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Comment by kylehotchkiss | Hacker News Reader

I can't wait to access their web/desktop version! Phone has been nice.

As far as monetization goes, even if robin hood was $5-10/month it'd still be fun for a beginner investor like myself, i just dread the idea of per-trade fees on my single-stock purchases.

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You do realize you pay fees it’s just baked into the price? It’s pretty impressive how they’ve worked it out.

That's only true in the most technical of senses. Yes, there is a spread, but other brokerages take a spread AND additionally charge you another fee on top of that which is often an outrageous $5-10.

That outrageous $5-10 probably helps the average person make money in the long run by not overtrading.

depends, how big is the spread?

The spread is generally on the order of a cent.

The same as literally any other brokerage.

Not really, just because they're selling order flow doesn't necessarily mean the customer gets a worse deal. Robinhood still has to follow reg nms, they have to fill you at the NBBO.

But is their NBBO worse than other firms (worse routing options)?

That's literally a contradiction. Look up what NBBO actually means.

It's actually more complicated, nbbo governs quotes but there are a few other things that affect your actual trade price such as exchange fees and price improvement.

For example, every exchange can have the same quote, but a different liquidity fee.

Web / desktop version is out in the beta. You can signup to get on the waitlist here: https://robinhood.com/#web

You already have a desktop version of Robinhood available as an open source - http://bit.ly/2FJXl7b

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