Hacker News Reader

Comment by nodesocket | Hacker News Reader

I use Robinhood in tandem with my traditional online brokerage and love it.

The Robinhood iOS interface is really excellent, though they provide way less technical tools and analysis than my traditional online brokerage. However this is to be expected since Robinhood is targeting non-pro/power users.

Trade execution time and preference has actually been solid on Robinhood, though untested in a highly volatile situation where liquidity could be an issue for non-institutions and professionals.

Shameless plug (I've posted it before), but here is a blog post I wrote on leveraging capital using Robinhood Gold (margin) for those who are interested:

https://justink.svbtle.com/leveraging-capital-using-robinhoo...

View on HN

I read your post and am left with two questions.

1. Robinhood Gold interest is 6%. Interactive Brokers is 2.4% [1]. Why do you think there is such a massive difference, and would anyone benefit from paying it?

2. Your analysis works on ten years of data from 2007 to 2017. Did you know that is a very positive period and that shifting it by a few years would completely change the analysis? [2]

I'm not surprised you stopped using it. I am surprised you would encourage us to use it.

[1] https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=interest&p...

[2] http://www.1stock1.com/1stock1_2312.htm

> 1. Robinhood Gold interest is 6%. Interactive Brokers is 2.4% [1]. Why do you think there is such a massive difference, and would anyone benefit from paying it?

I've used IB (and don't use robinhood). The IB GUI is a fucking trainwreck. If design had ethical obligations the way bridge engineering does, IB's designers would be in prison. It is bad. And it's still one of the better trading interfaces. Ever seen a bloomberg terminal?

That jump from 2.4 to 6% is effectively a "regular people can make sense of this without wanting to kill themselves" markup. No different from the markup any other SaaS company puts on "run this 10 line script periodically". One can sell convenience.

Access to a good GUI should cost a flat rate, not a %.

I agree the IB UI has lots of room to improve.

> Ever seen a bloomberg terminal?

I helped build it. Sorry.

> The IB GUI is a fucking trainwreck

I tried to buy some index funds and couldn't even really figure out how to log in after creating my account :( Trainwreck is an understatement.

Shameless plug: if you like good UI on Mac, check out Stockfolio, http://apple.co/2niG1PY

One of our next updates should include linking to your brokerage + support for buying and selling shares. IB should (hopefully) be one of the supported brokerages.

This is something I am interested in, but the fact that you don't have a website about this app boggles my mind. I have simple questions like, how much of a pain in the ass is it to import your current holdings.

Right. We only launched the app last month, and given websites tend to not drive significant conversion numbers for apps (personal experience), we've deferred a bit on that. There's still a lot of of stuff we're working on.

To answer your question: currently it's probably a bit cumbersome to insert significant amounts of holdings. That said, one of the next updates should have both CSV import (for your historical data) + brokerage integration. You should be able to link your account so that transactions / holdings / etc automatically get imported.

Just shoot me an e-mail if you have other specific questions. I'd be happy to answer them.

> I've used IB (and don't use robinhood). The IB GUI is a fucking trainwreck. If design had ethical obligations the way bridge engineering does, IB's designers would be in prison. It is bad. And it's still one of the better trading interfaces. Ever seen a bloomberg terminal?

I agree that the UI is terrible but keep in mind that IB is very very specifically targeted at active stock traders and institutions, not regular people. The UI starts to make slightly more sense if you're trading a lot.

For an example of a good UI though, I'd look at TD Ameritrade, which has a pretty decent one.

> I agree that the UI is terrible but keep in mind that IB is very very specifically targeted at active stock traders and institutions, not regular people

I understand what you're saying here, and you're right. Large parts of IB's complexity come from accomodating the crazy stuff you have to do when you want to unload millions of shares without tipping off algos.

However..

The implication that "active stock traders" and "regular people" are mutually exclusive is one of the things holding finance software back.

I don't think this is a bad assumption to make though. Active stock trading, daytrading at least, requires a minimum balance of $25k in the account due to SEC regulations. The people who have that much money available for investment outside a retirement account are very very few and near-entirely investors.

IB is a great platform (though their design and tech suck), but by far offer the best margin rates. They are geared towards professionals though, and I think lots of people just don't know about them.

So 2008, the great recession was a very positive period? Ok, here are QQQ returns starting at 2003:

  2003 - 49.61%
  2004 - 9.49%
  2005 - 1.23%
  2006 - 6.81%

If you want to be bearish and hunker down in your bunker that is fine, but claiming that over 14 years of results is not a fair sample size is a stretch.

> So 2008, the great recession was a very positive period?

No, 2007 to 2017 is claimed as a positive period.

CAGR over the period you list above is 15%. Over 2007 to 2017, it's 10%, not so far off, and over a 10 year period rather than a 4 year period.

Well if a humdrum ~%25 correction wipes out half your capital. Then you'll be hoping for a massive 50% run in the market to get back to where you started.

I'd want to get paid more than 9.74 - 6 = 3.74 percent to ride that rollercoaster.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com