Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 207 posts

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

#91

Post by jjeaff »

wgerard wrote: post #59
dguo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Washington Mutual, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, General Motors, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac are all good examples of why you should avoid individual stocks, even if they are "blue chip".

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

#92

Post by tanderson92 »

adrr wrote: post #77
Scoundreller wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the amount of dividend need to be the cost of one share? If so, with VTI trading at $140, you would need about 250 shares to buy a share with each dividend.

Most ETFs support DRIP and the dividends reinvestment happens at the fund level.

Dividend reinvestment for ETFs happens at the brokerage level, not at the fund level. You can see this because some brokers don't support reinvestment in the same ETFs.

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

#93

Post by dguo »

logicallee wrote: post #70
dguo wrote: post #19

I appreciate the zero commission trading, but at the same time, I'm worried about the attitude towards "investing" that they promote. Most people should arguably be putting their money into index funds and holding for the long term[1], not picking individual stocks and following price movements on a daily basis. I wouldn't criticize anyone for speculating (i.e. gambling) with money they can afford to lose. I've done…

Index funds aren't just boring, there is something morally abhorrent about simply investing in everything that has done well enough to be in an index fund. At that rate, why not invest in government bonds, given that the government gets whatever share it wants of literally every penny that goes through commerce in any capacity? If you want security, why invest in anything other than the government? I admire people fo…

We do need active investors, but the average person shouldn't be one if his or her goal is long term wealth generation. That doesn't mean maximizing security. It means maximizing the expected risk-adjusted rate of return.

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

#94

Post by dguo »

dlp211 wrote: post #80
dguo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Vanguard website/experience is definitely not that user-friendly/modern. That's the main reason I usually recommend Betterment to my friends instead.

Betterment, where you pay an extra quarter percent to buy Vanguard funds.

That's better than the alternative of not investing at all because Vanguard is not user-friendly. And I know that's possible because I have friends who were in that situation.

If you sign up with Vanguard, you still have to pick which fund(s) to buy. If you don't know anything about investing, that can be a daunting task. With Betterment, the only decision you have to make is the percentage split for stocks vs. bonds.

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

#95

Post by Veraticus »

dguo wrote: post #19

I appreciate the zero commission trading, but at the same time, I'm worried about the attitude towards "investing" that they promote. Most people should arguably be putting their money into index funds and holding for the long term[1], not picking individual stocks and following price movements on a daily basis. I wouldn't criticize anyone for speculating (i.e. gambling) with money they can afford to lose. I've done…

There's also M1 Finance (https://www.m1finance.com/), which is all about long term investing. Commission-free like Robinhood, but it also has fractional shares. Makes it even easier than Robinhood to manage a well-balanced portfolio.

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

#96

Post by omarforgotpwd »

stouset wrote: post #39
omarforgotpwd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a middle ground between day trading and just putting your money in an S&P 500 index fund and never looking at it again. Trading stocks can be fun and help you make a lot of money if you're able to spot undervalued investments. It's very complicated, but anyone can learn the basics of value investing and do a little bit of stock picking on the side.

That is an absolutely gargantuan “if”, given that any particular retail investor is overwhelmingly unlikely to possess novel knowledge or insight in any market. The number of times this ever happens is outweighed a millionfold by the frequency of times where people incorrectly believe this to be the case. What happens in the vast majority of cases is that people believe they’re making money, but after fees are actual…

That's true, most people likely won't know what they're doing. But it's possible to spend some time, pick up something like The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham, and invest a little yourself. Ordinary people can sometimes have investable insights that most players in the market are not aware of.

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

#97

Post by siruncledrew »

dguo wrote: post #19

I appreciate the zero commission trading, but at the same time, I'm worried about the attitude towards "investing" that they promote. Most people should arguably be putting their money into index funds and holding for the long term[1], not picking individual stocks and following price movements on a daily basis. I wouldn't criticize anyone for speculating (i.e. gambling) with money they can afford to lose. I've done…

That's why the $0 commission is such a key feature. They know people enjoy the emotional high of seeing the green numbers in their account when they open the app. This isn't a tool for high net-worth individuals, people that want "traditional" (Vanguard, Wealthfront, Schwab) wealth management investing with long-term planning, or advanced traders looking for Bloomberg terminal-esque features. This is designed to allow the average person to play with their money and see if they can "beat the market". It's like a fintech online casino. It's not gambling per se, but it definitely has a lot of psychological overlap with it for many of its users. With the addition of crypto trading, they've basically just opened up their new slot machines to the public.

I played with the Robinhood app before as well, but stopped using it after a couple weeks because it's just more of a novelty than a dedicated investment platform with all the features I want. I can see how some people that don't want all the complicated financial markets stuff would enjoy it though. If people think $0 trading is a short-cut to becoming a millionaire day trader though, they are in for a very bad time.

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

#98

Post by tehlike »

justonepost wrote: post #27

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.

This. interactive brokers provide the best user experience for most portfolios. Very useful app.

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

#99

Post by prostoalex »

dguo wrote: post #19

I appreciate the zero commission trading, but at the same time, I'm worried about the attitude towards "investing" that they promote. Most people should arguably be putting their money into index funds and holding for the long term[1], not picking individual stocks and following price movements on a daily basis. I wouldn't criticize anyone for speculating (i.e. gambling) with money they can afford to lose. I've done…

> Most people should arguably be putting their money into index funds and holding for the long term

Fidelity’s internal survey revealed that best performance correlated with low account activity http://www.businessinsider.com/forgetful-investors-performed...

Post reply on HN