https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en-us/articles/210216783-International-Expansion Australia Robinhood is in the regulatory approval process in Australia. As such, we do not have a timeline to share right now. Any interested Australians may sign up for updates via our waitlist here. China Robinhood integrated with Baidu’s StockMaster app in June 2016. Subsequently, the Chinese regulatory environment changed and the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) provided guidance to Baidu and other unlicensed Chinese companies disallowing them from engaging in business with U.S. brokerages. In accordance with this new ruling, Robinhood ended its integration with Baidu’s StockMaster and notified affected customers.
I love robinhood now that they have options I trade options using them excursively there is no $SPX but I deal with it by trading $SPY options instead. The interface is a bit slow if you want to change your order. But overall I love it a decent trader can make a decent return trading using robinhood. They sell order flow like other brokers(https://d2ue93q3u507c2.cloudfront.net/assets/robinhood/legal/RHF PFO Disclosure.pdf). Someone said what serious investor would let money sit without collecting interest if they wanted money to sit to collect interest it wouldnt be sitting in a margin account the reason for trading is to get a higher return than what current rates can achieve.
It's a big field, with a lot of ways to skin the cat - some are very low-risk - overnight lending, for example. Some are high risk - MF Global ultra-high leverage bets against Greek debt (or something like that). If they say it upfront (MF didn't - they lied) - then it's probably a lot safer because they're basically inviting regulators to oversee it. Still, caution till they prove it is a good rule.
I don't know if there is ever going to be a desktop version...the reason for zero cost commission is because of the simplicity of just having it on the mobile platform....as for the size of the screen everything is reasonable to trade with, it's set up to trade on the smallest of smart phones. I have 6 inch screen so it's simple...as you mentioned about taking small positions. You are absolutely right....you don't have commission eating up your trading costs...after you trade for free paying $5 at Ameritrade or E-Trade seems expensive But today I took tiny trades on SSO, TNA, SOXL and SPXL...so right there I paid zero commission where any other broker would have been at least $20-$25 ...I'm telling you I'm addicted to paying zero commission. Try it out. Fund it with $500 and just see what it's like...
Honestly since I'm trading in 10-50-100 share lots and use limit orders I'm not not bothered by the fills, if you trading thousands of shares then yes it's something to question.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/03/19/how-does-robinhood-make-money.aspx Pretty much a rehash of most of our posts.
Great article, they mention how long can a sustained model like this last referencing that it's been tried before and has failed every time ...this time I believe it could stay due to the fact of how many people use the service and how they have a simple platform with not much overhead compared to other brokers out there...there wasnt really much of a mobile platform back in the day, today I make over 99% of my trades on the go away from the computer. Since opening my account in early February I have already made 45 trades!!!! I have saved a huge $312.75 by using Robinhood over E-Trade or ameritrade. $312.75!!! Once you get the taste for free trading youll never want to pay commissions ever again.... Watch one of the big brokers come in and buy them out..... they are closing in on 5 million accounts in only a few years of being established. That's pretty insane!!
Honestly, if your capital limits are at this level you should be saving first, long term investing second, BUT definitely not trading.