[larrythedog]

The way they market this app makes me pretty concerned. It seems like they're advocating short-term trading -- pretty risky behavior. I guess they don't explicitly do this, but the nature of a mobile-only platform, with what looks like no portfolio/risk analysis tools screams short term. Also, the only real reason a commission-free account would be helpful is if you're trading pretty frequently or in very small amounts. I'd rather pay $10/trade for something like Fidelity, Etrade, or the like, and have access to some mediocre portfolio analysis, risk analysis, and research tools, than have only a Buy/Sell button. However, I'd bet that uninformed investors would see this deal and jump right in without considering these things.

I guess my TLDR here is that a trading platform's selling point (for the general public) should be tools first, price second; not price first, aesthetics second.

[roymurdock]

RE: short-term trading - all of the same time constraint rules apply (wait 3 days to transfer funds in and out, settle trades, etc.) as they do to a regular retail account which makes funds in the account too illiquid to be used for very short/risky plays.

RE: No portfolio/beta analysis - this is a huge problem for me and I can't understand why they would intentionally not build at least a simple portfolio tracker in so you can analyze your investments over time.

I use the app because I don't want to pay the fees, but I've taken to tracking investments in excel which is annoying when it would be pretty trivial to add functionality to the app.

[larrythedog]

Robinhood definitely takes the cake for ease-of-use, but companies like Interactive Brokers offer very low commissions, and a much more comprehensive tool. May be worth checking out if you're a somewhat sophisticated investor.

As for your response to the short-term trading concerns. Transfer restrictions don't really matter here. I can still buy/sell stocks as much as I want. I don't have to cash out to my bank in order to trade SPY 10 times a day.

[roymurdock]

Sure, if you have enough settled funds to make 10 substantive trades in a day.

Say you have 10k of settled funds in your account. You can make a total of 10 $1k trades of SPY throughout the day, or 100 $100 trades. Your account is effectively frozen for the next 3 days as the trades "settle" and you are unable to do anything with them. So you would have needed to cash out of your bank 3 days prior to have active funds ready to go for the next day.

AKA Robinhood gets 2-3 days to earn interest on your unsettled/uninvested funds.

[lewisl9029]

I've found Interactive Brokers to be rather unfriendly for long term investing due to their minimum monthly activity fees though.

But to be fair, they do advertise themselves as a platform for active traders, and the monthly minimums can be waived with a large enough account. I don't qualify for the latter yet, but once I do I'll probably switch over to IB if Robinhood isn't in Canada by then (You can't really beat free).

[solaarphunk]

Honestly, I use other sites to do my research - most of the great research communities like motley fool, stocktwits, and seekingalpha are reasonably decentralized away from a brokerage app anyway. Since my account size is relatively small, the 10 bucks really eats into a lot of my profit margin, so I appreciate not having to pay it.

That being said, I can see that the lack of features might be discouraging for people who want to run a more complex portfolio of options or require a feature like a rudimentary asset allocation model.

The potential here really seems to be for people who hold well-researched single names regularly, mixed with some index ETFs.

[Someone1234]

> It seems like they're advocating short-term trading -- pretty risky behavior.

No matter how successful they're, I'd argue that it is a drop in the bucket compared to high-frequency trading. I cannot see it hurting the markets.

> Also, the only real reason a commission-free account would be helpful is if you're trading pretty frequently or in very small amounts.

Why? It saves you $10 even if you only trade once every year. It is MORE helpful with many trades, but it is helpful regardless.

> pay $10/trade [..] and have access to some mediocre portfolio analysis, risk analysis, and research tools

Why can't people get these from third parties? A lot of other services provide these tools and information. This de-couples the bundling and allows people to shop around.

[larrythedog]

You're right on all counts. The point I was trying to make is that it caters to unsophisticated investors, and this platform indirectly encourages them to invest without understanding the risks.

[mentat]

It's hurting their customers, not the markets.