Robinhood is a predatory lending scheme. The vast majority of its users should not be trading anything other than indexes.
I've used the app sparingly in the past with "fun money" but haven't done serious investing with it.
The industry regulations would indicate otherwise. Generally, the “dumber” the money, the more regulatory protections that will apply. At their core, financial regulators are consumer protection entities.
What stops me from liquidating my 401k and investing all of my money into a company that misses their earning goals this week? Where does the US SEC come into play here?
Doesn’t mean you should though. Also Vegas doesn’t have the reputation for capital preservation and growth that brokerages have.
Most (fidelity, etrade, etc.) have margin rates around ~10%. IB has ~3-4% but they're an outlier in this regard.
https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/6/26/how-brokerages-make-mone...
IB is abundantly clear that it makes money from cash balances. I'm not sure where you got this idea from.
https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/6/26/how-brokerages-make-mone...
What makes them worse than than anyone that charges a fee?
" 57% of Schwab’s revenues are from net interest"
https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/6/26/how-brokerages-make-mone...
And you can do so on robinhood by buying ETFs while potentially saving money on transaction fees if you were to use a traditional brokerage (I say potentially because vanguard lets me buy their etfs without a transaction fee when I use their brokerage account).