Stock exchanges have been a core component of the world economy for a long time now, but they are not exactly easily approachable for novices.Robinhood’s goal is to make investment easy even for those who are not experienced Wall Street aficionados.
We must preface this by saying that iDownloadBlog is not here to give investment advice. This is purely a spotlight on an attractive and easy to use stock brokerage app.
Robinhood provides fee free trading
Robinhood‘ s killer feature is that it claims to have “cut out the fat” that forces other brokerages to charge high fees of up to $10 per trade. Trades within Robinhood are completely fee free, no charge per transaction whatsoever. A quick look at the pricing page for any popular mainstream brokerage such as E*Trade will make you realize that Robinhood truly does attempt to make trading stocks a user-friendly experience.
Considering that most brokerages make the bulk of their revenue from these fees per trade, you may be thinking: how does Robinhood make money? This is a fair question, and it is a wise one as well. Robinhood is not trying to fool you with hidden fees, they make their money in a peculiar but smart way. When you deposit funds in to the Robinhood app, Robinhood collects interest on its users funds which are not invested in stocks.
Gold Buying Power
The optional Robinhood Gold subscription also includes access to instant deposits and extended trading hours. The subscription is useful for those who choose to use it, but for those who either do no not feel comfortable with it or who do not want it, the default app experience is still quite remarkable.
A clean and useful experience
The best way to describe the design of the app is as a normal stocks app, but with the ability to actually buy the stocks. You can set your watchlist of stocks, and within those stocks you have access to all sorts of information to aid you in making your purchase decisions. This information includes news, some basic stock statistics, volatility, earnings reports, and some basic information about the company. All of this information is wrapped in a clean white, green, and red design that is pleasing and intuitive. As you would guess, the information section is peppered with green and red to denote gains and losses respectively.
Robinhood is a unique opportunity to our generation, and that is the ability to buy stocks with an incredibly low barrier to entry. It goes without saying that you must use your own money to purchase the stocks you choose to, but it is a unique benefit to be able to trade with no fee per transaction.
In all, Robinhood is incredibly convenient even without the in-app subscription. I would even go as far to say that I would not recommended Robinhood Gold to most people. Give Robinhood a try if you are looking to dabble in investing in the market and would enjoy a clean and simple interface with little to no barrier to entry.Robinhood is available for free on the App Store.
Are you going to give Robinhood a try? Are you already a user? Let us know in the comments below.
