Robinhood Has Gamified Online Trading into an Addiction | Hacker News Reader

Robinhood Has Gamified Online Trading into an Addiction

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Robinhood is not the first. The whole concept of day trading already "gamified online trading into an addiction", and that started in 1975 and had its peak popularity in the 80s. The author is really just complaining that this gamification is now in app format.

Was there commission-free trading in the 70's and 80's? And how did you access it? These platforms are about access. No commission and you can trade 24/7 from your phone. I imagine day trading in the 80's was considerably move involved and expensive.

Day trading was considerably more expensive a few years ago. It's free/cheap now due to Robinhood.

You cannot trade 24/7, there is no access to futures via Robinhood. Definitely turns people into degenerate gamblers though.

Scott Galloway is very right. It is incredibly difficult to out-earn the market consistently, and virtually all day traders lose money. (like 95% or so)

it really is glorified gambling and the app is designed to treat money as if it is a sort of gaming currency. In payments there's evidence that digital currency or credit/debit cards compared to cash increase the propensity to spend. I think it's very likely that the 'cute' user interfaces of these apps increase the propensity to invest.

There should be significant more regulation here to make sure that young people don't ruin their entire financial futures or even take their lives, like the 20 year old mentioned in the article. There are no social welfare gains by this kind of gambling on the stock market (in fact there may be externalities, like the volatily Scott mentions).

Day trading has been a problem ever since it was invented, 45 years ago.

You realize in the 1920s many hotels had a bucket shop in the lobby that you could place a bet on stocks?

Pretending this is something new is really laughable when things were 100X crazier literally a 100 years ago.

How many Americans were staying in these types of hotels? The new thing is that stock trading is not universally accessible, even to those with very limited means.

These were not special hotels, this was a feature like getting free breakfast today. This is how crazy the 1920s thirst for stock speculation was.

Not just betting on stocks but betting on stocks with huge leverage too. You want to bet on a $100 stock then go down to the hotel lobby and put up $10.

I feel people who write this kind of stuff have an ill placed sense of superiority.

Let the (adult) people wtf they want.

If anything the world is going to be increasingly full of more addictive stuff anyway, not less. Trying to censor 1 or 2 of them among all is doomed.

Worst case scenario people will learn self discipline through their own mistakes

Absurd article. I first traded stocks during the dot com bubble. People have barely caught even the smallest amount of speculative frenzy the past 20 years since.

I don't think we will ever match the level of addiction people had when online trading was a new thing.

I agree that online trading has been a thing for a while, but zero commission zero friction trading is relatively new and Robinhood just so happens to be the most popular in the US. Now literally anyone, including the least knowledgable and sophisticated investors can gain access to the market within hours with just a few details and an RPQ where everyone deliberately chooses maximum risk vs reward.

You Schwabb or e*Trade account also doesn't constantly send you push notifications saying "$TSLA has just risen by 5%!" to encourage you to keep logging into your brokerage account.

My buddy has the inside scoop on this new company called “Pets.com”. I’m gonna go all in because everything is vertical right now

Right he's so wise he should run the Ministry of Fun and get to decide what kind of fun i am permitted to have!

Not that i disagree with him entirely. I just believe i should be entitled to an opt-out form from his meddling.

You do have to laugh a bit when someone starts their article on addiction by claiming their own addictions have been a net positive on their life, self awareness? What's that?

Normalizing deviant behavior, and pandering to the hipster crowd, that he's not one of those "backward" people who refuse to engage in such vices.

I think he pointed that out to show he’s not part of the anti-vice crowd, the kind of people determined to lower exposure to all kinds of stimulating things.

Stimulation and vice is good, but I think he made his point that phones have enabled people to access stimulation through stock trading with a sort of reckless abandonment that should be worth asking “is this too much?”

EDIT: I personally moved my portfolio from Robinhood a year ago over to TDAmeritrade in order to “slow down” my interactions with my portfolio. Robinhood made it too easy and “fun” for me personally. YMMV of course, but I find myself agreeing with his point

It's really a gambling addiction. #YOLO-ing your paycheck for tendies is fun... most of the time...

Article is mostly filler, doesn't talk or explain much of anything as to what makes Robinhood addictive.

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