I just don't see the point of them anymore. Once the other trading platforms started offering $0 transactions, I saw way less value in Robinhood - then, following that, the argument was "fractional shares", which many other platforms offer.
Is it just that they are the most famous name in the retail investor space?
Plus they only offer "First In, First Out" stock sales which can have absolutely MASSIVE tax implications. Most real brokers offer FIFO, LIFO, and most importantly specific lots.
PS - I do keep a few bucks in RH so I can continue to use their real time graphs/watchlists/options information/etc, since my normal broker's website/app has terrible UI/UX by comparison (and it isn't close). RH is known for bringing free transactions, but maybe they should be known for being the first broker with non-terrible UI.
I think focusing on UX really does have a big impact on adoption, as it can differentiate a company in a competitive and saturated industry.
The outrage was real and obviously some users left, but at the end of the day most people will still use whatever platform is easiest and cheapest for them.
I think they're fine but if pessimism means the stock takes a haircut or dive when it starts trading I'm going to buy-in. There really is not a similar investing app that appeals to the Gen-Z / Millenial market as well as Robinhood does.
$0 fees have been commonplace for a few years now.
I can't speak for the size or amount of users, but definitely it had an impact.
I have heard so many apologists for Robinhood but never heard it addressed why they couldn't have implemented whatever measures of protection they "had to" in a stock-agnostic way.
https://stu2b50.dev/posts/why-robinhood-d3580b
I want to be upfront in that I can't verify the accuracy of this article, and I still look askance at Robinhood personally; however, it did pique my interest in keeping an eye out for further analyses of the incident as more details emerge. And it seems like there is plausibility to Robinhood's claims that they had to halt buys.
And...on the face of it, I am all for regulation that places risk management requirements on financial firms.
You don't actually take possession of the coin - no wallet, etc, purely custodial. But saves the 3.5% bitcoin fee from Coinbase!
The UI looks pretty but it's purposely confusing, for example Market Buy, Limit Buy, Market Sell and Limit Sell look almost identical and you are funneled to chose the option that makes RH most money. I even accidentally sold instead of buying and bought instead of selling but luckily I reverted the action before the price changed too much. I lost money several times because of the poor UI and was wondering what others think of their '0 commission' marketing. It is deceptive, the price to pay in RH is quite high, I think I've given them at least a few hundred a month (they've been taking).
There are other issues that I am not going to get too deep into regarding mining trading data, which apparently is how they make their big money. That is the leverage to enable the retail investors to bleed cash in the long run. I've been thinking about the parallel between Robin Hood and RobinHood(LLC), and the latter seems to me like an impostor, it is far from the legendary folkloric outlaw who was robbing the rich to give to the poor. It's quite the opposite in its intention in some ways. But I'll give them credit for priming me for trading.
Anyhow, I rolled up my command line interface for RH. I can easily do limit buys and sells, cancel all orders, and so on with the just one or two keywords while I see the real time data in front of me. The API wrapper for RH is available online for whoever is interested. I keep on improving on my scripts little by little and it's fun to program again in Python. It would be nice to script up a bot that takes advantage of small price fluctuations to generate a modest stream if income.
Can they 'insider' trade based on knowledge of their customers positions on themselves and knowledge of their own upcoming financial results? Seems like ripe for shenanigans.
Either you do buy and hold or you do trigger trading (expecting good sales, acquisition announcement etc.) or you do HFT. I doubt that you are able to do HFT. I know some people that are extremely successful with the first two. So what is left?
Trading too much. And very likely you are doing this on your phone. How often do you check the ticker? The answer will give you a good idea about what you are doing.
