Hip, populist sounding name? Check.
New slick-designed facade on old activity? Check.
Marketed as if they're eliminating middlemen? Check. (wow! no fees!)
Promoted as making a begrudgingly-done banality suddenly fun? Check.
Entirely predicated on the idea that the founders' simplicity will persevere? Check.
Majority of money still flowing to well connected insiders? Check. (who do you think is on the other side of trades?)
Eventually going to be assimilated into an incumbent and end up as a tired pig's discarded lipstick? Check.
I think Theodore Roosevelt said it best: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
And you're right, the founders probably didn't set out to pretend and they actually believe they're changing the world. So I guess it's more appropriately described as "amateur disruption porn".
Who are these "insiders" you refer to? Why does it matter who takes the other side of the trade? If you got filled and you got the price you wanted (or better), the system worked.
Anyone else think this web design style is getting very cliche?
<snazzy background>
LOOK THERE IS ONE SENTENCE HERE
... scroll scroll scroll ...
WOW ANOTHER SENTENCE
... scroll scroll scroll ...
WOW SO DOGE
... scroll scroll scroll ...
...
With my current brokerage, I get online trading in 10+ worldwide markets, I can hold a variety of currencies, I get excellent execution, and there's no fees, there's plenty of services available including charts, real-time quotes, reports and many things that would otherwise cost me money, and all I have to pay is a flat commission fee on my trades. I really don't see how Robinhood is superior, now or in the future... And many brokerages already offer API access, even if they don't advertise it.
If I were to switch, it would probably be to Interactive Brokers - their fees are significantly lower and they have an equally or possibly slightly more compelling set of features.
I feel happier letting a major bank hold onto my shares, do my trades, calculate interest and balances, etc. rather than some startup. I also use scotiabank for my banking, so it's very convenient.
I'd view the competition as Interactive Brokers, not E*TRADE or Fidelity.
If I didn't love my job so much I'd be schwangling my way in to try and get in the door there.
|RobinHood co-founder Baiju Bhatt stresses that if you want to do deep financial research, you probably want to sit down at a desktop.
The heavy traders who would really benefit from zero-commission (assuming that it actually is) are on desktops in front of 4-10 monitors. Because of what it implies, I think regular people probably shouldn't be making trades that need to be done RIGHT NOW before a desktop can be reached.
edit to add: Is the "Share" button on the bottom of the trade confirmation screen really necessary? Are rich people going to be clogging up twitter with brags like "Just bought 1,000 shares of AAPL on Robinhood!"
Those people don't pay $10 per trade. If you do enough volume, you're usually able to negotiate much lower commissions. In addition, some of them will also specifically route their orders to ECNs and benefit from credit gained for providing liquidity to even further reduce their fees. All in all this is clearly designed for retail traders aka dumb money. I'd be willing to bet that their business model is based on selling the order flow they generate to institutions.
> They appear to charge TAF and other regulatory fees (https://brokerage-static.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/robinhood/l...) -- and based on the fee numbers it looks like they don't have significant volume -- but the website shows "FEES $0" in the app screen. The fees may not seem to be a lot, but saying that fees are zero is a factually incorrect statement.
I'm glad they fixed their homepage, but the table in the article (http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/screensh...) is wrong.
https://brokerage-static.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/robinhood/l...
