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I would be shocked if the GME / Reddit crowd made up more than a few percent of that decline. Robinhood has a lot of users across a lot of demographics. Reddit,

I would be shocked if the GME / Reddit crowd made up more than a few percent of that decline. Robinhood has a lot of users across a lot of demographics. Reddit, however large, is more of a small microcosm of internet culture. I think it's more likely that Robinhood's rapid rise was fueled by COVID boredom and a wonky stock market where it felt like everyone was getting rich from stocks and options. Now that the market is cooling off and a lot of their new users got burned when they learned that the market doesn't always go up, I suspect a lot of them are losing enthusiasm for frequent trading. They did their IPO at just the right time.

mirceal 5y ago
I would not be shocked. We need to consider who would use Robinhood to begin with and how likely are they to know be exposed to the whole GME saga. Personally I stopped using it. Had it for trying out new things / prototyping crazy ideas (yeah yeah disposable income and first world problems I now). From that point on I am using only a legit broker. When I want to trade I want to be able to trade. If you as a broker cannot do that - even under weird conditions - I will NOT use you. Also, at a meta level, the problem is that RH massaged the truth and didn’t straight up explain what was going on. If they did the right thing in keeping everyone in the loop this could have been a golden opportunity to consolidate their position.
at-fates-hands 5y ago
>> I think it's more likely that Robinhood's rapid rise was fueled by COVID boredom. Agreed. The half dozen people I know who were kind of on the back end of this before they locked up trading made some money off it. Not a lot, but nothing to sneeze at either. Once the whole saga went nuclear, they decided to close out their accounts. Most waited for everything to settle out, sold off all their positions and cashed out. They haven't been back. It feels a lot like a normal trading cycle. I'm sure the same thing would've eventually happened where people found something else that caught their attention, but the whole GME saga I think speed up a lot of people into other things. COVID had a weird effect where people found a lot of things to do they normally would not have been doing. Now that things have subsided somewhat, people are moving on from those things and going back to the activities and hobbies they were doing pre-COVID.

mirceal 5y ago

I would not be shocked. We need to consider who would use Robinhood to begin with and how likely are they to know be exposed to the whole GME saga. Personally I stopped using it. Had it for trying out new things / prototyping crazy ideas (yeah yeah disposable income and first world problems I now). From that point on I am using only a legit broker. When I want to trade I want to be able to trade. If you as a broker cannot do that - even under weird conditions - I will NOT use you. Also, at a meta level, the problem is that RH massaged the truth and didn’t straight up explain what was going on. If they did the right thing in keeping everyone in the loop this could have been a golden opportunity to consolidate their position.

at-fates-hands 5y ago

>> I think it's more likely that Robinhood's rapid rise was fueled by COVID boredom. Agreed. The half dozen people I know who were kind of on the back end of this before they locked up trading made some money off it. Not a lot, but nothing to sneeze at either. Once the whole saga went nuclear, they decided to close out their accounts. Most waited for everything to settle out, sold off all their positions and cashed out. They haven't been back. It feels a lot like a normal trading cycle. I'm sure the same thing would've eventually happened where people found something else that caught their attention, but the whole GME saga I think speed up a lot of people into other things. COVID had a weird effect where people found a lot of things to do they normally would not have been doing. Now that things have subsided somewhat, people are moving on from those things and going back to the activities and hobbies they were doing pre-COVID.