- The ability to short a stock, which I still can't believe isn't available.
- Price Alerts
Everything else is gravy, IMO, especially if they keep the same basic, sleek interface, which I actually like.
You can buy put options on Robinhood already.
From a brokerage house perspective, it's a whole other marketplace to set up (brokers willing to back your interest)
You could always to a synthetic short through buying a Long Put, but time (and often volatility) decay become a factor (for shorter term trades).
The biggest problem presumably for Robinhood is managing the borrowing of the shares. They're probably not large enough to have a pool of shares to consistently borrow from like other larger brokerages.
Honest question: is having access to shorting THAT much different than having the ability to buy puts/sell calls? Shorting isn't the only way to profit in a bear position
Maybe try it with a paper trading account?
Selling a call option and buying a put option at the same strike price creates the synthetic short. By buying the call option with the highest strike price for the same date or later, Robinhood lets you skip the safety requirement of holding 100 shares of the underlying stock because you’ve capped your max-potential-loss to a fixed amount. Understand that with shorting a stock, you have limited potential gains and unlimited potential losses.
Example synthetic short with the S&P500 Index ETF ($SPY) at $299/share currently: Create Call credit spread by selling June 18th 2021 calls at $300 strike for $24.95/ea and buying June 18 2021 calls at at the highest possible strike of $390 for $1.39/ea. Then buying the June 18th 2021 Put option at the same strike price of $300 for $24.95/ea.