Working in a sports gambling field, I know the data shows that less than 1% of total players actually make a consistent profit. I wonder how similar it is for nonpassive traders(not investors) on the market, regardless of the platform. People trading futures or actively trading might not be making much money at all. Investing has been very profitable for a layman, but I do definitely believe that trading has been over glorified as a money investment method.
Robinhood’s big gamble
11–20 of 156 posts
Re: Robinhood’s big gamble
#12The internet makes risky behavior more accessible by very nature of connectivity. You can talk to someone on the other side of the world with much less friction. Similarly, a fintech company like Robinhood decided to make stock trading more modern and reduce the barrier to entry. Granted, this wasn't really a big change in accessibility if you wanted to trade stocks. One could simply goto Fidelity ore other brokers a…
Isn't pushing Robinhood gold (leverage) onto users with repeated in app messaging about how great it is, Robinhood pushing users to do irresponsible things? Or the fact that if you end the day down, your whole app is red, unless you deposit enough additional cash to cover your losses and then it switches back to green? (edit note: not sure if this is still the case but it was true in the early days of the android app). The app feels like a mobile game developer switched to the stock market.
Re: Robinhood’s big gamble
#13What's risky? If there were one easy and legal way to make a lot of money in a non-risky way, then everyone would do that. Is it more risky to invest in Doge or to give it to some professional hedge funds that have been losing money every year?
Maybe S&P is the closest to legal, free, easy, little-risk?
Re: Robinhood’s big gamble
#14The internet makes risky behavior more accessible by very nature of connectivity. You can talk to someone on the other side of the world with much less friction. Similarly, a fintech company like Robinhood decided to make stock trading more modern and reduce the barrier to entry. Granted, this wasn't really a big change in accessibility if you wanted to trade stocks. One could simply goto Fidelity ore other brokers a…
Isn't pushing Robinhood gold (leverage) onto users with repeated in app messaging about how great it is, Robinhood pushing users to do irresponsible things? Or the fact that if you end the day down, your whole app is red, unless you deposit enough additional cash to cover your losses and then it switches back to green? (edit note: not sure if this is still the case but it was true in the early days of the android app…
If you deposit more cash than you lost in a day, does it flip back to green?
As far as I remember, it's just based on the gains / losses you had during the day. So depositing cash at the end of the day shouldn't affect your gain/loss.
Re: Robinhood’s big gamble
#15I always viewed the stock market as another form of gambling. Regulation existed to create enough friction to justify calling it "not gambling", but it was always gambling. Absent of regulation the two are indistingushable, robinhood is just taking advantage of the asymmetry
Re: Robinhood’s big gamble
#16what's really dumb is the fact it takes 3 days for a trade to settle. why can't I buy $SPY and get my money immediately? it's 2021, jeez.
From what I have heard is that they are working towards 1 day settlement, which isn't too bad.
Intraday settlement may sound good on paper but it also opens up a whole bunch of extra problems that you might not like.
Re: Robinhood’s big gamble
#17Robinhood seems to being doing both, but it feels like small retail investors are getting the blame for a speculative bubble that they have little fault for.
And even if small investors do share some fault, it is incoherent to end a critique with them and their (perhaps understandable ab)use of Robinhood's business model, and skip the pervasive estrangement of financial speculation from productive enterprise, a situation for which the largest players are predominantly responsible
Re: Robinhood’s big gamble
#18The internet makes risky behavior more accessible by very nature of connectivity. You can talk to someone on the other side of the world with much less friction. Similarly, a fintech company like Robinhood decided to make stock trading more modern and reduce the barrier to entry. Granted, this wasn't really a big change in accessibility if you wanted to trade stocks. One could simply goto Fidelity ore other brokers a…
Although robinhood's app was pretty revolutionary, I think their real "innovation" was removing the cost of trades, basically forced the entire market to remove that. Before, it would cost 4.99+ to execute a trade, so if you were not buying significant amounts that could EASILY eat up a lot of profits.
There have been brokers like that for at least 15 years. Zecco was doing it back in like 2006.
Re: Robinhood’s big gamble
#19Articles like this strike me as FUD no matter how hard i try and read them another way. "Risk" is such a wide spectrum when it comes to financial investments. Just look at the crypto crash today, and there are hundreds of billions invested there still. Robinhood giving younger people access to options is hardly a doomsday risk scenario in my mind. Robinhood may well be responsible for a generation gaining investment…
Cost of tuition.
Re: Robinhood’s big gamble
#20I always viewed the stock market as another form of gambling. Regulation existed to create enough friction to justify calling it "not gambling", but it was always gambling. Absent of regulation the two are indistingushable, robinhood is just taking advantage of the asymmetry
I think it’d more accurate to say all interactions with the stock market exist on a spectrum between gambling and creating real value, depending on your strategy.