The interface looks pretty attractive
Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year
121–130 of 207 posts
Re: Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year
#122Given the complexity of running a stock brokerage service I don't think it's appropriate to call Robinhood an "app"
For the end user it’s an app
Re: Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year
#123I 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 allo…
> 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".
And this is exactly why these sorts of people will continue to remain low-net-worth individuals. Far be it for me to tell anyone what to do with their money to have fun, but these are exactly the sort of people who should be targeted for an easy to use solution that just auto deposits some amount of money into an index fund or target retirement date fund every pay period. It might not be "fun", but they'll be pretty happy later in life when they actually have retirement savings.
Re: Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I don't admire active investors. Most of them are going to get killed on commissions and fees and won't be able to compete with the professionals who spend all day, every day investing and have sources of information that aren't available to retail investors. It's good that most Robin Hood investors are young and don't have much to lose. I hope they learn their lesson before they put they are old enough to put their…
To be honest it's a good sandbox.
Re: Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hello fellow Capital One Investing refugee. I too was thinking about moving my portfolio over to Robinhood, but they'll need a web app before I'll make the jump. I'd say I'm only a semi-active trader (maybe 2-3 trades a day) and it's still hard to envision doing that on a mobile device.
they now have a web-app. it might be invite-only, not sure, but I have been using their web app for 3 weeks.
Don't even think it's invite-only, just an unannounced "beta". I didn't get an invite and went to what I expected the url to be and was able to login just now.
Will probably never really use it over the Android App, but glad it exists.
Re: Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year
#126how can something which is so trivially cloneable be valued so high?
Re: Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year
#127I 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 allo…
what does $0 commission mean? unless they're sourcing assets at mid then it's not 0 commission. and they can't be giving trades at mid to customers unless they're taking a loss on every transaction. they must be charging bid-offer - so how much?
Re: Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year
#128Earlier 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…
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Re: Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Isn't that why Vanguard has their Total Stock Market and Total Bond Market funds? Basically, they're the "invest in these if you don't want to bother" funds.
They also have LifeStrategy 0/20/40/60/80/100 so you can balance stocks vs bonds however you want, and have diversification handled for you.
Re: Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year
#130Does anyone know their plans to expand to other countries? I am curious how they will manage to apply to different laws and fee structures overseas. Expanding with the premium option only would also make sense to me.