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“Gamification” of trading doesn’t exist: please show me even one broker that has a site wide points leaderboard that incentivizes pointless trades to rank highe

“Gamification” of trading doesn’t exist: please show me even one broker that has a site wide points leaderboard that incentivizes pointless trades to rank higher. All Robinhood ever did was have a UI that was relatively modern and approachable. That’s the only thing they did right. The real issue the SEC should be investigating is naked short selling.

filoleg 5y ago
Been saying the same thing for a while, never got a straight reply. RH doesn’t have “missions”, “challenges”, leaderboards, “achievements”, experience and stat points, etc. The only sense of progression you can get is the portfolio value chart over time, which is an integral part of every single brokerage. The only example I ever got was “the mobile UI shows confetti and fireworks celebratory animation when you place your first trade.” This is literally just for the first trade, and you never see it again, pretty much a part of new user onboarding experience. I had no memory of this animation at all, because i saw it only once and years ago (if it was even implemented back then). Using it for trading is the exact same as using Fidelity, except with RH i dont need to go through bajillion nested menus and clicks to perform something as simple as selling an option i already hold.
cyanydeez 5y ago
robinhood uses dark patterns to get you to randomly push the market. then they use opaque buy spreads to capture value. regardless, the market is fucked by momentum plays rather than any fundamental values, which naked short selling is only one of dozens of meaningless "liquidity" plays
- logicalmonster 5y ago
  > robinhood uses dark patterns to get you to randomly push the market. I think we'd all sleep a little easier at night if we knew what these dark patterns were. Can you please provide an example of misleading language or anything on their site that would be termed a dark UI pattern? I do not use Robinhood anymore as they proved they are not trustworthy, but their user-interface seems to be one of the things they did pretty well. > then they use opaque buy spreads to capture value. Can you please describe the mechanism used here? I'm not sure where bid/ask prices can emerge from other than from buyers/sellers. > regardless, the market is fucked by momentum plays rather than any fundamental values, which naked short selling is only one of dozens of meaningless "liquidity" plays I think conflating naked short selling with other momentum plays is very misleading. There's 10,001 completely valid reasons for random short term price movements. To me, naked shorting is a fundamentally fraudulent price manipulation where more shares are now available in the market than should actually exist. This messes with the normal pricing mechanism which is a function of supply and demand. This is one of the reasons that stock trading eventually moving onto some kind of blockchain seems inevitable to me: nothing else can be actually verified and fully trusted.

filoleg 5y ago

Been saying the same thing for a while, never got a straight reply. RH doesn’t have “missions”, “challenges”, leaderboards, “achievements”, experience and stat points, etc. The only sense of progression you can get is the portfolio value chart over time, which is an integral part of every single brokerage. The only example I ever got was “the mobile UI shows confetti and fireworks celebratory animation when you place your first trade.” This is literally just for the first trade, and you never see it again, pretty much a part of new user onboarding experience. I had no memory of this animation at all, because i saw it only once and years ago (if it was even implemented back then). Using it for trading is the exact same as using Fidelity, except with RH i dont need to go through bajillion nested menus and clicks to perform something as simple as selling an option i already hold.

cyanydeez 5y ago

robinhood uses dark patterns to get you to randomly push the market. then they use opaque buy spreads to capture value. regardless, the market is fucked by momentum plays rather than any fundamental values, which naked short selling is only one of dozens of meaningless "liquidity" plays

logicalmonster 5y ago
> robinhood uses dark patterns to get you to randomly push the market. I think we'd all sleep a little easier at night if we knew what these dark patterns were. Can you please provide an example of misleading language or anything on their site that would be termed a dark UI pattern? I do not use Robinhood anymore as they proved they are not trustworthy, but their user-interface seems to be one of the things they did pretty well. > then they use opaque buy spreads to capture value. Can you please describe the mechanism used here? I'm not sure where bid/ask prices can emerge from other than from buyers/sellers. > regardless, the market is fucked by momentum plays rather than any fundamental values, which naked short selling is only one of dozens of meaningless "liquidity" plays I think conflating naked short selling with other momentum plays is very misleading. There's 10,001 completely valid reasons for random short term price movements. To me, naked shorting is a fundamentally fraudulent price manipulation where more shares are now available in the market than should actually exist. This messes with the normal pricing mechanism which is a function of supply and demand. This is one of the reasons that stock trading eventually moving onto some kind of blockchain seems inevitable to me: nothing else can be actually verified and fully trusted.