Selling stock on Cash App takes about 30 seconds. You’ll navigate to your portfolio, choose the stock, enter the amount you want to sell, and confirm. There are no commission fees, though tiny regulatory charges apply to every sale. Here’s exactly how the process works and what to expect afterward.
How to Sell Stock Step by Step
Open Cash App and follow these steps:
- Tap the Money tab on your home screen
- Tap the Stocks tile
- Scroll down to the stocks you own
- Tap the company whose stock you want to sell
- Tap Sell
- Enter a dollar amount, or tap the three-dot icon to type a custom amount
- Confirm the sale with your PIN, Touch ID, or Face ID
You can sell all your shares at once or just a portion. Cash App lets you enter a dollar amount rather than a specific number of shares, which means you can sell fractional shares without doing the math yourself. If you own $200 worth of a stock and want to sell $50, just type in $50.
Fees for Selling Stock
Cash App does not charge commissions on stock trades. Opening and maintaining an investing account is free, and there’s no minimum balance requirement. The only costs come from two small regulatory fees that the SEC and FINRA require on every sell order.
The FINRA Trading Activity Fee is $0.000195 per share sold, rounded up to the nearest penny, and capped at $9.79 per trade. The SEC fee is $20.60 per million dollars of principal, also rounded up to the nearest penny. On a typical small sale, these fees add up to a fraction of a cent or a few pennies at most. Cash App shows you the exact amount on the trade confirmation screen before you finalize the sale.
When Your Money Becomes Available
After you sell, the proceeds don’t hit your Cash App balance instantly. Settlement typically takes one business day or more. During that window, you won’t be able to access the funds from the sale or transfer them to your bank account. Once the trade fully settles, the money appears in your Cash App balance, and you can spend it with your Cash Card, send it to someone, or transfer it to a linked bank account.
If you need the money in your bank account, keep in mind that a standard transfer from Cash App takes one to three business days on top of the settlement period. Instant transfers are faster but carry a small fee.
Day Trading Restrictions
Cash App investing accounts are cash accounts, not margin accounts. That distinction matters because FINRA rules prohibit day trading in cash accounts. Day trading means buying and selling the same stock within the same business day. In a cash account, you must fully pay for a stock before you can sell it, and the proceeds from a sale must settle before you can use them to buy again.
Even on platforms that offer margin accounts, FINRA’s pattern day trader rule kicks in if you make four or more day trades within five business days (and those trades represent more than 6% of your total trades in that period). Pattern day traders must keep at least $25,000 in their account. Since Cash App doesn’t offer margin trading, this rule doesn’t directly apply, but the cash account restriction effectively prevents rapid-fire buying and selling anyway.
Taxes on Stock Sales
Selling stock is a taxable event. If you sold the stock for more than you paid, the profit is a capital gain. If you sold for less, it’s a capital loss you can use to offset other gains on your tax return. How long you held the stock matters: gains on shares held for more than a year are taxed at lower long-term capital gains rates, while shares held for a year or less are taxed as ordinary income.
Cash App Investing sends you a Composite Form 1099-B each year if you sold stock or received $10 or more in dividends during the tax year. This form lists every sale, including the date, proceeds, and cost basis, which is what you originally paid. You’ll need this form when filing your taxes. It typically becomes available in your Cash App account early in the year following the tax year, in time for the filing season.
Selling After Hours
The U.S. stock market is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time on weekdays. If you place a sell order outside those hours, Cash App queues it and executes it when the market reopens. The price you get will be the market price at the time of execution, not the price displayed when you placed the order. If you want more control over the price, place your sell order during market hours so it fills right away at or near the quoted price.