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Robinhood launches 3% checking account

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661–670 of 684 posts

Re: Robinhood launches 3% checking account

#661
post #658
post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I consistently heard that Monzo's competitors like Revolut are going to be a future case study in scaling before great product/market fit. I don't know how many people have Revolut accounts, but nobody seems to be using their cards in public. Monzo is a licensed bank in the UK, and Revolut is not. Still, Revolut has about 30% more customers in the UK than Monzo, and about 3x more in total, since it's available in t…

Revolut have a banking license now: https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/12/revolut-gets-european-bank...

True. Revolut got its banking license in Lithuania, not in the UK. That's why people in London might prefer Monzo.

Re: Robinhood launches 3% checking account

#662

I think folks are overthinking this. The math itself doesn't matter. Have you seen recent Robinhood commercials popping up on TV? Their whole business is to encourage folks that should not be day trading to day trade. Having your money parked there just facilitates knee-jerk-reaction and follow-the-crowd trading.

Appreciate the comment.

And,

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/arti...

Re: Robinhood launches 3% checking account

#663
post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh lets not overstate it too much- this isn't the first time it has happened, paypal and a few other "internet banks" back in the early-mid 2000s was offering 5% interest rates when big banks weren't offering much. The big banks are as strong as ever. Generally, you really shouldn't be keeping much in a bank anyway, invest most of your money, even if only in ultra safe bonds.

Why would you lock your money up for years in a bond at a lower yield than you can now get with Robinhood?

You can sell bounds, they can be fairly liquid, and the yields are higher, with a locked in rate for that time. Personally I am a bit concerned about the safety of keeping money at RH as well after their big F up last week.

The real point though was that IMHO aside from your emergency money, you should really have as little in cash as possible. My other callout was that high interest rates didn't appear to steal any significant business from big banks in the past.

Re: Robinhood launches 3% checking account

#664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least 2008 had nothing to do with being good or bad at math. In fact, it kind of happened because of some rather fancy math. This article has been posted on HN multiple times: https://www.wired.com/2009/02/wp-quant/

I would call misapplying mathematical tools being bad at math personally. If you said that because you are intergrating revenue back into investments and are showing nx growth you'll get quadratic growth in exchange for cutting growth in half I would call that being bad at math. An uncommon form of it but still bad due to it being a clear failure to model the underlying domain. They did the same thing really by not t…

I think that's a pretty broad definition that wouldn't find much support. I think the words you used later, "critical thinking" or lack thereof, are much more apt.

Re: Robinhood launches 3% checking account

#665
post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2000/2008 didn't happen because someone did basic accounting math incorrectly.

I think you could argue that the rating agencies did the math incorrectly, at least in 2008.

This was an incentives issue. They were paid by the companies they rate. So in order to not lose market share they had to certify junk.

Re: Robinhood launches 3% checking account

#666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America, I don't think contactless matters that much currently. It's really a crap shoot if any specific retailer supports contactless, no major metro system that I know of support direct debit / credit contactless cards and no major bank or credit card company issues contactless cards. If you want to use contactless in america, you add the card to apple / google / samsung pay and use your phone for NFC payments.…

Most Amex US cards are now issued with contactless. Chase is about to add it to all their cards.

That must be very recent. I had contactless cards on half my cards in Canada a decade before hand in comparison.

Re: Robinhood launches 3% checking account

#667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America, I don't think contactless matters that much currently. It's really a crap shoot if any specific retailer supports contactless, no major metro system that I know of support direct debit / credit contactless cards and no major bank or credit card company issues contactless cards. If you want to use contactless in america, you add the card to apple / google / samsung pay and use your phone for NFC payments.…

Cashier was shocked when I used my contactless card in middle of SF. She nearly screamed "WHAT DID YOU JUST DO???". Meanwhile even in smallest villages of Europe no one bats an eye anymore. America is bizarre!

Yeah America is fairly bizarre in what is advanced and what is from 30 years ago. But you do get things like generous rewards cards, no exchange fee international ATM & credit cards on many accounts and so on. Not to mention cheap consumer goods.

In Canada we had none of that.

Re: Robinhood launches 3% checking account

#668
post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Metacomment: geeks who believe they have outmathed a financial firm should ask themselves "Are financial firms likely to be bad at math?" and "Are financial firms incapable of hiring their own geeks?" reminds me of the first time i interviewed at google, and one of the interviewers asked "if you could set up your own project and get a team to work on it, what would you do?". i answered that i would get a bunch of m…

Geeks can and do outmath financial firms and even bookmakers and casinos. The financial firm, bookmaker and casino just needs to outmath the 99.9% of customers who are not trying to beat them to win, and evict the 0.01% of customers whose outmathing is so good it is causing them problems.

Exactly. Counting cards at the blackjack table in Vegas isn't illegal, but they won't let you play after they figure out that you are. You can can beat the bookmakers, but once you do, you either get cut off or you only get offered odds with more juice.

Re: Robinhood launches 3% checking account

#669
post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you really move your emergency funds into a less secure more likely problematic service though?

I would have to read up on the transfer times. If it's reasonably standard (2-3 days) and doesn't have any daily limits, then yes. It's a US company, FINRA approved, SIPC insured, so the risk is minimal.

SIPC says they don't think they have to insure this.

Re: Robinhood launches 3% checking account

#670
post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schwab is excellent. Their "high-yield" (lol) investor checking/brokerage account is a good offering due to no minimums, unlimited foreign ATM fee rebates, unlimited checks, etc. Their customer support is amazing. Three rings and a human picks up the phone. My direct deposits go there, but I moved all my investments over to Interactive Brokers since Schwab doesn't offer (to my knowledge) portfolio margin and Schwab's…

Just out of curiosity how do you employ margin in your personal investment portfolio?

I have risk management parameters for all the positions in my portfolio and for my portfolio overall. I use the kelly criterion to size my trades (beta-hedged intra-sector constituent spread trades). Margin is just additional capital I can allocate and get a slightly smaller return on. I'm about 1.5x leveraged on equities and 6x on forex right now.
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