Robinhood walks a really fine line between a reputable broker and legalized gambling. There isn't much difference between Robinhood app and a casino app. I'm surprised they have been allowed to turn stock trading into a game.
All RH did was substantially reduce fees and make trading a little more exciting for unsophisticated "investors."
They did. I personally tried (in addition to RH) WeBull and Fidelity. Both allowed me to access margin and options just as easily. The only difficulty I had with Fidelity was their atrocious UX (not just for options, but in every single aspect).
>then have cute animations and other tech-inspired addictive features.
Tech-inspired addictive features? Like which ones? The only "addictive" feature that RH has over Fidelity is UX that doesn't suck massively. Had to help a friend recently with something as simple as closing out a trade on Fidelity, and we spent 10-15 mins trying to figure out how to do it. This is a disgrace, given how basic and fundamental of an operation closing a trade is.
Imagine if gmail has made it extremely difficult to reply to an email, by making you click through bajillion submenus and dropdowns to even get to the textbox. That's how bad it is.
So basically the thing left to blame them for is good UX.
"No using colors in your UI other than grey, white and black"
Mostly because not everyone is bound by that distinction. Many people recognize that the need for there to be a difference between financial games is purely cultural or religious.
Even the delineation between positive expected value games (buy and hold investing) and negative expected value games (table games at casinos) is not so binary with derivatives.
The reason this discrepancy exists in the US is because states regulate casinos and property and the federal government regulates the subset of property that are deemed securities. But despite the supporting culture, the Federal government is actually quiet on gambling, except to maintain a prohibition on financial services helping transfer funds to online gambling, allowing states to maintain their monopolies.
For me, it doesn't matter, I like to know the rules or lack thereof for whatever game I happen to be playing. For me, energy is better spent towards fixing structural issues, such as DTCC and antiquated mandates on long settlement times, which should be much shorter.
It did catch up with them, but the headline marketing remains unchanged. https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-321
Actually your broker has to execute your order at a better or equal price than the NBBO. I'm presuming that's what you mean by "best public offer", because the price improvements that you get from market makers are definitely not public.
There is more than just random numbers involved. Equity prices may have a tenuous connection to reality, but there is some real-world basis for stock, bonds, and derivatives. That is what separates financial markets from casino games (which are purely random number games).
Minor nitpick: some companies do this. There are plenty that never issue dividends, don't sell voting shares, and don't do buybacks.