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Comment by dannyphantom | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious if this is to address the current potential of a large shift of users moving to different brokerages and to keep Robinhood afloat until IPO in which it will have to fend for itself. I've seen a large sentiment online, and in public spaces expressing how angry the consumer is about RH restricting trading.

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People still use Bank of America and Wells Fargo despite the incredibly customer-hostile things they've done in the past. I will not be surprised if Robinhood weathers this pretty well after a short term hit.

I wonder how/if age demographics play into that, especially with regards to millenials/gen z.

I'm personally of the opinion that it's limited choices. Banks have been merging and suppressing new entries to the business for decades. Around here, there are basically two large banks and a handful of credit unions.

When doing the right thing takes more work than the current situation, people are probably going to do nothing as long as it's not too uncomfortable. It's akin to canceling subscriptions.

I lazily left my 401k at my previous job "running" for 18 months before finally rolling it into my personal IRA. I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

Apples and oranges.

Wells Fargo literally opened accounts for people without their consent, pushing balances below critical thresholds and causing their customers to lose money they had no right to lose to fees. BoA foreclosed on homes they never should have foreclosed on.

These weren't one-off incidents (Robinhood has not, yet, established a trend), these were systemic issues with these banks. And people still go to them. They're getting new accounts daily, not subsisting off of legacy accounts.

Everybody needs to bank, those pay checks gotta go somewhere.

The portion of people who invest -- outside of forced investing through 401k, etc. -- is pretty small in comparison.

Those that are using an investment application to speculate on stocks on their phone are a smaller yet demographic. And I'll bet that, dollars to donuts, they're more informed about everything, and more willing to shop.

Lots of chatter on /wsb talking about Fidelity migration. I'm not sure how that translates into actuals - like the WhatsApp migration it may be severe or it might be a tempest in a teapot.

But at least it identifies who are they real customers for RobinHood.

not quite the same as whatsapp, you're isolated. you dont need your friends to move, it's something you can do on your own.

"reports" that i'd read said that fidelity were getting something like 600% increase in signups (who knows if thats because of this movement or because people hate RH).

Very true. But on the other hand, it ties up your investments for several days.

Moving means totally removing yourself from the market precisely at the time when big swings are happening, which many people might not want to risk. So it's actually pretty tricky, not frictionless or anything.

You migrate your new buy activity into Fidelity and leave your existing stock in RH (you can still sell).

At some point, either migrate your holdings from RH completely or sell them off and move money to Fidelity.

Done.

Fidelity opened an account, took my money and I was able to trade this morning w/o restriction.

Robinhood,on the other hand is still tumbling thumbs on their ACH transfer I did last monday. No margin was accessed.

Going to close the RH account, I see no value in it. I do most of my trading on another platform, but felt like playing with fun money to see how it'd be.

Not fun at all.

Definitely interested in how they articulate risks unearthed by recent events in their future S-1.

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