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People complain about unfair advantages regular "retail" people have but Robinhood has made access to stocks & options a lot easier. They've made it easy to get

People complain about unfair advantages regular "retail" people have but Robinhood has made access to stocks & options a lot easier. They've made it easy to get the cheapest rates possible on portfolio backed loans. They're starting to try & give some type of IPO access, although I can't comment on the value of that. If they start to offer IRAs & other tax advantaged accounts, plus a way for non accredited investors to invest early in Start-Ups they would have hit a grand slam in my opinion. Obviously while I see the above as a lot of great things, in the wrong hands people can do a ton of damage to themselves with margin, options or trading risky stocks. Robinhood, at the demands of critics, has been improving their information in their UI to help people better understand the risks. And yes, their bash the button to get early crypto access shall never be forgotten & always be a tarnish. The Robinhood app is far better than anyone else out there for your average investor. ThinkorSwim is the only thing even close & it's far to complicated for most. Otherwise Robinhood is faster, cheaper, better info & overall better user experience. The other companies have all been incredibly behind times, as financial companies are known for. Side Rant: Robinhood wasn't the only one to run into GameStop issues. There are some people who believe the whole GME debacle was very close to having huge negative implications on the entire market that were going to hurt everyone, whether in the trade or not.

m00x 5y ago
Retail investors could still invest using regular tools. Most banks have portals where you can buy/sell, but most of them safeguard against margin bets and they have much less sketchy practices. Robinhood made it fancy and hid the complexities of investing so they could turn investing into a gambling platform.
toomanybeersies 5y ago
There's a reason why retail investors have traditionally been locked out of things like options and investing in IPOs. More often than not it ends up with the less wealthy losing their life savings. "The wrong hands" is the average retail investor. The philosophical debate is whether those people should be allowed to waste their life savings because they should know better, or if the government should make efforts to ensure that they can't.

m00x 5y ago

Retail investors could still invest using regular tools. Most banks have portals where you can buy/sell, but most of them safeguard against margin bets and they have much less sketchy practices. Robinhood made it fancy and hid the complexities of investing so they could turn investing into a gambling platform.

toomanybeersies 5y ago

There's a reason why retail investors have traditionally been locked out of things like options and investing in IPOs. More often than not it ends up with the less wealthy losing their life savings. "The wrong hands" is the average retail investor. The philosophical debate is whether those people should be allowed to waste their life savings because they should know better, or if the government should make efforts to ensure that they can't.