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Robinhood stock trading app confirms $110M raise at $1.3B valuation

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Re: Robinhood stock trading app confirms $110M raise at $1.3B valuation

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still a lot, but TD dropped their fee to $6.95 https://www.tdameritrade.com/pricing.page

And Fidelity is at $4.95 which is the lowest for big brokerages I think https://www.fidelity.com/why-fidelity/pricing-fees

Schwab dropped to the same. If anything Robinhood has benefitted everyone because it's pricing model has pressured other brokerages to lower fees.

Re: Robinhood stock trading app confirms $110M raise at $1.3B valuation

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends what you want to do, I'm about 98% in plain old, boring index-tracking ETFs. But sometimes I want to take a bit of money to make some stupid bet. Yes, to gamble. And for that purpose, often having the leverage is a good thing. The way I see it, the bets are much more entertaining than those at casinos and with better odds. Maybe it's just me, but I find casinos incredibly boring, but gambling on the market ca…

What are returns like on "boring index-tracking ETFs"?

Long term (10+ year) returns have historically been around 7%. Obviously that can vary quite a bit year-to-year.

Re: Robinhood stock trading app confirms $110M raise at $1.3B valuation

#153

Enticing millenials to "trade" individual stocks is quite possibly the most anti- Robinhood thing I can think of. The only thing more ironic would be to encourage them to take on margin...which as it turns out is literally Robinhood's business model. 99% of users on the platform will ulimately end up participating in a direct transfer of their own wealth to a more sophisticated trader or algo (i.e. The banks and hedg…

I wonder what percentage of their customer base is holding leveraged ETFs in a hope to get rich fast.

Re: Robinhood stock trading app confirms $110M raise at $1.3B valuation

#155
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the major retail brokers sell their order flow, so you generally eat this cost no matter who you use. In addition, the hidden cost is fractions of a penny on the dollar (so still better than the $5-7 a regular broker charges per trade anyways).

What's the long play then? Surely Robin Hood isn't absorbing the the transaction fees as a loss leader just to increase it's user base? If that's the play, any other company can emulate that.. The incentive seems to be this may cause a price war with existing brokerages.

Their end game is being bought by a larger financial org. RH is capturing a user base that has eluded more established institutions for a long time.

Re: Robinhood stock trading app confirms $110M raise at $1.3B valuation

#156

Remember LendingClub which was a money lending business that touted it's machine learning KYC & AML process would automate the overhead but what happened was it just let a ton of people with non existent credit to grab money...that they will never pay back. Techcrunch, news, tv, they had it all. I'm not saying Robinhood is bad or anything but the business model and the valuation built on top of it is very questionabl…

They "lend" you money to buy assets they hold, up to 2x. There's essentially zero risk for them. They don't lend you money you can cash out to your account.

You buy $1000 of stock with your cash. They say cool your account can now "borrow" $1000 from us to buy more stock. If your stocks start crashing, they margin call and get their money back. The assets are always in their account, no risk to them.

The only real risk is probably fraud. Sign up with stolen account A, cash out to mule account B. This happens a ton and for small amounts no one is gonna follow up on it, so it's up to Robinhood to detect and prevent this ahead of time.

Re: Robinhood stock trading app confirms $110M raise at $1.3B valuation

#157

Enticing millenials to "trade" individual stocks is quite possibly the most anti- Robinhood thing I can think of. The only thing more ironic would be to encourage them to take on margin...which as it turns out is literally Robinhood's business model. 99% of users on the platform will ulimately end up participating in a direct transfer of their own wealth to a more sophisticated trader or algo (i.e. The banks and hedg…

I've written this on HN before but Fidelity(1) and Schwab(2) have similar low cost index fund offerings to Vanguard as well so don't think you are stuck with Vanguard. Both Fidelity and Schwab also offer the best checking account you can possibly get (no fees, minimums, plus ATM reimbursement) for free as well. Additionally, Fidelity has a great 2% cash back credit card. Even if you don't use Fidelity or Schwab's brokerage accounts it's a no brainer to sign up for a checking account with one of them.

Vanguard, however, is owned by it's investors if that's important to you.

Last I checked you can also trade some Vanguard ETFs on Robinhood as well. I just checked, you can buy VOO, among others, on Robinhood as well as iShares ETFs, which are also low cost index funds.

Basically, if you want low cost index funds you have a lot of options, including Robinhood

(1)https://www.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/investing-ideas/index-...

(2)https://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/m/indexfunds.html

Re: Robinhood stock trading app confirms $110M raise at $1.3B valuation

#158

“But ‘how are you going to make money long-term?’ has been a question mark” Bhatt says. Gold has answered that question.” A Gold subscription lets users borrow up to double the money in their account to trade on margin with leverage Wow, so that's effectively opening up new easy to get credit vehicles for unsophisticated investors. How could that go wrong? Even if you are a professional trader you'll take a bath on m…

Wouldn't want to enable people to make their own decisions with their money, would we? The fact that you have to make a paid account to use leverage (whereas you can trade indefinitely for free) is deterrent enough for most people who do not already actively manage their investments. I think Robinhood is doing a great service -- I just wish they would expose a better API.

> Wouldn't want to enable people to make their own decisions with their money, would we

I think you're missing what the criticism here is.

Let's say you, right now, have $10,000. I say "Hey, lend me that money so I can play the stock market with it." Would you give me the money? You know literally nothing about me. You don't know if I've ever traded a stock before. You don't know if I can ever pay you back. There's a higher than normal probability that I will never pay you that money back.

Robinhood is taking on a lot of risk and using that as proof that they're a profitable company.

Re: Robinhood stock trading app confirms $110M raise at $1.3B valuation

#159

Enticing millenials to "trade" individual stocks is quite possibly the most anti- Robinhood thing I can think of. The only thing more ironic would be to encourage them to take on margin...which as it turns out is literally Robinhood's business model. 99% of users on the platform will ulimately end up participating in a direct transfer of their own wealth to a more sophisticated trader or algo (i.e. The banks and hedg…

[deleted]

Re: Robinhood stock trading app confirms $110M raise at $1.3B valuation

#160

“But ‘how are you going to make money long-term?’ has been a question mark” Bhatt says. Gold has answered that question.” A Gold subscription lets users borrow up to double the money in their account to trade on margin with leverage Wow, so that's effectively opening up new easy to get credit vehicles for unsophisticated investors. How could that go wrong? Even if you are a professional trader you'll take a bath on m…

I came here to write pretty much exactly this.
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