9 ms·

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 yo

by lend000 10y ago

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.

theseatoms 10y ago
On the flip side, we do a terrible job of educating young people about even the basics of personal finance (in the US). I was lucky enough to have a father who ran a small business, so I got an early education in these matters. But that's the exception to the rule.
nolok 10y ago
Unless I misunderstood him, he's not complaining that people can make their own decisions with their money, aka that anyone can use this service even if they're not well versed in that field, he's complaining that Robinhood entire business model is based on pushing the very users who don't know how to use it in a sane way, to do it anyway. That will be the company's lifeline, as its way to make money. I can see the benefit in making it easier for people to get access to things that are often hidden behind layer of complexity and "need an in", but I can also see the perversity of building a business where your money making system is "put debt on people who don't quite know what they're getting into". The point is not that they allow it, it's that they have a direct incentive to make it happen as much as possible.
- dnautics 10y ago
  100% agree that depending on people going into margin for monetization is a poor alignment of incentives. The humorous thing to me, is that being aligned with forcing people into leverage is an apt description of the economy at large.
- rtx 10y ago
  Most lifestyle business have similar revenue models. We shouldn't just object against one company.
  - icedchai 10y ago
    Lifestyle businesses, by definition, turn a profit. I doubt the same can be said for Robinhood.
  - Steeeve 10y ago
    The difference being that margin investing by novice investors has already led to the worst economic collapse in history.
    - tanderson92 10y ago
      Many home buyers are novice investors. There was more to it than novice investors blowing up the real estate market due to misunderstanding margin.
      - GenWintergreen 10y ago
        Believe it or not, buying a very expensive home with poor understanding of the market and finance mostly through debt can be seen as analogous to un-collateralized leveraged investing....
- SEJeff 10y ago
  However, they still sell their client order flow to the bank that pays them the most to execute their trades. This isn't illegal and was a HUGE point of Michael Lewis's hack-n-slash book on electronic trading "Flash Boys". If my Robinhood trades of 100 lots or more execute at a few pennies higher than the price when I place the order, I think that is entirely fine. Why? Because it costs 5-10 to trade from Etrade or most other normal brokerage accounts. From what I've seen thusfar (I've got maybe 20k invested with RH), all of the trades have executed at the price I expected them to, or 1 cent higher on very volatile stocks (TSLA in specific). I'm still paying massively less than if I used a traditional broker and RH is making a bit of money by selling my order flow. Win/win really.
  - nayefc 10y ago
    You think Etrade doesn't sell order flow?
    - SEJeff 10y ago
      They do, and they still charge you fees to trade, unlike Robinhood!
  - minimax 10y ago
    If my Robinhood trades of 100 lots of more execute at a few pennies higher than the price when I place the order They're not really allowed to do that and I don't think they are doing that. Robinhood (or whatever wholesaler they route your order too) is required to execute your order within the nbbo. They can't just e.g. fill your buy orders a few cents above the national best offer because they want to make some extra money. The regulations don't work that way...
    - SEJeff 10y ago
      I'm familar with NBBO, my previous employer (Virtu Financial) and current employer (another large electronic trading firm) are very well known HFT firms but I'm in tech, not the trading side. That doesn't mean the NBBO doesn't change before your order can fully execute? Is it fair to assume you've never heard of RBC's Thor[1] and aren't super familar with maker-taker rebates and the scandal behind them? The NBBO and the proliferation of trading exchanges is in fact what allows this to be possible legally. Like many regulations, it became a tool to perform the types of things it was designed to prevent. This article[2] has an interesting take on the NBBO wrt the SIP that is used. Many firms can calculate their own information faster than the NBBO updates. Note that this isn't the kind of trading (speed only) that my current employer does at all, which is why I sleep well at night. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THOR_(trading_platform) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THOR_(trading_platform) [2] http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/HowSlowIsTheNBBO_%20A_Comparison_with_DirectExchangeFeeds.html http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/HowSlowIsTheNBBO_%20A_Comparison_...
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
Except it's credit, not their own money, so your naiive "how people spend their money has no consequences" attitude, doesn't hold water. That's the whole point.
- replies_to_all 10y ago
  It is a "credit" but with margin trading one can not fall below their inital investment, so no debt can be incurred, so it still is, "how people spend their money has no consequences [to others]. A user could just as easily lose all their money betting on penny stocks with no leverage.
- lend000 10y ago
  > so your naiive "how people spend their money has no consequences" attitude Who said it has no consequences? People make bad decisions with money their all the time. In fact, many of the working class get their fix in real casinos, where there's no real chance of winning, even if you know what you're doing. But the parent argument is going in the direction of "people shouldn't have the freedom to use this type of product." Instead of allowing normal people (some of whom know what they are doing) to freely engage in leveraged -- or just free -- trading, would you rather people with small portfolios get their already modest earning potential chewed away by large trading fees that make short term investing impractical? The difference is that I don't think we should be protecting people from themselves.
  - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
    But the parent argument is going in the direction of "people shouldn't have the freedom to use this type of product." No, my comment was in the direction of: "It's bad if your core business is getting unsophisticated people making trades (bets) with credit." It's the same reason we all know it's a bad idea to give someone a 400k mortgage on an ARM when we don't know if they can pay it back or not. Great way to find yourself in a recession.
    - lend000 10y ago
geofft 10y ago
> Wouldn't want to enable people to make their own decisions with their money, would we? As a blanket statement? No, we don't. Two reasons why: 1. "Make their own decision" is an extremely inaccurate phrasing. Unsophisticated investors do not have enough information to properly evaluate a decision, and are therefore unduly influenced by companies wanting to take advantage of them. 2. There's a cost to society from people who take risks that have negative expected value and then expect society to help them. Of course, society could just refuse to help them, but find that society works better when certain support structures (e.g., the ability to discharge debts in bankruptcy) exist, and it's very hard to distinguish people who "really" need the support structure and those whose petard is their own. If social pressure or regulation can deter people from taking these risks, that's slightly unfortunate for the person who would have won the gamble, but very advantageous to the health of society as a whole. Both reasons are also why outright gambling is regulated, why publicly-traded companies are subject to financial regulation, why we don't let people "make their own decisions" about raw milk, untested drugs, aircraft, etc. - there are strong incentives for the people selling you that product to lie to you by omission in the hope of influencing your decision to be profitable to them.
- okreallywtf 10y ago
  "Make your own decisions" and "choose what is right for you" are often euphemisms for "get thrown to the sharks" but give the illusion that you are really being given control over your own destiny by those who will likely take advantage of you.
dopamean 10y ago
> Wouldn't want to enable people to make their own decisions with their money, would we? Wow this is an ignorant thing to say in this context.
mabbo 10y ago
> 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.
- bdonlan 10y ago
  Margin loans are lower risk than you may think, as they're secured by highly liquid assets that are held in custody at the broker that's lending the money. That's not to say the broker can't take a loss, but it's not as risky for the broker as you might think.
- lend000 10y ago
  > Robinhood is taking on a lot of risk and using that as proof that they're a profitable company. Margin positions are typically liquidated when they go negative. At worst, the customer owes Robinhood some leftover slippage after their margin gets called. And typically, margins are called before your account goes negative.
  - mabbo 10y ago
    I agree, it's not as risky as it might be. But there's still something unsettling about lending money to people to gamble with.
- MatthewMcDonald 10y ago
  > You know literally nothing about me Isn't a credit check required to open an account?
- morgante 10y ago
  Do you actually understand how margin loans work? If your trade starts going bad they'll be aggressively unwound. They're a very well-understood model offered by tons of (profitable) brokerages out there. Robinhood is not doing anything new by offering them.
vivekd 10y ago
As a small investor, borrowing money to invest is almost invariably a terrible, terrible idea, because any return you make on the investment will likely be cancelled out by the interest paid to borrow the money. I just looked up margin interest rates, for loans of 10 000 or less (which is what we are likely talking about with robin hood) the interest rate is Base Rate + 1.25% which is 8.50% interest. I don't know many stocks you can buy even in the best of circumstances that will get you a guaranteed return of more than 8.5%. Moral of the story - robin hoods retail investors should not engage in margin trading.
- Ntrails 10y ago
  Is that Base Rate something specific to them? Because it's a goddamned travesty for a pretty well secured loan.
  - thunderstrike 10y ago
    Take a look at these broker's rates for comparison: https://www.scottrade.com/investment-products/interest-margin-rates.html https://www.scottrade.com/investment-products/interest-margi... https://www.fidelity.com/trading/advanced-trading-tools/margin-trading https://www.fidelity.com/trading/advanced-trading-tools/marg...
    - Ntrails 10y ago
      Yeah. Then you compare it to what IBs are charging actual funds...
- sf_rob 10y ago
  Where are you getting these numbers? Their rates appear to go from ~4.8-7.2%[1] Also, it should be noted that Gold is a flat fee based on account value brackets and margin brackets not a percent fee of your margin like every other brokerage. That means your effective margin rate can be much higher. e.g. if you borrow $100 for a $2000 account, you're looking at an effective margin rate of 72%. [1] https://d2ue93q3u507c2.cloudfront.net/assets/robinhood/legal/RHF%20Retail%20Commisions%20and%20Fees%20Schedule.pdf https://d2ue93q3u507c2.cloudfront.net/assets/robinhood/legal... (linked to from their FAQ[2], sorry for the sketch URL) [2] https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en-us/articles/214681823-Introducing-Robinhood-Gold https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en-us/articles/214681823-In...
rl3 10y ago
>Wouldn't want to enable people to make their own decisions with their money, would we? While we're on that subject, Pattern Day Trading restrictions[0] are a fine example of how arbitrary regulations created with good intentions can lead to negative outcomes. How it works is that margin accounts must maintain an equity balance of at least $25,000 in order to day trade freely. Otherwise, you're allotted three round-trip day trades within a 5-day period before there's serious consequences. Cash accounts are subject to long settlement periods, so the restrictions are moot in that case. What this means is that you can't trade equities with any sort of frequency on an account that has a cash balance below $25k—at least not if you want anywhere near full utilization of your capital. That also rules out algorithmic trading on anything but medium or long timescales. The "protection" afforded to the uninformed retail customers it was designed to protect is questionable at best. For example: it would be perfectly acceptable to allocate 100% of your portfolio plus leverage to a single stock just before market close, become subject to after-hours and pre-market price movement, then sell the next morning. Repeat by buying a different stock that same day. Yet, round-trip trades during market hours are heavily discouraged to the point of prohibition beyond any number that isn't trivial. In fact, I would argue that PDT restrictions create a perverse incentive that holds people to bad trades which they would otherwise prefer to exit, subjecting them to dangerous after-hours price movement in the process. It also creates incentive for novices to abandon equities entirely in favor of forex markets. Not exactly risk reduction. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_day_trader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_day_trader
- JamesSwift 10y ago
  I recently got interested in the markets and the PDT rules are one thing that I feel I need to hear more informed opinions on before formulating my own. I'd love if more people chimed in here to put in their .02 cents on the benefits/drawbacks/intentions of the current rules.
  - JakeAl 10y ago
    I think they are fine. The way I look at it one just needs to get educated before they become a pattern day trader. Ideally that means they grow their account to $25K and have experience before they are put into a position where they can screw up bad enough that it affects others. Of course people don't do that, but at least there's some incentive. In the end margin is irrelevant if you only trade with money that is actually available. Robinhood is for traders that know even less than the twits on StockTwits. I'm sure it's fine for investing but I'd bet that the vast majority of the people that use the app don't know what the difference is, just like StockTwits.
randomizor22 10y 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
mbesto 10y ago
> I just wish they would expose a better API IIRC Robinhood just uses another service's API to transact a trade (can't remember the name), so you'd be leaving pennies on the table when you could just go straight to the source.

by lend000 10y ago

theseatoms 10y ago

On the flip side, we do a terrible job of educating young people about even the basics of personal finance (in the US). I was lucky enough to have a father who ran a small business, so I got an early education in these matters. But that's the exception to the rule.

nolok 10y ago

Unless I misunderstood him, he's not complaining that people can make their own decisions with their money, aka that anyone can use this service even if they're not well versed in that field, he's complaining that Robinhood entire business model is based on pushing the very users who don't know how to use it in a sane way, to do it anyway. That will be the company's lifeline, as its way to make money. I can see the benefit in making it easier for people to get access to things that are often hidden behind layer of complexity and "need an in", but I can also see the perversity of building a business where your money making system is "put debt on people who don't quite know what they're getting into". The point is not that they allow it, it's that they have a direct incentive to make it happen as much as possible.

dnautics 10y ago
100% agree that depending on people going into margin for monetization is a poor alignment of incentives. The humorous thing to me, is that being aligned with forcing people into leverage is an apt description of the economy at large.
rtx 10y ago
Most lifestyle business have similar revenue models. We shouldn't just object against one company.
- icedchai 10y ago
  Lifestyle businesses, by definition, turn a profit. I doubt the same can be said for Robinhood.
- Steeeve 10y ago
  The difference being that margin investing by novice investors has already led to the worst economic collapse in history.
  - tanderson92 10y ago
    Many home buyers are novice investors. There was more to it than novice investors blowing up the real estate market due to misunderstanding margin.
    - GenWintergreen 10y ago
      Believe it or not, buying a very expensive home with poor understanding of the market and finance mostly through debt can be seen as analogous to un-collateralized leveraged investing....
SEJeff 10y ago
However, they still sell their client order flow to the bank that pays them the most to execute their trades. This isn't illegal and was a HUGE point of Michael Lewis's hack-n-slash book on electronic trading "Flash Boys". If my Robinhood trades of 100 lots or more execute at a few pennies higher than the price when I place the order, I think that is entirely fine. Why? Because it costs 5-10 to trade from Etrade or most other normal brokerage accounts. From what I've seen thusfar (I've got maybe 20k invested with RH), all of the trades have executed at the price I expected them to, or 1 cent higher on very volatile stocks (TSLA in specific). I'm still paying massively less than if I used a traditional broker and RH is making a bit of money by selling my order flow. Win/win really.
- nayefc 10y ago
  You think Etrade doesn't sell order flow?
  - SEJeff 10y ago
    They do, and they still charge you fees to trade, unlike Robinhood!
- minimax 10y ago
  If my Robinhood trades of 100 lots of more execute at a few pennies higher than the price when I place the order They're not really allowed to do that and I don't think they are doing that. Robinhood (or whatever wholesaler they route your order too) is required to execute your order within the nbbo. They can't just e.g. fill your buy orders a few cents above the national best offer because they want to make some extra money. The regulations don't work that way...
  - SEJeff 10y ago
    I'm familar with NBBO, my previous employer (Virtu Financial) and current employer (another large electronic trading firm) are very well known HFT firms but I'm in tech, not the trading side. That doesn't mean the NBBO doesn't change before your order can fully execute? Is it fair to assume you've never heard of RBC's Thor[1] and aren't super familar with maker-taker rebates and the scandal behind them? The NBBO and the proliferation of trading exchanges is in fact what allows this to be possible legally. Like many regulations, it became a tool to perform the types of things it was designed to prevent. This article[2] has an interesting take on the NBBO wrt the SIP that is used. Many firms can calculate their own information faster than the NBBO updates. Note that this isn't the kind of trading (speed only) that my current employer does at all, which is why I sleep well at night. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THOR_(trading_platform) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THOR_(trading_platform) [2] http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/HowSlowIsTheNBBO_%20A_Comparison_with_DirectExchangeFeeds.html http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/HowSlowIsTheNBBO_%20A_Comparison_...

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

Except it's credit, not their own money, so your naiive "how people spend their money has no consequences" attitude, doesn't hold water. That's the whole point.

replies_to_all 10y ago
It is a "credit" but with margin trading one can not fall below their inital investment, so no debt can be incurred, so it still is, "how people spend their money has no consequences [to others]. A user could just as easily lose all their money betting on penny stocks with no leverage.
lend000 10y ago
> so your naiive "how people spend their money has no consequences" attitude Who said it has no consequences? People make bad decisions with money their all the time. In fact, many of the working class get their fix in real casinos, where there's no real chance of winning, even if you know what you're doing. But the parent argument is going in the direction of "people shouldn't have the freedom to use this type of product." Instead of allowing normal people (some of whom know what they are doing) to freely engage in leveraged -- or just free -- trading, would you rather people with small portfolios get their already modest earning potential chewed away by large trading fees that make short term investing impractical? The difference is that I don't think we should be protecting people from themselves.
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  But the parent argument is going in the direction of "people shouldn't have the freedom to use this type of product." No, my comment was in the direction of: "It's bad if your core business is getting unsophisticated people making trades (bets) with credit." It's the same reason we all know it's a bad idea to give someone a 400k mortgage on an ARM when we don't know if they can pay it back or not. Great way to find yourself in a recession.
  - lend000 10y ago

geofft 10y ago

> Wouldn't want to enable people to make their own decisions with their money, would we? As a blanket statement? No, we don't. Two reasons why: 1. "Make their own decision" is an extremely inaccurate phrasing. Unsophisticated investors do not have enough information to properly evaluate a decision, and are therefore unduly influenced by companies wanting to take advantage of them. 2. There's a cost to society from people who take risks that have negative expected value and then expect society to help them. Of course, society could just refuse to help them, but find that society works better when certain support structures (e.g., the ability to discharge debts in bankruptcy) exist, and it's very hard to distinguish people who "really" need the support structure and those whose petard is their own. If social pressure or regulation can deter people from taking these risks, that's slightly unfortunate for the person who would have won the gamble, but very advantageous to the health of society as a whole. Both reasons are also why outright gambling is regulated, why publicly-traded companies are subject to financial regulation, why we don't let people "make their own decisions" about raw milk, untested drugs, aircraft, etc. - there are strong incentives for the people selling you that product to lie to you by omission in the hope of influencing your decision to be profitable to them.

okreallywtf 10y ago
"Make your own decisions" and "choose what is right for you" are often euphemisms for "get thrown to the sharks" but give the illusion that you are really being given control over your own destiny by those who will likely take advantage of you.

dopamean 10y ago

> Wouldn't want to enable people to make their own decisions with their money, would we? Wow this is an ignorant thing to say in this context.

mabbo 10y ago

> 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.

bdonlan 10y ago
Margin loans are lower risk than you may think, as they're secured by highly liquid assets that are held in custody at the broker that's lending the money. That's not to say the broker can't take a loss, but it's not as risky for the broker as you might think.
lend000 10y ago
> Robinhood is taking on a lot of risk and using that as proof that they're a profitable company. Margin positions are typically liquidated when they go negative. At worst, the customer owes Robinhood some leftover slippage after their margin gets called. And typically, margins are called before your account goes negative.
- mabbo 10y ago
  I agree, it's not as risky as it might be. But there's still something unsettling about lending money to people to gamble with.
MatthewMcDonald 10y ago
> You know literally nothing about me Isn't a credit check required to open an account?
morgante 10y ago
Do you actually understand how margin loans work? If your trade starts going bad they'll be aggressively unwound. They're a very well-understood model offered by tons of (profitable) brokerages out there. Robinhood is not doing anything new by offering them.

vivekd 10y ago

As a small investor, borrowing money to invest is almost invariably a terrible, terrible idea, because any return you make on the investment will likely be cancelled out by the interest paid to borrow the money. I just looked up margin interest rates, for loans of 10 000 or less (which is what we are likely talking about with robin hood) the interest rate is Base Rate + 1.25% which is 8.50% interest. I don't know many stocks you can buy even in the best of circumstances that will get you a guaranteed return of more than 8.5%. Moral of the story - robin hoods retail investors should not engage in margin trading.

Ntrails 10y ago
Is that Base Rate something specific to them? Because it's a goddamned travesty for a pretty well secured loan.
- thunderstrike 10y ago
  Take a look at these broker's rates for comparison: https://www.scottrade.com/investment-products/interest-margin-rates.html https://www.scottrade.com/investment-products/interest-margi... https://www.fidelity.com/trading/advanced-trading-tools/margin-trading https://www.fidelity.com/trading/advanced-trading-tools/marg...
  - Ntrails 10y ago
    Yeah. Then you compare it to what IBs are charging actual funds...
sf_rob 10y ago
Where are you getting these numbers? Their rates appear to go from ~4.8-7.2%[1] Also, it should be noted that Gold is a flat fee based on account value brackets and margin brackets not a percent fee of your margin like every other brokerage. That means your effective margin rate can be much higher. e.g. if you borrow $100 for a $2000 account, you're looking at an effective margin rate of 72%. [1] https://d2ue93q3u507c2.cloudfront.net/assets/robinhood/legal/RHF%20Retail%20Commisions%20and%20Fees%20Schedule.pdf https://d2ue93q3u507c2.cloudfront.net/assets/robinhood/legal... (linked to from their FAQ[2], sorry for the sketch URL) [2] https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en-us/articles/214681823-Introducing-Robinhood-Gold https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en-us/articles/214681823-In...

rl3 10y ago

>Wouldn't want to enable people to make their own decisions with their money, would we? While we're on that subject, Pattern Day Trading restrictions[0] are a fine example of how arbitrary regulations created with good intentions can lead to negative outcomes. How it works is that margin accounts must maintain an equity balance of at least $25,000 in order to day trade freely. Otherwise, you're allotted three round-trip day trades within a 5-day period before there's serious consequences. Cash accounts are subject to long settlement periods, so the restrictions are moot in that case. What this means is that you can't trade equities with any sort of frequency on an account that has a cash balance below $25k—at least not if you want anywhere near full utilization of your capital. That also rules out algorithmic trading on anything but medium or long timescales. The "protection" afforded to the uninformed retail customers it was designed to protect is questionable at best. For example: it would be perfectly acceptable to allocate 100% of your portfolio plus leverage to a single stock just before market close, become subject to after-hours and pre-market price movement, then sell the next morning. Repeat by buying a different stock that same day. Yet, round-trip trades during market hours are heavily discouraged to the point of prohibition beyond any number that isn't trivial. In fact, I would argue that PDT restrictions create a perverse incentive that holds people to bad trades which they would otherwise prefer to exit, subjecting them to dangerous after-hours price movement in the process. It also creates incentive for novices to abandon equities entirely in favor of forex markets. Not exactly risk reduction. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_day_trader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_day_trader

JamesSwift 10y ago
I recently got interested in the markets and the PDT rules are one thing that I feel I need to hear more informed opinions on before formulating my own. I'd love if more people chimed in here to put in their .02 cents on the benefits/drawbacks/intentions of the current rules.
- JakeAl 10y ago
  I think they are fine. The way I look at it one just needs to get educated before they become a pattern day trader. Ideally that means they grow their account to $25K and have experience before they are put into a position where they can screw up bad enough that it affects others. Of course people don't do that, but at least there's some incentive. In the end margin is irrelevant if you only trade with money that is actually available. Robinhood is for traders that know even less than the twits on StockTwits. I'm sure it's fine for investing but I'd bet that the vast majority of the people that use the app don't know what the difference is, just like StockTwits.

randomizor22 10y 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

mbesto 10y ago

> I just wish they would expose a better API IIRC Robinhood just uses another service's API to transact a trade (can't remember the name), so you'd be leaving pennies on the table when you could just go straight to the source.