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I really don’t understand this “democratizing” thing. In Spain, banks have allowed to trade on all kinds of assets for ages. Some with low fees. If you wanted

I really don’t understand this “democratizing” thing. In Spain, banks have allowed to trade on all kinds of assets for ages. Some with low fees. If you wanted to buy a certain asset you could do so in like three clicks. In the US I know as a fact that some banks like Charles Schwab have also made retail investing accessible for ages… Robin Hood has “democratized” trading in the sense of aggressively expanding it through marketing, maybe a cool UX (I wouldn’t know), but otherwise I don’t see how it has innovated significantly in the area of retail investing. Like a sibling commenter is saying it has also popularized day-trading more than anything. The math about day-trading is unequivocal and it may very well be that popularizing this is a net loss for society, or at the very least (yet another?) mechanism for transferring wealth from the middle class to sophisticated elites (I mean, this wouldn’t be a loss if you believe it’s stricly a zero-sum effect, and that wealth is just as well in either set of hands) To be clear, I may have moral qualms with RH and the popularization of day-trading, but I do believe in free market economics and I think it should exist - I can only hope that in time regular folk become educated about investing and that my transfer theory doesn’t come to fruition. I’m all open for counterpoints on both my claims that it hasn’t done all that much for democratizing retail investing and that day-trading for the masses may be a bad proposition.

cyral 5y ago
> In the US I know as a fact that some banks like Charles Schwab have also made retail investing accessible for ages… I was helping a friend open an IRA with Schwab the other day. After you sign up, it just plops you into their dashboard with no instructions at all. Search function was useless, actually took tons of clicks for me to figure out how to fund the IRA and invest it in an index fund (for example, the list of target date funds isn't found anywhere on their menus, I had to google and use their secondary fund site to find the symbol). Basically they sure didn't make it easy or accessible for new users, where as with Robinhood it is immediately obvious how it works (I know Robinhood doesn't have IRAs but the patterns for regular investing with other brokers are similar levels of clunkiness)
dilyevsky 5y ago
CS had like $9 fee per trade before they felt the heat from RH. Which btw was fine by me since it was small potatoes if you just casually invest and hold for a year or longer. What they really democratized is incessant day-trading, otm calls on dogshit stocks etc. basically a casino pretending to be a brokerage
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  It was never ok. Trade fees were a gatekeeping measure to dissuade retail investors. Since RH started I have been able to build a portfolio of many single individual stocks (my own market “index fund”), some worth less than $10. This was never possible under pay per trade regime.
  - tayo42 5y ago
    What's the point of investing less then 10 dollars?
    - rwmurrayVT 5y ago
      Earning a return greater than the 0.10% offered by my credit union. Should only those with more capital than 1mm earn returns?
      - tayo42 5y ago
        Keep it in your wallet or put it on a blackjack table. Or yes put it in a savings account that won't disappear until you can build up money to invest with.
        thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
        Or don't.
      - unmole 5y ago
        And you couldn't put that into an Index fund because?
jetru 5y ago
It's like, you could upload videos to YouTube all you wanted all the time, but TikTok made it more accessible.
JoelSanchez 5y ago
Just curious, what banks are those? Renta 4 is mainly focused on funds, and traditional banks like, say, BBVA, don't have any stock trading features in their apps / websites, as far as I know? I'm using Degiro for stocks.
- arcturus17 5y ago
  BBVA or Bankinter certainly have brokers! I’d assume many other Spanish retail banks do as well. BBVA has a standard broker that charges about 5€ per trade and also a trading platform called Trader with different conditions. Bankinter has had a standard broker for ages - some people in my family are pro investors and they’ve been using since the 00s. Both have a massive selection of funds on top of stocks.

cyral 5y ago

> In the US I know as a fact that some banks like Charles Schwab have also made retail investing accessible for ages… I was helping a friend open an IRA with Schwab the other day. After you sign up, it just plops you into their dashboard with no instructions at all. Search function was useless, actually took tons of clicks for me to figure out how to fund the IRA and invest it in an index fund (for example, the list of target date funds isn't found anywhere on their menus, I had to google and use their secondary fund site to find the symbol). Basically they sure didn't make it easy or accessible for new users, where as with Robinhood it is immediately obvious how it works (I know Robinhood doesn't have IRAs but the patterns for regular investing with other brokers are similar levels of clunkiness)

dilyevsky 5y ago

CS had like $9 fee per trade before they felt the heat from RH. Which btw was fine by me since it was small potatoes if you just casually invest and hold for a year or longer. What they really democratized is incessant day-trading, otm calls on dogshit stocks etc. basically a casino pretending to be a brokerage

randomhodler84 5y ago
It was never ok. Trade fees were a gatekeeping measure to dissuade retail investors. Since RH started I have been able to build a portfolio of many single individual stocks (my own market “index fund”), some worth less than $10. This was never possible under pay per trade regime.
- tayo42 5y ago
  What's the point of investing less then 10 dollars?
  - rwmurrayVT 5y ago
    Earning a return greater than the 0.10% offered by my credit union. Should only those with more capital than 1mm earn returns?
    - tayo42 5y ago
      Keep it in your wallet or put it on a blackjack table. Or yes put it in a savings account that won't disappear until you can build up money to invest with.
      - thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
        Or don't.
    - unmole 5y ago
      And you couldn't put that into an Index fund because?

jetru 5y ago

It's like, you could upload videos to YouTube all you wanted all the time, but TikTok made it more accessible.

JoelSanchez 5y ago

Just curious, what banks are those? Renta 4 is mainly focused on funds, and traditional banks like, say, BBVA, don't have any stock trading features in their apps / websites, as far as I know? I'm using Degiro for stocks.

arcturus17 5y ago
BBVA or Bankinter certainly have brokers! I’d assume many other Spanish retail banks do as well. BBVA has a standard broker that charges about 5€ per trade and also a trading platform called Trader with different conditions. Bankinter has had a standard broker for ages - some people in my family are pro investors and they’ve been using since the 00s. Both have a massive selection of funds on top of stocks.