As long as you do not buy prohibited investments in any type of IRA, there are no restrictions on when or how long you purchase or hold shares. Many people use IRAs for extensive trading because there is NO current tax impact or reporting. IRAs including Roths, only produce a tax when you take money out of the IRA account. Of course, all expenses you incur in your IRA due to trading or just holding high expense mutual funds, still reduce your IRA balance even though there is no current tax due.

You can ask the IRA custodian to bill your account administrative fees outside the Roth or have them deducted from the Roth. If paid with outside funds, you may qualify for misc itemized deduction subject to 2% of AGI floor, but no deduction if the fees are deducted from the account. Commissions cannot be paid from outside funds unless you have a “wrap account”, which is a fee that includes all expenses and commissions based on the total values in the IRA as opposed to each transaction.

You should also have selected an IRA custodian based on the type of holdings and amounts of trading you wish to do. A discount broker is better suited for frequent trading or a fairy low % wrap account if you do not use a discount broker. Some discount brokers also offer wrap accounts. Otherwise high trading expenses will eat up too much of your IRA funds.

For tax purposes, if you have a Roth IRA, all you need to keep track of is the year and amount of each regular or conversion contribution and the year and amount of each distribution, which will be reported on Form 8606. There are no capital gains or losses, therefore you do not need to keep track of each holding, when you buy or sell them or if you lose or gain on that holding. You do not report regular Roth contributions, only conversions to your Roth and distributions of funds from the Roth.

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