23 ms·

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

450 points by jbernardo95 9y ago

rl3 9y ago
Nice, now hopefully they can deliver on a public API, short selling, and a desktop app.
- szirka 9y ago
  I would be pretty surprised if they introduced short selling. There's no question that a good chunk of Robinhood's user base are novice investors. Those that do not understand short selling may land themselves into a lot of a hot water. There may be measures RH could take to prevent novice users from dangerous short selling plays. I'd be curious to see how they introduce it.
  - GeneralMayhem 9y ago
    They could introduce put options, at least.
    - rl3 9y ago
      Just so they offer some form of betting against the market. I don't care how. Creating beta-neutral systems with Robinhood would then be possible.
      - pmalynin 9y ago
        (Not trading advice, yada yada) Well, The way I approach betting against the market is inverse leveraged ETFs. If you want to bet against S&P 500, ProShares has a 2X inverse offering, and you can probably balance it with 3x leveraged gold JNUG / JDST as they track the market.
        rl3 9y ago
        Nice, I never knew inverse ETFs existed. Thanks for this!
  - traviswingo 9y ago
    I actually emailed support about this a while back and was told it's on the roadmap.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- randomizor22 9y ago
  Not sure exactly what you're looking for in a Robinhood API, but I work for a company that provides a brokerage API (the sort of API that would power a Robinhood-type product). Might be relevant: https://www.thirdparty.com https://www.thirdparty.com We've got quite a few things on the roadmap that exceed Robinhood's offering.
  - jameskegel 9y ago
    In your theoretical opinion, what would set your company apart from any other offering the same?
  - rl3 9y ago
    The market you're targeting is at least an order of magnitude out of my price range, but I appreciate the info. Best of luck.
jessriedel 9y ago
> Robinhood also earns money from rebates its gets for directing its order flow to broker dealers, though Bhatt insists “We do not sell data to anyone. We have never sold data to anyone. We just do not do that.” Just so everyone knows, order flow from unsophisticated investors is considered a valuable resource because, when filling it, you know that you're more informed than the person trading against you.
- arcanus 9y ago
  Great catch, missed that during the article skim. Doesn't this also enable front-running? Regardless, this is useful info for HFT funds, right?
  - celim307 9y ago
    They explicitly call out in the article they don't do that
    - tomp 9y ago
      No, they didn't. It was more of a "non-denial". > Robinhood also earns money from rebates its gets for directing its order flow to broker dealers, though Bhatt insists “We do not sell data to anyone. We have never sold data to anyone. We just do not do that.” There have been misconceptions that Robinhood sells high-frequency traders its data to help them trade against the startup’s customers. But Bhatt says “The rules around this stuff as so tight. We’re not a social media company. If we even step slightly out of line with anything we all go to jail.” Basically all they're claiming is that they're following the rules - i.e. if the rules allow selling "data" (or something that we won't call "data" but "order flow" or something) to HTFs or banks' dark pools, they're not saying they don't do it!
      - morsch 9y ago
        How would that not directly contradict "We do not sell data to anyone."?
celticninja 9y ago
A unicorn with a revenue stream, how novel.
- metalliqaz 9y ago
  Well, as others have pointed out, that revenue stream may not be so solid.
malanj 9y ago
My understanding is that if you trade through a platform like this, that's monetizing through order flow, you're getting screwed by HFTs. I.e. AFAIK Robinhood doesn't need to be selling the data to HFTs (which they don't do), for you to get screwed by them. Anyone here in the space who can quantify the "hidden" cost you incur because of more sophisticated traders trading against you? It feels like working with a broker who's explicitly charging you might actually be cheaper if you take this "cost" into account?
- supster 9y ago
  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).
  - mr_turtle 9y ago
    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.
    - user5994461 9y ago
      If I have to guess a business model: They get a good deal on the commission and they get enough money from the gold subscribers to cover the commissions across all users. A fix subscription package is user friendly and easy to understand. It can be "better" for business than a variable commission on trades.
    - supster 9y ago
      The long play is that it actually doesn't cost significant money per trade at an institutional level. The only reason the other major brokers charge you money is because it covers their brick and mortar retail costs (e.g. Scottrade) and it adds to the bottomline (e.g. Etrade). So Robin Hood is actually just giving this surplus to the consumer instead of keeping it for themselves, and building a user base / brand in the process. Eventually once they have enough users, they will start to up sell you for other services (e.g. checking/savings, margin trading, options trading, check writing etc).
pillowkusis 9y ago
Pretty skeptical about the value here. >A Gold subscription lets users borrow up to double the money in their account to trade on margin with leverage Users pay money to be loaned money? How is this different than a microloan service? >Robinhood also earns money from rebates its gets for directing its order flow to broker dealers That means, presumably, the dealers are profiting in some way by handling trades from investors less informed than themselves. At the end of the day, Robinhood may not have trading fees, but the underlying brokers it works with do. I don't see how a microloans service and some kickbacks are enough to compensate. Presumably they are hemorrhaging money right now and the VC money is subsidizing novice investor's trading fees. Despite the name "Robinhood" like this is giving money to the poor, this service seems extremely predatory to its users, offering them cheap loans to gamble with on the stock market and taking kickbacks from the exact type of people Robin Hood was stealing from.
- pgodzin 9y ago
  There are also other benefits that the Gold service provides, such as after-hours trading. As they become more feature-complete compared to established brokers, those new features will likely be exclusive to Gold members. I also think they are able to invest non-invested money in people's accounts for short-term small percentage gains
- behrlich 9y ago
  The monthly fee for "gold" does seem a bit strange. But it gives you more than just margin. From https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en-us/articles/214681823-Introducing-Robinhood-Gold https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en-us/articles/214681823-In... you also get instant settlement, instant deposit, and extended trading hours, which seems like something worth paying for. As for "micro loans" - how is this any more predatory than a margin account at any other brokerage?
- wufufufu 9y ago
  Gold subscription is a fixed monthly cost whereas microloan services are interest based. https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en-us/articles/214681823-Introducing-Robinhood-Gold https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en-us/articles/214681823-In...
marvel_boy 9y ago
Somebody knows if there they are planning to operate in UK?
- akhatri_aus 9y ago
  Theres one called Freetrade.io that does the same thing in the UK
  - marvel_boy 9y ago
    Thanks, from his portal seems that they will operat in two months.
mstibbard 9y ago
I think the most surprising aspect is their desire to offer a similar referral scheme as Uber. "Now when one user refers someone else who signs up, both get one share of a randomly selected company from a set that includes Facebook, Apple, RiteAid, Ford, and General Electric."
AndrewKemendo 9y ago
“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 margin over the long run. They are incentivizing what is effectively borrowing for gambling and that is their long term revenue strategy? Might be a great money maker but it certainly is playing with some really big barrels of fire. "Three things ruin people: drugs, liquor, and leverage - Charlie Munger" edit: The point here is not that Margin is a new service, yes every brokerage has it, it's that it is irresponsible to use Margin if you are not a sophisticated investor. Its even more irresponsible to push leverage onto unsophisticated investors. Not everyone is going to understand the risks of leverage and if Robinhood makes it as easy as candy crush to trade on leverage, enough gamified users are "playing" stock market with real money and a margin call happens during a huge downturn, it will be exceptionally nasty.
- lcfcjs 9y ago
  Why do people that work in finance hate the idea of personal investing? Is it because you are losing out on somebody paying you for your market insight? Investment is always good. The only person losing out with apps like this are investment advisors like you.
- hammock 9y ago
  Might be questionable for investors (although trading on margin is extremely common) but gambling seems to make a ton of money for casinos, betting parlors and lottery boards, many of which have been around for "long term." Sounds more like you have moral/personal objection.
  - azag0 9y ago
    Casinos do not make money on borrowing for gambling, but on gambling.
    - 9y ago
lexo 9y ago
Robinhood will lend people money, so they can invest with that. Buying stocks with money that isn't yours. What could possibly go wrong here?
- mortehu 9y ago
  People do this when buying houses all the time, and often at a 5x or 10x margin, rather than just 2x. Even Vanguard supports this.
  - scurvy 9y ago
    At the end of the day, you can't live in a stock.
    - devopsproject 9y ago
      but it does still exist
      - ceejayoz 9y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy
      - scurvy 9y ago
        Unless it's BSC you bought... Or LEH... Or...
  - AndrewKemendo 9y ago
    I think a few years ago there was a pretty big issue with that. Something happened...can't quite remember.
- scurvy 9y ago
  People watch margin interest and amount of margin buys very closely. They can be indicators of over heated or bubble markets (especially in emerging markets). China has basically endorsed margin buying to prop up their insanely overvalued stocks. They're about to enter their own too big to fail territory, but I digress.
Leader2light 9y ago
I use Robinhood daily and love it. Low level traders could care less if HFT are making a penny off them. Also you can put limit orders....... No way I could trade the way I do and still make money if I was paying 7$ or more per trade. Crazy the industry can charge that much.
- omarforgotpwd 9y ago
  Same exact situation here. Because I put in lots of relatively small dollar value trades $10 transaction fees at TD Ameritrade would eat all my profits pretty quickly.
  - The_Hoff 9y ago
    Still a lot, but TD dropped their fee to $6.95 https://www.tdameritrade.com/pricing.page https://www.tdameritrade.com/pricing.page
    - auganov 9y ago
      And Fidelity is at $4.95 which is the lowest for big brokerages I think https://www.fidelity.com/why-fidelity/pricing-fees https://www.fidelity.com/why-fidelity/pricing-fees
      - spelunker 9y ago
        Schwab dropped to the same. If anything Robinhood has benefitted everyone because it's pricing model has pressured other brokerages to lower fees.
        ceejayoz 9y ago
        Don't give Robinhood the credit - fees have been dropping for decades. http://www.businessinsider.com/historical-trading-commissions-2014-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/historical-trading-commission...
- 9y ago
revelation 9y ago
This is just a slightly more obfuscated "binary options" betting scam. A Gold subscription lets users borrow up to double the money in their account to trade on margin with leverage Gamble alright.
- akhatri_aus 9y ago
  How is that different from the dozens of other offerings from other brokers? Margin lending has been around for centuries, binary options on the other hand..
x2f10 9y ago
I've been interested in Robinhood for some time. Does anybody here have experience with the app (good or bad) they can share?
- saget 9y ago
  I've used it for both about 6 months and it's wonderful. Very easy and nice to use. Only complaint is there is no features to explore stocks and financial news but there are other apps for that
- jtraffic 9y ago
  I've been using it for a while. I think it's best for longer term positions (2+ years at least). I realize it's ironic, because in theory, I could trade all the time with Robinhood, but I find that I don't do that. (Though that may be because I've learned over time that trading often is difficult, a recipe for me to lose money, and draining.) It's really just good, from the customer perspective. It's the brokerage that needed to exist. My uncle, who lives off of trading, gave me his transaction list and I saw that like 12% of his profits were eaten up by trading fees. Ouch. I think more sophisticated individual investors don't jump on because you can't trade options. For me, that's a good thing, I'm not tempted to speculate.
- devopsproject 9y ago
  good experience. The app is extremely smooth and attractive and it makes it easy to buy and sell.
colourincorrect 9y ago
"hey guys! lets take a model that has been proven effective by many years of fierce market competition, and disrupt it by doing for free!"
- replies_to_all 9y ago
  SIR, I appreaciate your contrarian attitude. I think this model is so tempting because it has become easy to persuade investors of value with user numbers (by itself a truly meaningless metric). People are better at gaming a system than building useful new products. If the institutions say, give me a large user base and we will give you money, the next day you will have a line a mile long with startups with HUGE user bases, because that is what they were told to do to be successful. Easiest way to do that, as you say, giving away for free what used to cost money. Between destroying the natural world and being total sociopaths hell bent on obtaining money/power at all costs, this species is fucking sick.
michaelmarkell 9y ago
If Robinhood bundles user debt and sells it at varying ratings (depending on information about the stocks being bought, perhaps) they could protect themselves from a large default and probably make money doing it
- akhatri_aus 9y ago
  It wouldn't necessarily protect them. Typically the broker sells off your shares/etfs on your behalf before they are owed anything net over your account deposit or margin.
deleted 9y ago
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brilliantcode 9y ago
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 questionable. It's almost like gravity does not exist anymore. It's all about making it across the IPO finish line and then it's like fuck what happens to everyone else because I've already got Monssack Fonseca shuffling my untaxable money.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  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.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > 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. Last I checked, Lending club still had strong returns, even after their fees, for investors (though somewhat less attractive then the figures would suggest since it is taxable as personal income rather than capital gains), and a sub-5% default rate. This characterization seems to be pure fantasy.
  - brilliantcode 9y ago
    https://seekingalpha.com/article/4009799-lending-club-online-lender-trouble https://seekingalpha.com/article/4009799-lending-club-online...
hkon 9y ago
Never seen a marketing video with so much disclaimers and fine print before as the one on the robinhood site
pembrook 9y ago
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 hedge funds who aren't just doing this for "fun" and have the financial and political backing of the world's elite). Side note: even those hedge funds can't consistently beat the market. If you are reading this, for your own finacial future I beg of you, please take your money to Vanguard instead and buy some index funds. Scratch your "trading" itch by trying to game your asset allocation instead. Future you will thank present you. If you don't believe me, please look into any of the academic research that has been conducted around efficient markets.
- spelunker 9y ago
  Trading is how brokers make money. It shouldn't surprise you that this is Robinhood's business model. I totally agree with your investment strategy, and you can do that on Robinhood, by the way.
  - pembrook 9y ago
    However the other online Brokers don't call themselves "Robinhood" and claim to be the champion of the little guy while simultaneously encouraging you into a strategy that has been proven to lose over the long run. Use the advisor (robo or human) services of any of the top online brokers and they will recommend you put your money in index funds. Also, putting together a "long term" portfolio of indexes at Robinhood assumes that Robinhood will be around offering free trades for the next 40 years. Otherwise you're looking at hefty capital gains taxes to transfer when they pivot or go belly up. There once was a company called Zecco...
    - sigstoat 9y ago
      > Otherwise you're looking at hefty capital gains taxes to transfer when they pivot or go belly up. you should be able to account transfer out without causing a taxable sale. how well that will go in the event they pivot or fail and have to transfer your assets over to some backup service is of course unknown.
dharma1 9y ago
Do they have an API?
duren 9y ago
I have a modest amount of money in Robinhood. I love the app and they way it has encouraged me to learn about markets. I started in March of 2016. I was naïve and I made a lot of silly mistakes early on, but I was able to learn a lot of fundamentals when the stakes were low. I view it more as a gaming app than investing — it's a supplement, not a replacement for investing and asset management.
- tekromancr 9y ago
  Absolutely! The app lives in my phone's "games" folder. I have a relatively small amount of money, just enough that it would sting a bit if I lost it all. I find that even having a tiny stake in things makes learning about investing and finance actually interesting, whereas the majority of my invested assets are all "Vanguard, take the wheel"
  - Gustomaximus 9y ago
    + This. I keep a similar smaller trading account where I effectively gamble with stock picking. I do this as I enjoy researching and understanding businesses and find things more interesting, and you see opinions more honestly when I put money where my mouth is. And it helps you stay engages with your reading. I leave the 'retirement' investments elsewhere.
thro1237 9y ago
Is there a chance of losing money that is invested in RobinHood? I am not talking about trading losses -- but some thing like RobinHood going under and me losing money as a consequence of that? Are there any protections for consumers?
- neuralFatigue 9y ago
  Robinhood is SPIC insured upto $250,000. So you can get upto 250,000 worth of securities value back if company goes under. Scroll down on the link https://www.robinhood.com/ https://www.robinhood.com/
- kolbe 9y ago
  Yes, there is a chance, but there are very tight regulations about the company's capital requirements that are designed to ensure you're protected. The only thing you're particularly susceptible to is outright theft/fraud on the part of Robinhood.
ixacto 9y ago
This is gambling for almost all users, and yes I used robinhood for a couple trades. Use https://stockfuse.com https://stockfuse.com and you won't actually lose your money.
- devopsproject 9y ago
  that link kills the back button. also, you can't make money so why bother
  - jameskegel 9y ago
    Can you explain the latter half of your statement please?
    - devopsproject 9y ago
      you can't make money trading with fake money in a simulated stock market.
hotgloupi 9y ago
"Additionally, Robinhood earns revenue by collecting interest on the cash and securities in Robinhood accounts, much like a bank collects interest on cash deposits." I wonder if selling (or using) data from their customer is more profitable than the Gold plan.
arrty88 9y ago
i dont use gold for the leverage, but for access to execute trades after hours... do i automatically fall into dumb millennial trading on margin?
- namlem 9y ago
  That depends, are you day trading without knowing what you are doing, or are you just buying to hold?
beezle 9y ago
Their margin rates are very high at best and potentially usury at worst. They are counting on you not using the full amount of margin on the tier you paid for and further, counting on you being too lazy to downgrade to a lower (or no) tier when you no longer need it. There was nothing I could find in the FAQ about them automatically dropping the tier as your use declined. For comparison - and I have no vested interest here - Interactive brokers currently charges 0 - 100,000 2.41% (BM + 1.5%) and 100,000.01 - 1,000,000 1.91% (BM + 1%) on USD margin loans. If you think you will be an active user of margin I would go elsewhere unless you can justify savings on the commission side against paying 0.005/shr elsewhere.
- webninja 9y ago
  My Robinhood margin rate for $6,000 is only 5%/year. It also provides extended pre-market trading, after-market trading, and instant deposits. Interactive brokers charges commissions on trades. Also you don't have to use margin with Robinhood, it's not required.
  - beezle 9y ago
    That 5% rate only applies if you fully utilize the margin for the entire year. If you do not, and do not drop out of the gold tier when not using the margin, your effective rate sky rockets. As to IB, again my point was there is a trade off between paying nothing for commissions and overpaying for margin vs paying a low commission and getting a market margin rate that only kicks in when in use.
c0smic 9y ago
From my experience having used Robinhood for almost two years now, it's fine up until something happens with your account and you need to talk to someone. Their customer support seems almost nonexistent, no phone number, only an email where their response time is anywhere from a day to a week+ and you have to bug them to follow up. On top of that, the support that I have gotten hasn't been very clear, like they don't know what's really going on with my account. When I have several thousand dollars somewhere with active investments, I don't want to have to wait around and deal with a different support person for each message. Just recently I had to email them first to find out that they have an issue with my account and "any sell, dividend, etc. will have 28% removed and sent to the IRS." And I "will need to reach out to IRS regarding those funds." They did not tell me anything when they apparently started doing this. I was paying for Robinhood Gold too at the time. I'm sure most people will have OK experiences with Robinhood, but I'm closing my account and moving to another broker with better support and communication.
webninja 9y ago
I've been using Robinhood for the past year and made a 14% return which amounted to an extra $1500 in my pocket that I wouldn't otherwise have. There is so much negativity surrounding Robinhood here and I think it's coming from speculative people who haven't actually used Robinhood and can't assess it empirically. They charge _0_ fees. What's so anti-robinhood about that? If you're concerned about them making money off of order flows, just use limit orders. I _only_ place limit orders.
- myroon5 9y ago
  To play devil's advocate, the S&P 500 is also up by over 14% for the past year with likely less risk and drawdown due to diversification.
  - bricestacey 9y ago
    Reminds me when my friend told me he was up like %30 using Wealthfront and I should complete his referral. And I told him the S&P was up the same amount over the past year, but I only paid a 0.05% fee.
creeble 9y ago
Wow. Am I the only one here that remembers that feeling of 1999, when all stocks were going up, and one could do no wrong with leverage and a Quick and Reilly account? Good idea for Robinhood to target millennials, who definitely aren't old enough to remember.
- unknown_apostle 9y ago
  Yup. Exactly this. Some measures suggest the current bubble is even bigger than the one in 1999. Or at least more broadly carried, in the sense that in 1999 the bubble was limited to a fairly narrow range of tech stocks. This time it's all over the place. It's not limited to a few stocks. It's not even limited to the broader stock market or to subprime credit. Today even government bonds are in a very special place. PS: it's also very interesting that so many people here in these comments think that shaving a penny off on order flow is all there is to say about HFT. And the comments also make me wonder about the staggering popularity of ETFs. ETFs are much bigger than in 2007. In themselves a sound idea, I do wonder how things like the 3x Inverse Synthetic Foobar ETF consisting of 99% bond meat with 1% mystery spices will fare during a real panic.
  - pembrook 9y ago
    The difference however, is that interest rates were 5.5% in 1999. They currently sit below 1% (and it's been almost 10 years where they've been below that level). Interest rates are lower for longer than they've ever been in US history. And interest rates are extremely influential.
    - unknown_apostle 9y ago
      That's what I mean by government bonds being in a special place; like a balloon pushed underwater by the ever escalating central banking interventions of the last decades. And it's not just in US history, we may be talking about all of history. And not just on the short end. In 2016, a country like Belgium, where the government has huge unfunded liabilities, was able to borrow on 10yrs for around 0.2%. Japan is even worse. The price of all credit ultimately relates back to these bonds. That's why the entire financial market is setting new records, for the 3rd time in 20 years. That's why in some sectors being profitable is once again not being considered as important as various metrics of "growth potential". And, to get back to Robinhood, that's why they can offer margin trading rather cheaply to the masses. It's a massive bubble, and some comments here reflect that. The only thing we can't know is when it finally pops and where the epicentre will be this time. (My guess would be somewhere in the nexus between ETFs and the bond market. Throw in bipolar, on/off liquidity and high volatility-of-volatility caused by modern versions of program trading-style hedging and HFT and you can have a panic with a whole new look and feel.)
uncensored 9y ago
So the SEC is ok with having non-accredited investors borrow money to gamble with? If it's so legit why isn't eTrade or Ameritrade et al doing it? I think the SEC should be investigated by Congress for throwing the common man (non-accredited investor) in front of the bus by not enforcing sane rules for investing.
MistaEd 9y ago
encouraging retail investors to trade frequently and on a margin sounds like a terrible idea. Basically creating more suckers for the high frequency traders to trade against. Should rebrand the app and call it Robber-in-a-hood
reuncensored 9y ago
The SEC should be investigated by Congress for allowing companies like RobinHood for wrecking ordinary people's lives with tempting loans for gambling.
- omarchowdhury 9y ago
  Margin trading isn't new to any brokerage.
aerovistae 9y ago
These announcements always remind me of this. https://m.signalvnoise.com/press-release-basecamp-valuation-tops-100-billion-after-bold-vc-investment-c221d8f86ad7#.9lqnwvrs6 https://m.signalvnoise.com/press-release-basecamp-valuation-...
deleted 9y ago
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97s 9y ago
Why is there no browser version? Some of us don't like using our phones for this type of stuff. Just because I don't like little screens. Other than that, it is about time someone broke up this market. I welcome our new free overlords.
IAmGraydon 9y ago
If you're going to gamble, have some real fun with Forex, which commonly offers 50:1 leverage in the US. Though I'm being a bit sarcastic, highly leveraged trading can be quite entertaining as long as you treat it exactly as you would a trip to Vegas - don't bet more than you care to lose, know when to quit and don't try to make a living doing it.
raleighm 9y ago
Take from the rich to give to the poor to give back to the rich. Brazenly named.
unixhero 9y ago
Still US only? sigh

450 points by jbernardo95 9y ago

rl3 9y ago

Nice, now hopefully they can deliver on a public API, short selling, and a desktop app.

szirka 9y ago
I would be pretty surprised if they introduced short selling. There's no question that a good chunk of Robinhood's user base are novice investors. Those that do not understand short selling may land themselves into a lot of a hot water. There may be measures RH could take to prevent novice users from dangerous short selling plays. I'd be curious to see how they introduce it.
- GeneralMayhem 9y ago
  They could introduce put options, at least.
  - rl3 9y ago
    Just so they offer some form of betting against the market. I don't care how. Creating beta-neutral systems with Robinhood would then be possible.
    - pmalynin 9y ago
      (Not trading advice, yada yada) Well, The way I approach betting against the market is inverse leveraged ETFs. If you want to bet against S&P 500, ProShares has a 2X inverse offering, and you can probably balance it with 3x leveraged gold JNUG / JDST as they track the market.
      - rl3 9y ago
        Nice, I never knew inverse ETFs existed. Thanks for this!
- traviswingo 9y ago
  I actually emailed support about this a while back and was told it's on the roadmap.
deleted 9y ago
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randomizor22 9y ago
Not sure exactly what you're looking for in a Robinhood API, but I work for a company that provides a brokerage API (the sort of API that would power a Robinhood-type product). Might be relevant: https://www.thirdparty.com https://www.thirdparty.com We've got quite a few things on the roadmap that exceed Robinhood's offering.
- jameskegel 9y ago
  In your theoretical opinion, what would set your company apart from any other offering the same?
- rl3 9y ago
  The market you're targeting is at least an order of magnitude out of my price range, but I appreciate the info. Best of luck.

jessriedel 9y ago

> Robinhood also earns money from rebates its gets for directing its order flow to broker dealers, though Bhatt insists “We do not sell data to anyone. We have never sold data to anyone. We just do not do that.” Just so everyone knows, order flow from unsophisticated investors is considered a valuable resource because, when filling it, you know that you're more informed than the person trading against you.

arcanus 9y ago
Great catch, missed that during the article skim. Doesn't this also enable front-running? Regardless, this is useful info for HFT funds, right?
- celim307 9y ago
  They explicitly call out in the article they don't do that
  - tomp 9y ago
    No, they didn't. It was more of a "non-denial". > Robinhood also earns money from rebates its gets for directing its order flow to broker dealers, though Bhatt insists “We do not sell data to anyone. We have never sold data to anyone. We just do not do that.” There have been misconceptions that Robinhood sells high-frequency traders its data to help them trade against the startup’s customers. But Bhatt says “The rules around this stuff as so tight. We’re not a social media company. If we even step slightly out of line with anything we all go to jail.” Basically all they're claiming is that they're following the rules - i.e. if the rules allow selling "data" (or something that we won't call "data" but "order flow" or something) to HTFs or banks' dark pools, they're not saying they don't do it!
    - morsch 9y ago
      How would that not directly contradict "We do not sell data to anyone."?

celticninja 9y ago

A unicorn with a revenue stream, how novel.

metalliqaz 9y ago
Well, as others have pointed out, that revenue stream may not be so solid.

malanj 9y ago

My understanding is that if you trade through a platform like this, that's monetizing through order flow, you're getting screwed by HFTs. I.e. AFAIK Robinhood doesn't need to be selling the data to HFTs (which they don't do), for you to get screwed by them. Anyone here in the space who can quantify the "hidden" cost you incur because of more sophisticated traders trading against you? It feels like working with a broker who's explicitly charging you might actually be cheaper if you take this "cost" into account?

supster 9y ago
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).
- mr_turtle 9y ago
  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.
  - user5994461 9y ago
    If I have to guess a business model: They get a good deal on the commission and they get enough money from the gold subscribers to cover the commissions across all users. A fix subscription package is user friendly and easy to understand. It can be "better" for business than a variable commission on trades.
  - supster 9y ago
    The long play is that it actually doesn't cost significant money per trade at an institutional level. The only reason the other major brokers charge you money is because it covers their brick and mortar retail costs (e.g. Scottrade) and it adds to the bottomline (e.g. Etrade). So Robin Hood is actually just giving this surplus to the consumer instead of keeping it for themselves, and building a user base / brand in the process. Eventually once they have enough users, they will start to up sell you for other services (e.g. checking/savings, margin trading, options trading, check writing etc).

pillowkusis 9y ago

Pretty skeptical about the value here. >A Gold subscription lets users borrow up to double the money in their account to trade on margin with leverage Users pay money to be loaned money? How is this different than a microloan service? >Robinhood also earns money from rebates its gets for directing its order flow to broker dealers That means, presumably, the dealers are profiting in some way by handling trades from investors less informed than themselves. At the end of the day, Robinhood may not have trading fees, but the underlying brokers it works with do. I don't see how a microloans service and some kickbacks are enough to compensate. Presumably they are hemorrhaging money right now and the VC money is subsidizing novice investor's trading fees. Despite the name "Robinhood" like this is giving money to the poor, this service seems extremely predatory to its users, offering them cheap loans to gamble with on the stock market and taking kickbacks from the exact type of people Robin Hood was stealing from.

pgodzin 9y ago
There are also other benefits that the Gold service provides, such as after-hours trading. As they become more feature-complete compared to established brokers, those new features will likely be exclusive to Gold members. I also think they are able to invest non-invested money in people's accounts for short-term small percentage gains
behrlich 9y ago
The monthly fee for "gold" does seem a bit strange. But it gives you more than just margin. From https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en-us/articles/214681823-Introducing-Robinhood-Gold https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en-us/articles/214681823-In... you also get instant settlement, instant deposit, and extended trading hours, which seems like something worth paying for. As for "micro loans" - how is this any more predatory than a margin account at any other brokerage?
wufufufu 9y ago
Gold subscription is a fixed monthly cost whereas microloan services are interest based. https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en-us/articles/214681823-Introducing-Robinhood-Gold https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en-us/articles/214681823-In...

marvel_boy 9y ago

Somebody knows if there they are planning to operate in UK?

akhatri_aus 9y ago
Theres one called Freetrade.io that does the same thing in the UK
- marvel_boy 9y ago
  Thanks, from his portal seems that they will operat in two months.

mstibbard 9y ago

I think the most surprising aspect is their desire to offer a similar referral scheme as Uber. "Now when one user refers someone else who signs up, both get one share of a randomly selected company from a set that includes Facebook, Apple, RiteAid, Ford, and General Electric."

AndrewKemendo 9y ago

“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 margin over the long run. They are incentivizing what is effectively borrowing for gambling and that is their long term revenue strategy? Might be a great money maker but it certainly is playing with some really big barrels of fire. "Three things ruin people: drugs, liquor, and leverage - Charlie Munger" edit: The point here is not that Margin is a new service, yes every brokerage has it, it's that it is irresponsible to use Margin if you are not a sophisticated investor. Its even more irresponsible to push leverage onto unsophisticated investors. Not everyone is going to understand the risks of leverage and if Robinhood makes it as easy as candy crush to trade on leverage, enough gamified users are "playing" stock market with real money and a margin call happens during a huge downturn, it will be exceptionally nasty.

lcfcjs 9y ago
Why do people that work in finance hate the idea of personal investing? Is it because you are losing out on somebody paying you for your market insight? Investment is always good. The only person losing out with apps like this are investment advisors like you.
hammock 9y ago
Might be questionable for investors (although trading on margin is extremely common) but gambling seems to make a ton of money for casinos, betting parlors and lottery boards, many of which have been around for "long term." Sounds more like you have moral/personal objection.
- azag0 9y ago
  Casinos do not make money on borrowing for gambling, but on gambling.
  - 9y ago

lexo 9y ago

Robinhood will lend people money, so they can invest with that. Buying stocks with money that isn't yours. What could possibly go wrong here?

mortehu 9y ago
People do this when buying houses all the time, and often at a 5x or 10x margin, rather than just 2x. Even Vanguard supports this.
- scurvy 9y ago
  At the end of the day, you can't live in a stock.
  - devopsproject 9y ago
    but it does still exist
    - ceejayoz 9y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy
    - scurvy 9y ago
      Unless it's BSC you bought... Or LEH... Or...
- AndrewKemendo 9y ago
  I think a few years ago there was a pretty big issue with that. Something happened...can't quite remember.
scurvy 9y ago
People watch margin interest and amount of margin buys very closely. They can be indicators of over heated or bubble markets (especially in emerging markets). China has basically endorsed margin buying to prop up their insanely overvalued stocks. They're about to enter their own too big to fail territory, but I digress.

Leader2light 9y ago

I use Robinhood daily and love it. Low level traders could care less if HFT are making a penny off them. Also you can put limit orders....... No way I could trade the way I do and still make money if I was paying 7$ or more per trade. Crazy the industry can charge that much.

omarforgotpwd 9y ago
Same exact situation here. Because I put in lots of relatively small dollar value trades $10 transaction fees at TD Ameritrade would eat all my profits pretty quickly.
- The_Hoff 9y ago
  Still a lot, but TD dropped their fee to $6.95 https://www.tdameritrade.com/pricing.page https://www.tdameritrade.com/pricing.page
  - auganov 9y ago
    And Fidelity is at $4.95 which is the lowest for big brokerages I think https://www.fidelity.com/why-fidelity/pricing-fees https://www.fidelity.com/why-fidelity/pricing-fees
    - spelunker 9y ago
      Schwab dropped to the same. If anything Robinhood has benefitted everyone because it's pricing model has pressured other brokerages to lower fees.
      - ceejayoz 9y ago
        Don't give Robinhood the credit - fees have been dropping for decades. http://www.businessinsider.com/historical-trading-commissions-2014-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/historical-trading-commission...
9y ago

revelation 9y ago

This is just a slightly more obfuscated "binary options" betting scam. A Gold subscription lets users borrow up to double the money in their account to trade on margin with leverage Gamble alright.

akhatri_aus 9y ago
How is that different from the dozens of other offerings from other brokers? Margin lending has been around for centuries, binary options on the other hand..

x2f10 9y ago

I've been interested in Robinhood for some time. Does anybody here have experience with the app (good or bad) they can share?

saget 9y ago
I've used it for both about 6 months and it's wonderful. Very easy and nice to use. Only complaint is there is no features to explore stocks and financial news but there are other apps for that
jtraffic 9y ago
I've been using it for a while. I think it's best for longer term positions (2+ years at least). I realize it's ironic, because in theory, I could trade all the time with Robinhood, but I find that I don't do that. (Though that may be because I've learned over time that trading often is difficult, a recipe for me to lose money, and draining.) It's really just good, from the customer perspective. It's the brokerage that needed to exist. My uncle, who lives off of trading, gave me his transaction list and I saw that like 12% of his profits were eaten up by trading fees. Ouch. I think more sophisticated individual investors don't jump on because you can't trade options. For me, that's a good thing, I'm not tempted to speculate.
devopsproject 9y ago
good experience. The app is extremely smooth and attractive and it makes it easy to buy and sell.

colourincorrect 9y ago

"hey guys! lets take a model that has been proven effective by many years of fierce market competition, and disrupt it by doing for free!"

replies_to_all 9y ago
SIR, I appreaciate your contrarian attitude. I think this model is so tempting because it has become easy to persuade investors of value with user numbers (by itself a truly meaningless metric). People are better at gaming a system than building useful new products. If the institutions say, give me a large user base and we will give you money, the next day you will have a line a mile long with startups with HUGE user bases, because that is what they were told to do to be successful. Easiest way to do that, as you say, giving away for free what used to cost money. Between destroying the natural world and being total sociopaths hell bent on obtaining money/power at all costs, this species is fucking sick.

michaelmarkell 9y ago

If Robinhood bundles user debt and sells it at varying ratings (depending on information about the stocks being bought, perhaps) they could protect themselves from a large default and probably make money doing it

akhatri_aus 9y ago
It wouldn't necessarily protect them. Typically the broker sells off your shares/etfs on your behalf before they are owed anything net over your account deposit or margin.

deleted 9y ago

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brilliantcode 9y ago

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 questionable. It's almost like gravity does not exist anymore. It's all about making it across the IPO finish line and then it's like fuck what happens to everyone else because I've already got Monssack Fonseca shuffling my untaxable money.

MichaelGG 9y ago
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.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> 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. Last I checked, Lending club still had strong returns, even after their fees, for investors (though somewhat less attractive then the figures would suggest since it is taxable as personal income rather than capital gains), and a sub-5% default rate. This characterization seems to be pure fantasy.
- brilliantcode 9y ago
  https://seekingalpha.com/article/4009799-lending-club-online-lender-trouble https://seekingalpha.com/article/4009799-lending-club-online...

hkon 9y ago

Never seen a marketing video with so much disclaimers and fine print before as the one on the robinhood site

pembrook 9y ago

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 hedge funds who aren't just doing this for "fun" and have the financial and political backing of the world's elite). Side note: even those hedge funds can't consistently beat the market. If you are reading this, for your own finacial future I beg of you, please take your money to Vanguard instead and buy some index funds. Scratch your "trading" itch by trying to game your asset allocation instead. Future you will thank present you. If you don't believe me, please look into any of the academic research that has been conducted around efficient markets.

spelunker 9y ago
Trading is how brokers make money. It shouldn't surprise you that this is Robinhood's business model. I totally agree with your investment strategy, and you can do that on Robinhood, by the way.
- pembrook 9y ago
  However the other online Brokers don't call themselves "Robinhood" and claim to be the champion of the little guy while simultaneously encouraging you into a strategy that has been proven to lose over the long run. Use the advisor (robo or human) services of any of the top online brokers and they will recommend you put your money in index funds. Also, putting together a "long term" portfolio of indexes at Robinhood assumes that Robinhood will be around offering free trades for the next 40 years. Otherwise you're looking at hefty capital gains taxes to transfer when they pivot or go belly up. There once was a company called Zecco...
  - sigstoat 9y ago
    > Otherwise you're looking at hefty capital gains taxes to transfer when they pivot or go belly up. you should be able to account transfer out without causing a taxable sale. how well that will go in the event they pivot or fail and have to transfer your assets over to some backup service is of course unknown.

dharma1 9y ago

Do they have an API?

duren 9y ago

I have a modest amount of money in Robinhood. I love the app and they way it has encouraged me to learn about markets. I started in March of 2016. I was naïve and I made a lot of silly mistakes early on, but I was able to learn a lot of fundamentals when the stakes were low. I view it more as a gaming app than investing — it's a supplement, not a replacement for investing and asset management.

tekromancr 9y ago
Absolutely! The app lives in my phone's "games" folder. I have a relatively small amount of money, just enough that it would sting a bit if I lost it all. I find that even having a tiny stake in things makes learning about investing and finance actually interesting, whereas the majority of my invested assets are all "Vanguard, take the wheel"
- Gustomaximus 9y ago
  + This. I keep a similar smaller trading account where I effectively gamble with stock picking. I do this as I enjoy researching and understanding businesses and find things more interesting, and you see opinions more honestly when I put money where my mouth is. And it helps you stay engages with your reading. I leave the 'retirement' investments elsewhere.

thro1237 9y ago

Is there a chance of losing money that is invested in RobinHood? I am not talking about trading losses -- but some thing like RobinHood going under and me losing money as a consequence of that? Are there any protections for consumers?

neuralFatigue 9y ago
Robinhood is SPIC insured upto $250,000. So you can get upto 250,000 worth of securities value back if company goes under. Scroll down on the link https://www.robinhood.com/ https://www.robinhood.com/
kolbe 9y ago
Yes, there is a chance, but there are very tight regulations about the company's capital requirements that are designed to ensure you're protected. The only thing you're particularly susceptible to is outright theft/fraud on the part of Robinhood.

ixacto 9y ago

This is gambling for almost all users, and yes I used robinhood for a couple trades. Use https://stockfuse.com https://stockfuse.com and you won't actually lose your money.

devopsproject 9y ago
that link kills the back button. also, you can't make money so why bother
- jameskegel 9y ago
  Can you explain the latter half of your statement please?
  - devopsproject 9y ago
    you can't make money trading with fake money in a simulated stock market.

hotgloupi 9y ago

"Additionally, Robinhood earns revenue by collecting interest on the cash and securities in Robinhood accounts, much like a bank collects interest on cash deposits." I wonder if selling (or using) data from their customer is more profitable than the Gold plan.

arrty88 9y ago

i dont use gold for the leverage, but for access to execute trades after hours... do i automatically fall into dumb millennial trading on margin?

namlem 9y ago
That depends, are you day trading without knowing what you are doing, or are you just buying to hold?

beezle 9y ago

Their margin rates are very high at best and potentially usury at worst. They are counting on you not using the full amount of margin on the tier you paid for and further, counting on you being too lazy to downgrade to a lower (or no) tier when you no longer need it. There was nothing I could find in the FAQ about them automatically dropping the tier as your use declined. For comparison - and I have no vested interest here - Interactive brokers currently charges 0 - 100,000 2.41% (BM + 1.5%) and 100,000.01 - 1,000,000 1.91% (BM + 1%) on USD margin loans. If you think you will be an active user of margin I would go elsewhere unless you can justify savings on the commission side against paying 0.005/shr elsewhere.

webninja 9y ago
My Robinhood margin rate for $6,000 is only 5%/year. It also provides extended pre-market trading, after-market trading, and instant deposits. Interactive brokers charges commissions on trades. Also you don't have to use margin with Robinhood, it's not required.
- beezle 9y ago
  That 5% rate only applies if you fully utilize the margin for the entire year. If you do not, and do not drop out of the gold tier when not using the margin, your effective rate sky rockets. As to IB, again my point was there is a trade off between paying nothing for commissions and overpaying for margin vs paying a low commission and getting a market margin rate that only kicks in when in use.

c0smic 9y ago

From my experience having used Robinhood for almost two years now, it's fine up until something happens with your account and you need to talk to someone. Their customer support seems almost nonexistent, no phone number, only an email where their response time is anywhere from a day to a week+ and you have to bug them to follow up. On top of that, the support that I have gotten hasn't been very clear, like they don't know what's really going on with my account. When I have several thousand dollars somewhere with active investments, I don't want to have to wait around and deal with a different support person for each message. Just recently I had to email them first to find out that they have an issue with my account and "any sell, dividend, etc. will have 28% removed and sent to the IRS." And I "will need to reach out to IRS regarding those funds." They did not tell me anything when they apparently started doing this. I was paying for Robinhood Gold too at the time. I'm sure most people will have OK experiences with Robinhood, but I'm closing my account and moving to another broker with better support and communication.

webninja 9y ago

I've been using Robinhood for the past year and made a 14% return which amounted to an extra $1500 in my pocket that I wouldn't otherwise have. There is so much negativity surrounding Robinhood here and I think it's coming from speculative people who haven't actually used Robinhood and can't assess it empirically. They charge _0_ fees. What's so anti-robinhood about that? If you're concerned about them making money off of order flows, just use limit orders. I _only_ place limit orders.

myroon5 9y ago
To play devil's advocate, the S&P 500 is also up by over 14% for the past year with likely less risk and drawdown due to diversification.
- bricestacey 9y ago
  Reminds me when my friend told me he was up like %30 using Wealthfront and I should complete his referral. And I told him the S&P was up the same amount over the past year, but I only paid a 0.05% fee.

creeble 9y ago

Wow. Am I the only one here that remembers that feeling of 1999, when all stocks were going up, and one could do no wrong with leverage and a Quick and Reilly account? Good idea for Robinhood to target millennials, who definitely aren't old enough to remember.

unknown_apostle 9y ago
Yup. Exactly this. Some measures suggest the current bubble is even bigger than the one in 1999. Or at least more broadly carried, in the sense that in 1999 the bubble was limited to a fairly narrow range of tech stocks. This time it's all over the place. It's not limited to a few stocks. It's not even limited to the broader stock market or to subprime credit. Today even government bonds are in a very special place. PS: it's also very interesting that so many people here in these comments think that shaving a penny off on order flow is all there is to say about HFT. And the comments also make me wonder about the staggering popularity of ETFs. ETFs are much bigger than in 2007. In themselves a sound idea, I do wonder how things like the 3x Inverse Synthetic Foobar ETF consisting of 99% bond meat with 1% mystery spices will fare during a real panic.
- pembrook 9y ago
  The difference however, is that interest rates were 5.5% in 1999. They currently sit below 1% (and it's been almost 10 years where they've been below that level). Interest rates are lower for longer than they've ever been in US history. And interest rates are extremely influential.
  - unknown_apostle 9y ago
    That's what I mean by government bonds being in a special place; like a balloon pushed underwater by the ever escalating central banking interventions of the last decades. And it's not just in US history, we may be talking about all of history. And not just on the short end. In 2016, a country like Belgium, where the government has huge unfunded liabilities, was able to borrow on 10yrs for around 0.2%. Japan is even worse. The price of all credit ultimately relates back to these bonds. That's why the entire financial market is setting new records, for the 3rd time in 20 years. That's why in some sectors being profitable is once again not being considered as important as various metrics of "growth potential". And, to get back to Robinhood, that's why they can offer margin trading rather cheaply to the masses. It's a massive bubble, and some comments here reflect that. The only thing we can't know is when it finally pops and where the epicentre will be this time. (My guess would be somewhere in the nexus between ETFs and the bond market. Throw in bipolar, on/off liquidity and high volatility-of-volatility caused by modern versions of program trading-style hedging and HFT and you can have a panic with a whole new look and feel.)

uncensored 9y ago

So the SEC is ok with having non-accredited investors borrow money to gamble with? If it's so legit why isn't eTrade or Ameritrade et al doing it? I think the SEC should be investigated by Congress for throwing the common man (non-accredited investor) in front of the bus by not enforcing sane rules for investing.

MistaEd 9y ago

encouraging retail investors to trade frequently and on a margin sounds like a terrible idea. Basically creating more suckers for the high frequency traders to trade against. Should rebrand the app and call it Robber-in-a-hood

reuncensored 9y ago

The SEC should be investigated by Congress for allowing companies like RobinHood for wrecking ordinary people's lives with tempting loans for gambling.

omarchowdhury 9y ago
Margin trading isn't new to any brokerage.

aerovistae 9y ago

These announcements always remind me of this. https://m.signalvnoise.com/press-release-basecamp-valuation-tops-100-billion-after-bold-vc-investment-c221d8f86ad7#.9lqnwvrs6 https://m.signalvnoise.com/press-release-basecamp-valuation-...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

97s 9y ago

Why is there no browser version? Some of us don't like using our phones for this type of stuff. Just because I don't like little screens. Other than that, it is about time someone broke up this market. I welcome our new free overlords.

IAmGraydon 9y ago

If you're going to gamble, have some real fun with Forex, which commonly offers 50:1 leverage in the US. Though I'm being a bit sarcastic, highly leveraged trading can be quite entertaining as long as you treat it exactly as you would a trip to Vegas - don't bet more than you care to lose, know when to quit and don't try to make a living doing it.

raleighm 9y ago

Take from the rich to give to the poor to give back to the rich. Brazenly named.

unixhero 9y ago

Still US only? sigh