Stock picking is gambling for pretty much everyone, even professionals don't beat the market most of the time. Income is somewhat correlated with intelligence,

Stock picking is gambling for pretty much everyone, even professionals don't beat the market most of the time. Income is somewhat correlated with intelligence, but thats not the issue I have with marketing to lower income people, since as you said there are lots of very smart people at all income levels. The problem is that lower income people have less to lose, and are less able to recover from losses, so I am more concerned with them loosing money than if a well paid professional looses their bonus or something in the market. Also lower income people are more likely to try more risky methods of getting money, and are more likely a member of a vulnerable demographic (ex. pyramid schemes have a lot of success targetting recent immigrants without much income). I think there is a lot of value in letting someone who stocks sodas all day buy some Pepsi stock if they have some money free to play around with. I've done some day trading, it's a little fun (and a lot stressful, so no more). The problem I have is when Robinhood tries to convince that person stocking sodas that they have some special insight that will let them beat the market and make money investing. That's how you get people investing and loosing more than they can afford.