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Comment by kinkrtyavimoodh | Hacker News Reader

As a user of RobinHood I have not felt any specific push for buying single stocks. A lot of people just buy index funds on RobinHood. If RH had made it more difficult to buy those compared to single stocks, your claim might have some weight...

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Push notifications around a pre-defined 'watch list'? Notifications of major stock movements? Showing 'popularity' of a stock? 'Most Popular Under $25'? Gifting people free stock for referrals?

Right. It would be strange if RobinHood didn't encourage active single-stock trading, since that's how they made their money.

If all RobinHood users followed sound "buy diversified ETF and hold" investing advice, my understanding is that they'd go bankrupt.

I had a good laugh at this. I expect a certain level of professionalism from financial businesses, and this sort of fluff marketing / gamification makes my skin crawl... mostly because it tells you about the rest of the maturity of the organization if the product and marketing team is sending out this kind of amateur crap.

Just wait for really fun stuff, like the huge "Buy Stock" button with a tiny "Maybe later..." 8pt link below it. Or "Let us scan your photos and location and have AI generate a TOTALLY LIT suggested portfolio for you!" Or even better: "5 of your friends are currently pumping NVDA! Tap here to write a few naked puts!"

I can't wait until they bring in all the dark patterns from travel sites; "1,213 people currently considering this stock" or "act now; only 6MM shares left!"

>1,213 people currently considering this stock

If I had browser data from everyone on RobinHood, and was able to track which stocks they were looking at, I might be able to make money front-running.

The HFTs they are likely selling their data to are probably already way ahead of you.

You've got it backwards. The output of the product and marketing team is expertly tailored to target the amateur. Don't for a second think they don't know exactly what they're doing.

I remember hearing one of the founders talking about users trading stocks. He explained their data shows people get better at trading stocks with more experience. I can't remember the source, but I think it was on This Week in Startups podcast. This is really suspect--kind of like a casino telling blackjack players they will get better the more they play.

If Robinhood is incentivizing or encouraging frequent trading by users, that's not really good in my opinion. It doesn't make them worse than other brokerages, but it doesn't make them better either. And with a name like Robinhood, they are positioning themselves as white knights.

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