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Comment by _xhok | Hacker News Reader

Incidentally, if you're like me, and know nothing about stocks, but still want to get rich off companies you believe will succeed, I highly recommend Robinhood. It's like stock trading for chimpanzees. Install an app, fill out a brief profile, click a big shiny button to deposit money, select your stock, and click another big shiny button to buy.

I don't have any affiliation with them. I just always thought trading stocks was schleppily difficult, and was delighted to discover it was not so. I believe some company will do well; I'm not interested in understanding spreadsheets or hiring anyone; here's my money; how do I buy shares? What is the Uber-like, magic-button product here? Robinhood, it turns out.

https://www.robinhood.com/

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And if you love the simplicity and lack of informed investment Robinhood represents, you'll love slot machines too. Put money in, pull lever, boom.

If you don't know enough to stock pick, buy the index.

> If you don't know enough to stock pick, buy the index.

While I am in general agreement with your position, I see statements like this frequently when stock trading comes up. References to the market or the index. There isn't one, monolithic tradable "market". Rather there are dozens of different index views of the broader market, some of which are better than others. If you know so little about stock trading that you think a service like Robinhood is a good idea you probably don't know enough to choose a good index either.

Yes, that was an oversimplification. I had typed it as 'buy indices' but decided that would require explaining which indices, and I didn't want to get into that rabbit hole. And I didn't want to look like a shill for some particular vendor's fund. In any case, some concrete examples are VTI, VXUS, and BND/VTEB.

By simplicity I was talking about the fact that I don't need to fill out paperwork. Filling out paperwork is unrelated to the forecasting which companies will succeed. The point is, if it were 2005 and I wanted to buy Apple stock, without Robinhood I probably wouldn't have bothered.

Open a brokerage account, click BUY, enter AAPL. That's about it. :-)

Fun fact: brokerage accounts were easier to open in 2005 before the recent more stringent money laundering regulation.

Oh. Is opening a brokerage account that easy?

yes.

I would love to use it. Unfortunately it's only available in the US (and Australia?). If there are any alternatives that work in the UK and/or Switzerland then please let me know.

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