-up is applied per position, not per dollar. Ten thousand shares in one account rounds up to nothing extra — the fraction is what gets rounded, and a big position doesn't leave one. One share in ten accounts creates ten fractions. That's the whole reason the strategy is shaped this way.
Do you touch my brokerage passwords?
No. The desktop app runs on your machine, and each broker module talks only to that
broker's official domain. Credentials, cookies and 2FA secrets stay in your
.env and your local session files. If you pair the cloud dashboard,
exactly one thing uploads: your trade journal.
Why don't you show unrealized profit?
Because in this strategy it would be a lie. Half these tickers have no reliable quote, and a position that hasn't settled its round-up yet has no knowable value. A recorded buy matched to a confirmed sell is the only thing this product will call profit.
How do you find the splits?
Reverse splits are announced ahead of the effective date in public filings. The alert feed collects the tickers and dates and marks the type of each one — a standard listed name, an OTC name, or a conditional alert that the automation deliberately skips.
What does a bad split look like?
You buy ten shares across ten accounts for $2.50. Three brokers round up, four pay cash in lieu, three round down. The three rounded-up shares open at $4.10 instead of $5.00 and one of them is an OTC name with no bid until Thursday. You end the week up single-digit dollars, having spent an hour on it. That is a normal outcome, and it is why the tool exists — an hour is too long.
Now you know the mechanism.
The only part left is not doing it by hand, ten times, twice, before the window closes.
See pricingRSAMAXXED is trading automation software, not a broker, adviser, or fiduciary. This page is educational: it is not investment advice and not a solicitation. Round-up treatment varies by broker and by corporate action, changes without notice, and may not happen at all: you can lose money. Every figure here is the arithmetic of a hypothetical split — illustrative only, never a forecast, a promise, or past performance. Automating a brokerage account may conflict with that broker's terms of service. You are responsible for your own trades, taxes, and compliance.