Competing on price alone doesn't seem like a good strategy to creating a valuable company.
Competing on price alone doesn't seem like a good strategy to creating a valuable company.
It's a long term play. They're going to be loss-making for a while. Their VC backers can handle it. It's like Transferwise (similar backers) who launched three years ago and who are still loss-making even though they've already processed >$1 billion in transactions...
The definition of a bubble, if there ever was one.
They're investing heavily now (at a loss) in marketing and in international expansion (note the recent US launch). Have you seen their recent marketing campaign in the UK? If you refer 3 paying users, you get £100 ($155) cash. Their cost of acquisition is therefore £33/user if not more. Assuming a 0.5% margin, they are therefore implying that each paying user will make at least £7,000 ($10,000) in transfers with them. And that's just to break even...
from: http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/07/free-stock-trades/ > Tenev says Robinhood is charging a 3.5% fee to trade on margin in a private beta of the feature
It looks like they're planning to monetize via margin. That would work great if the economy was perpetually in an upswing... but I don't think they would have survived in the great recession.
Not to mention the irony of Robinhood making margin calls.
For US listed stocks there is no fee throughout the entire transaction (deposit, buy, sell, withdraw): https://brokerage-static.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/robinhood/l...
Robinhood has stated for a while that they have a margin feature they plan to charge for: https://robinhoodapp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202853769...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_for_order_flow http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/06/13/payments-to-big-br...
Citation needed. Its entirely possible that order flow traders are actually providing better/equivalent fills than can be obtained without them.
I've seen no long term studies one way or the other, though I admit on first blush order flow payment seems dodgy.
If I'm buying AAPL as a casual retail consumer, and the market price at the absolute moment is $121.05, and I get "screwed" with a fill of $121.06, is that really a big deal? Especially considering that a few seconds later the true market price could jump in either direction?
As a professional trader who's head is in the moment, sure, that seems bad. But does it REALLY matter for a casual long-term investor? My hunch is no. (I know I couldn't care less if I pay a few pennies more or less - I'm not using Robinhood for day trading, and that's not the point or their pitch.)
This is just fuel on the fire of uneducated first-time investors being lured by "$0 commissions".
This has nothing to do with the validity or intelligence behind being an armchair day trader. This is entirely about my ability to participate in the market in a small way, without trade fees having a significant enough impact to wipe out short-term gains completely.
I.e. transferwise.com charges a ton less than my bank to send money with a conversion. My bank could charge less and not lose customers, but it will probably take them some decades to do that.
One thing they are certainly doing is selling their order flow. Large HFT firms like Knight & Citadel pay brokerages like Robinhood for the privilege of routing retail orders. You can find the documents in their "Disclosure Library".
https://brokerage-static.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/robinhood/l...
http://public.s3.com/rule606/apex/APEX_1Q2015_Rule606.pdf
It's important to note that it is likely that all retail brokers are doing this, so this is not how Robinhood is able to offer no fees.
Either they have significant cost advantages (new infrastructure/cheaper labor etc) or they have better deals with the people executing their orders.
[edit] Also http://external.s3.com/rule606/apex/APEX_2015Q1Disclosure.pd...
> With Robinhood, you will be able to buy and sell US listed companies, ETFs, and many of the largest companies in your home country.
This also looks like a nice addition.