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Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year

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Re: Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year

#51

I can't wait to access their web/desktop version! Phone has been nice. As far as monetization goes, even if robin hood was $5-10/month it'd still be fun for a beginner investor like myself, i just dread the idea of per-trade fees on my single-stock purchases.

You already have a desktop version of Robinhood available as an open source - http://bit.ly/2FJXl7b

Re: Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year

#52

What people don’t realize is that these 0$ trading commissions just make it up in their routing of the transactions. You’re not going to get the best price. Use interactive brokers if you want a good price. Flat fee is higher but the trade routes are great.

And this is what limit orders are for. Disclaimer: I'm a robinhood user, who also works for a large high frequency trading firm. You're spot on (well that and robinhood gold is how they really make their money).

Re: Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year

#53
post #38
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people should arguably be putting their money into index funds and holding for the long term I think Robinhood is great for that! Zero commission means you can afford to buy small amounts without worrying about fees eating into your principal too much. You can put in $250 every pay period and buy a share of $SPY without losing ~3% to fees. With commissions involved you'd want to wait until you could afford a l…

That is true. I'm not saying Robinhood is all bad or can't be used in good ways. My concern is that overall, the product and marketing seem to be geared towards speculative, short-term trading. When I first signed up, the app was recommending that I check out stocks like Apple, Netflix, and Snapchat, not index funds.

I can understand why they guide people towards investing in "hip" companies versus an index fund, but regardless why is their so much animosity towards robinhood on HN? Is someone getting into investing and investing in an Apple/Amazon/etc. not overall a pretty good entry point compared to opening up thinkorswim or the pretty atrocious (at least on mac) schwab desktop client? Investing a small amount of money is better than blowing that money on tons of consumeristic bullshit that that tons of people do and RH seems like a genuinely good stepping stone compared to the current incumbents in a lot of ways (fees/minimum deposit/super simple). The fact that you can even start with RH and then at a later date transfer to a brokerage once you have a large enough portfolio is also a huge plus in my opinion to people who may have otherwise never set aside that money in the first place.

Re: Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year

#54

What people don’t realize is that these 0$ trading commissions just make it up in their routing of the transactions. You’re not going to get the best price. Use interactive brokers if you want a good price. Flat fee is higher but the trade routes are great.

I believe that RH is actually making their money off of the interest on spare cash in accounts. You can do limit orders in the app if you are particular about price. I don't have a source for this, other than I like the app.

Re: Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After using Schwab for both my banking and investments for more than a year now, I'm convinced that the most under-appreciated killer feature for a brokerage is actually cash management (i.e. a checking account you can pay bills from). Managing both my banking and investments at Schwab allows me to keep $0 in my checking account, and make use of their overdraft transfer feature to debit my investment account whenever…

Reducing the free loan you provide to a bank with a checking account is good, but be very careful with leverage. IMO any leverage should be a very deliberate decision. If you buy a 30k car/tuition one day (depending on how much you have invested, this could be a lot of leverage!), and the market crashes by 50% the next day, would you be ruined? It's possible that even if the stock immediately recovers from some flash…

You definitely raise a valid point, but as I mentioned in reply to a sibling comment, I do try to prepare in advance for big purchases like those by selling off stocks to pay those off in cash. I would never deliberately use margin as a financing option due to those dangers you mentioned.

Re: Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year

#56
post #34
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people should arguably be putting their money into index funds and holding for the long term I think Robinhood is great for that! Zero commission means you can afford to buy small amounts without worrying about fees eating into your principal too much. You can put in $250 every pay period and buy a share of $SPY without losing ~3% to fees. With commissions involved you'd want to wait until you could afford a l…

Vanguard charges no fees for buying/selling their owns ETFs. I believe Schwab and others do as well.

[deleted]

Re: Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen the vanguard ETFs in Robinhood? Would those be just as good as using the funds directly with vanguard?

Yes, better because the minimum is $0 not $10,000. It's not as good as Betterment/Wealthfront/Hedgeable because you can't rebalance, reinvest dividends, or get fractional shares.

You can rebalance and reinvest dividends at Vanguard.

Re: Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year

#59
post #38
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people should arguably be putting their money into index funds and holding for the long term I think Robinhood is great for that! Zero commission means you can afford to buy small amounts without worrying about fees eating into your principal too much. You can put in $250 every pay period and buy a share of $SPY without losing ~3% to fees. With commissions involved you'd want to wait until you could afford a l…

That is true. I'm not saying Robinhood is all bad or can't be used in good ways. My concern is that overall, the product and marketing seem to be geared towards speculative, short-term trading. When I first signed up, the app was recommending that I check out stocks like Apple, Netflix, and Snapchat, not index funds.

> My concern is that overall, the product and marketing seem to be geared towards speculative, short-term trading. When I first signed up, the app was recommending that I check out stocks like Apple, Netflix, and Snapchat, not index funds.

There's a broad spectrum of public companies obviously, but it's hard to see $AAPL as speculative in the same sense that people call penny stocks or cryptocurrencies speculative (i.e. much, much more risk involved in the latter two). Investing in large cap equities isn't the stupidest thing you could be doing as a new investor - that award would certainly go to buying derivatives.

And indeed if I have criticism of RH it's that they're trying to appeal to all investor types at the same time, new and experienced alike. It's easy to see how new investors can get confused when RH offers the ability to sign up for cryptocurrency trading and options trading, two things new investors obviously should not be doing (though admittedly there's obviously a questionnaire involved before you can be approved for options trading, not sure about cryptocurrencies).

Re: Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year

#60

What people don’t realize is that these 0$ trading commissions just make it up in their routing of the transactions. You’re not going to get the best price. Use interactive brokers if you want a good price. Flat fee is higher but the trade routes are great.

Is this really true if you're submitting passive limit orders? If I'm not even asking for the best price, how can I be taken advantage of.
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