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• 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Best for Cryptocurrency trading

Our Take

Robinhood may have taken the industry by storm when it launched in 2013, pioneering the no-fee trading model, but its first-mover advantage is l🐟ong gone. In 2025, nearly all brokers offer comm🉐ission-free trading, companies have to find innovative ways to stay competitive, and Robinhood has done a commendable job. Maintaining its no-fee, easy-to-use vibe, the company now offers much-improved trading platforms, an expanded number of available assets, including crypto and futures, more account types, solid banking features, and even a robo-advisor.

Robinhood Legend, the company’s brand new web platform, is built from the ground up. Its sleek and beautiful interface brings active traders some of the more advanced research capabilities they've been seeking. The company also launched index options, as well as futures trading, adding to its existing lineup of stock, ETF, option, and cryptocurrency trading.

While there has been a clear focus on improving access to a growing library of educational content, offering more retirement account benefits, and enhancing active trading capabilities. However, more advanced traders and investors who need the most sophisticated financial, research, and trading tools will find that they are not Robinhood's target audience. We’ll explore Robinhood in more detail so you can determine if the platform makes sense for you.

Introduction

Robinhood was founded in 2013 by two former Stanford roommates, Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt. Launched with a desire to expand access to the market by reducing barriers to entry, the platform quickly found a home with young, tech-friendly traders thanks to a simple design and intuitive trading experience. As of March 11, 2025, the brokerage boasts 25.6 million funded customers and $187 billion in assets under custody.

No-commission and no-account minimum trading makes it easy for beginners to get started, and the ability to trade 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:fractional shares gives users access to a greater range of assets than they might otherwise be able to afford. Robinhood provides access to trading in stocks, options, ETFs, and direct cryptocurrencies, and, as of Jan. 29, 2025, it also launched futures, making its asset selection even more competitive.

Despite ongoing enhancements, the platform is still light on some features other full-service brokers possess and may drive sophisticated investors to seek alternatives. For example, Robinhood offers no fixed income, mutual fund, or foreign exchange, thereby restricting trading and investing strategies that require a wide array of asset classes.

Robinhood is among a handful of brokers that offer a 24-hour market, allowing customers to trade select stocks and ETFs 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. The broker also continues to expand its Learn section with more material and has enhanced the onboarding questionnaire to help users understand investing basics while setting risk parameters that match their tolerance. 

Robinhood’s platform has improved in other areas, as well. Cash management enhancements, such as providing a higher interest rate on uninvested cash for its premium Gold members, as well as a cash card product, have helped to round out the platform and draw in more clients. As recently as Oct. 16, 2024, Robinhood took a major step in enhancing its active trader capabilities with the launch of its new web-based platform, Robinhood Legend. It also now gives clients the ability to choose tax lots when selling their positions, opening the door for potential tax savings.

Pros & Cons

Pros Explained

• Clean, intuitive trading experience: Robinhood's platform lets investors trade in the market seamlessly. The sleek mobile app design reflects Robinhood’s mobile-first approach, although a new, more powerful web-based platform is available as well.
• No trading commissions on most assets: This is the hallmark of Robinhood’s platform. Thanks to its innovative challenge to the industry, many brokers were forced to reduce or eliminate their trading commissions to remain competitive. Keep in mind that Robinhood does charge for futures trading.
• Fractional share trading and direct cryptocurrency access: Fractional share purchases can be made with as little as $1, and the dividend reinvestment program (DRIP) automatically reinvests dividends from stocks or ETFs (provided the positions support fractional shares). Direct crypto access allows traders to buy and sell over 25 coins with ease.
• Solid cash management features and recurring investment functionality: An innovative cash card lets users invest rewards earned from purchases. 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Interest on cash sweep accounts allows premium Robinhood Gold members to now earn 4.00% on uninvested cash.
• IRA match: Robinhood will actually give cash to its customers as a match on their IRA contributions. It matches 1% for regular customers and 3% for gold-level subscribers. The gold-level subscription costs $50 per year, so even a $2,000 contribution becomes worthwhile. However, to keep the match, the customer must keep the gold subscription for one year and maintain a balance greater than the contribution for five years.

Cons Explained

• Limited asset types: Robinhood has recently added retirement accounts but still doesn’t offer all of the assets some investors may be looking for, including fixed income, mutual funds, and foreign exchange. Moreover, only brokerage, IRA, Roth IRA, and joint accounts can be opened on Robinhood. Investors are deprived of savings and other account types available at full-service competitors.
• Limited research: Although the charting functionality of its web-based trading platform has witnessed a material upgrade, screening capabilities and fundamental research tools at Robinhood don’t measure up to competitor standards.
• Lack of transparency: Robinhood's lack of transparency on outages and trading restrictions with meme stocks in 2021 gave many traders pause before utilizing Robinhood as their preferred platform. In the aftermath of those account restrictions, investors were not confident that they would have access to their positions. Since then, Robinhood has become more transparent about 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:payment for order flow (PFOF) and publishes its 606 reports, but an average client may not realize just how big of a revenue source PFOF is for the company. Some argue traders are not Robinhood’s primary customers–market makers are.

Usability

Robinhood’s app is simple and user-friendly. Robinhood’s mobile-first approach makes it an easy choice for investors who prefer to trade from their phone. The company's new web-based platform, Legend, is a significant upgrade to its predecessor, which largely mimicked the mobile platform. Available at no additional cost to anyone with a Robinhood account, Legend is a beautiful platform that brings fluid customizability to active traders.

Designed from the ground up, Legend allows for easy setup of a trader's preferred layout by either using their own custom layout or choosing from templates. Once up and running, customers can initiate trades with ease by creating orders with one click directly from a watchlist, their positions, or an options chain. Users can also trade directly on a chart. 

The platform allows traders to view up to 8 charts in a single window, with dozens of chart settings and several chart types, including 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:equivolume, candle, 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Heikin Ashi,꧋ line, and more. Legend also features a💦 host of new technical indicators, provides many drawing tools, and allows customers to view data in custom intervals down to the tick. 

In addition to improved charting, Robinhood designed Legend to deliver deeper analysis of assets on customers' watchlists, as well as their open orders, positions, and prospective options contracts. Real-time pricing is updated on Legend at sub-second intervals. Available widgets can be linked to create synced groups, allowing for symbols to be updated instantly across layouts and tabs, even across multiple monitors.  

Mobile Trade Experience

​​Robinhood built its name as a mobile-first brokerage that aims to m🍷ake trading simple. It makes sense, then, that more complex trading tools and research options are largely absent from the mobile trade experience. For instance, no chart drawing tools are available on mobile, and trades can’t be executed directly from charts. Order staging and simultaneous order entry options are also not available. 

Options traders will only find that the app allows for stop, stop limit, and stop market orders, while equity traders can use market, limit, stop, stop limit, and trailing stop orders. Advanced tra🌊ders will notice that conditional orders aren’t supported. That said, quotes from the Robinhood ♊app do at least stream in real-time.

Range of Offerings

Robinhood offers stocks, ETFs, options, fractional shares, cryptocurrency, and futures trading. Robinhood doesn’t suppo🐼rt mutual funds or fixed-i🐟ncome products, and you can’t trade commodities and forex.

If you choose Ro꧒binhood as your broker, you caཧn invest in:

• Stocks: Long only; no short selling; American depository receipts (ADRs) available.
• Fractional shares: Stocks worth over $1.00 per share with a market capitalization over $25,000,000 are eligible for fractional share orders; Robinhood offers both stocks and ETFs. 
• Options: Index options up to 4 legs are included.
• Cryptocurrency: Over 25 coins are available to trade.
• Futures: Robinhood supports futures on stock indices, energy, currency, metals, and crypto. 
• Non-custodial wallets: Robinhood offers a web3 wallet for iOS and Android, which allows customers to control crypto in a seamless, decentralized web experience.
• Stock lending: Robinhood users can lend out fully paid stocks in their portfolio.

On March 17, 2025, Robinhood also announced the launch of the Prediction Markets Hub within its Robinhood app, allowing customers to place binary trades on the outcome of events such as what the upper bound of the target fed funds rate will be in May, and the upcoming men’s and women’s College Basketball Tournaments. The company said the contracts will become available to all eligible customers in the near future.

Order Types

Robinhood has a limited number of available order types compared to full-service brokers. It offers a range of market and limit orders but no conditional orders. Order staging is also absent. 

Support for more sophisticated order types, like order-triggers-other (OTO) is important because they help traders navigate risk, quickly enter and exit positions, and take gains off the table. As a result, traders using conditional orders can spend more time analyzing the market and pl𓆏anning their next move wi🌳thout having to watch current trades as closely. This is another sign that Robinhood isn’t built for advanced traders.

On the plus side, Robinhood recently launched the ability for clien💯ts to select preferred tax lots when closing out their positions, allowing for potential savings on the tax bill.

Trading Technology

The way a broker routes your order determines how good of a price you will get. The best brokers aim to deliver price improvement, meaning your order is executed at a price better than what was available when you placed the trade. Robinhood states that its trading systems are set up to automatically route your order to the market maker, who is most likely to give you the best price based on historical performance. Robinhood reports that 95.58% of orders are executed at 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:National Best Bid and Offer (NBBO) or better. The average price improvement is $2.21 per 100 shares of stoc🌳ks, but the company doesn’t report figures for options.

In terms of other trading technology, Robinhood gives you the ability to make recurring investments, which is a helpful feature. In keeping with its simplified approach to investing, Robinhood doesn’t allow you to perform backtests or offer a demo accountꦚ.

Costs

Similar to most of its competitors, Robinhood 🃏does not charge trading commissions, except when trading futures and index options. There are also some other fees that are listed below.

• All equity trades (stocks and ETFs) are commission-free.
• There are no commissions for options trades.
• Futures are $0.75 per contract, per side for regular accounts, and $0.50 per contract, per side for Robinhood Gold accounts.
• Index options are $0.50 per contract for regular accounts, and $0.35 per contract for Robinhood Gold accounts.
• The standard margin interest rate for non-Gold users is currently between 4.70% and 5.75% as of April 8, 2025.
• Robinhood Gold members get $1,000 in interest free margin trading. The subscription costs $5 per month and comes with a number of other benefits.
• There is a $100 account transfer fee.
• There are no domestic or international incoming wire fees.
• There are no account opening, account maintenance, or account inactivity fees.
• To send a domestic check overnight, the fee is $20.

How This B🎃roker Makes Money From You and for You

The fees and commissions 𝐆listed above are visible to customers, but there are a few behind-the-scenes ways Robinhood makes money from you (and for you).

• Interest on cash: Like most brokers, Robinhood generates interest income from the difference between what you are paid on your idle cash and what it can earn on customer cash balances. Some brokers pass part of these earnings on to customers. At the time of this review, U.S. Robinhood Gold members earn 4.00%.
• Payment for order flow: Many brokers generate income by accepting payment from market makers for directing orders to those trading venues. This is called payment for order flow (PFOF). For more details on Robinhood's payment for order flow practices, SEC disclosures can be found online.
• Stock loan programs: Stock loan programs generate revenue for brokers when stocks held in customer accounts are loaned to other traders or hedge funds, usually to 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:sell that stock short. Robinhood pays you 15% of the income it earns from lending the shares. The program is available to customers who have trading experience other than "none," at least $25,000 of reported income, or at least $5,000 in account value.
• Price improvement: Robinhood's smart order router seeks out price improvement, which benefits you as the customer, and attains an average of $2.21 per 100 shares.
• Margin Interest: Robinhood offers margin trading, which is borrowing additional capital to trade with. Like any other loan, interest is charged on the money borrowed, creating a source of revenue for Robinhood. The standard margin interest rate as of April 8, 2025, ranges between 4.70% and 5.75%. Robinhood Gold members can borrow the first $1,000 interest free.
• Retirement account matches: New contributions from outside the platform to IRA or Roth IRA accounts (up to the IRA contribution limit) receive a 1% match from Robinhood. To retain the match, however, the contribution amount needs to stay on the platform for five years.

Account and Research Amenities

Although the company has been working on improving it♑s account and research amenities, it now offers solid cash 🐈account offerings and drastically enhanced charting capabilities. However, the platform still lags behind larger, more advanced competitors.

Stock Screener

Robinhood offers a stock screener with over 20 filters.

ETF and Mutual Fund Screener

Robinhood does not offer any E꧃TF or mutual fund screeners. However, ETFs may be searchable with the stock screener.

Options Screener

Robinhood does not offer any options screeners.

Fixed-Income Screener

Robinhood does not offe♏r any fixedꦓ-income screeners.

Tools and Calculators

Robinhood does not off♒er any 🧜tools or calculators.

Charting

Robinhood's charting capabilities took a giant leap forward recently, with the Oct. 16, 2024, rollout of its brand new web-based platform, Robinhood Legend. When it comes to adjusting and customizing charts and other widget windows, the experience doesn't get much better. In a major step forward for Robinhood's desktop experience, traders can now view up to 8 charts in a single window. Traders will also find dozens of new chart settings and chart types. Legend also features a number of new technical indicators, provides popular drawing tool functionality, and allows customers to view data in custom intervals down to the tick.

Trading Idea Generators

🌠Robinhood does not of🅰fer trade idea generators. However, you can access trusted news sources for free through its newsfeed.

News

As a Robinhood customer, you can stay up to date with in-app Wall Street Journal market coverage, as well as news from Reuters and Barron’s, and video coverage from CNBC Business, Reuters, and Cheddar. Additionally, Robinhood offers Robinhood Snacks, which is a daily three-minuteꦐ newsletter that anyone can subscribe to. Robinhood also produces podcast and video content.

Third-Party Research

Robinhood Gold members are provided with unlimited access to Morningstar's premium, in-depth stock research reports. These reports are available on about 1,700 stocks and are updated frequently to reflect important company events. As a Robinhood Gold member, ♉you will have access to Nasdaq Level 2 market data powered by Nasdaq TotalView.

Cash Management

Robinhood does not support money market funds. However, its cash management brokerage feature offers 0.01% on uninvested cash balances to customers enrolled in its deposit sweep program. Robinhood Gold members can now earn 4.00% on uninvested cash. The auto-sweep feature is enabled by default, which is an added bonus.

Robinhood offers an innovative Cash Card. This new take on a debit card allows users to earn stock and crypto rewards with each purchase. The card offers cash back opportunities, allows clients to automatically invest a part of each paycheck, and offers to get paid up to 2 days early for those who set up direct deposit. Cash Card holders can also use 75,000 ATMs, although ATM fees may apply. The card builds on Robinhood’s mission of democratizing finance and investing in a new, enjoyable format.

During its second annual Gold keynote event held on March 26, 2025, the company also announced the upcoming launch of Robinhood Banking. The new banking experience, expected to roll out for Robinhood Gold clients in the fall of 2025, will have all typical banking features, but will also offer 4% savings APY, provide access to estate planning and professional tax advice, offer international transfers to 100+ countries, and come with travel and social perks.

Fractional Dividend Reinvestment Plan (DRIP)

As a Robinhood user, you can specify dividend reinvestment at the time you purchase a dividend-paying stock. If the stock is♎ eligible for fractional shares, the DRIP will purchase them with any leftovers.

SRI/ESG Research Amenities

Although there are no socially responsible♊ investing (SRI) or environmental, social, and gꦯovernance (ESG) screeners per se, Robinhood Lꩲists enables you to search and discover various sectors and t🧸hemes within the market, including companies focusing on SRI and ESG.

Portfolio Analysis

The new Legend web platform offers much-needed por𓄧tfolio analysis enhancements, like dozens of metrics that traders can use to monitor and analy✨ze assets in their watchlist, keep track of open orders, and manage positions.

However, there is no asset allocation, internal rate of return analysis, or ability to estimate the tax impact of a planned trade. There is also no trading journal. To perform any kind of portfolio analysis, you'll have to import your transactions into another program or website.

Robinhood now also has its own robo-advisor - on March 26, 2025, at its second annual Gold keynote event, the company unveiled Robinhood Strategies. The automated financial advisor constructs portfolios based on clients’ preferences, allows to add or remove any specific stock, and can even model and adjust expected performance based on 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Monte Carlo simulations.

It also allows to harvest tax losses, although, like most robo-advisors, speaking to a human advisor is not possible. Robinhood Strategies’ standard fee is 0.25% annually, although it decreases as your account grows. Robinhood Gold clie🅺nts get free management for ever💞y dollar over $100,000.

Education

Robinhood’s website contains a vast learn section filled with articles on investing basics, market insights, and general knowledge-building material. The apps also have a First Trade Recommendations feature, designed to help new investors begin their financial journey. Content hel💜ping traders understand more advanced options trading strategies has also been added. The acquisition of Say Technologies lets traders take more ownership of the companies they invest in, empowering users to participate by asking questions to companies and leadership teams.

Robinhood offers several additional content avenues to keep users informed and educated. For example🍃, its email newsletter (published by a subsidiary, Sherwood Media) aims to inform investors on a variety of subjects, including market dynamics and trade ideas.   

Through Sherwood Media, Robinhood also offers Snacks, a three-minute newsletter that delivers the day’s top financial news stories to its readers every weekday. Snacks boasted a robust following of 40 million subscrib🍰ers as of April 2022. Snacks combine text with exciting and helpful visuals to make financial news less intimidating.

Lastly, there is the Under The Hood podcast, hosted by one of the co-founders and often featuring prominent guests from the financial industry, offering unique perspectives on the market.

Customer Service

Robinhood's main customer service contact point is through the website and app. The company offers 24/7 live chat support as well as a large library of support articles. To speak with a support agent, you must give your number for a call back. Robinhood says the phone number is for information only, not support. The company also has social media channels, but it's better to contact support through the website or app. Robinhood offers extended-hours trading from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday.

Security and Reliability

• Mobile app users can log in with a face or fingerprint scan.
• Robinhood encourages users to enable two-factor authentication.
• New logins from unrecognized devices also need to be verified with a six-digit code that is sent via text message or email in case two-factor authentication is not enabled.
• Robinhood is a member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), which protects its members' securities customers for up to $500,000 (including $250,000 for claims for cash). The company has purchased additional insurance with a $1 billion aggregate limit for securities and cash. The per-customer limit is $50 million total in securities and $1.90 million for cash. Both forms of insurance do not protect against a loss in the market value of securities.
• Robinhood has reported data breaches within the past four years. The most recent was in 2021. A customer list of around five million email addresses with other information, along with another list of around two million names and other information, was obtained. No financial loss occurred, and no financial information was obtained by the hackers, although in January 2025, Robinhood was ordered to pay $45 million to settle the SEC’s investigation into the matter.

Transparency

Robinhood was a disruptive force in the brokerage industry, helping young investors get into the market. Much like any U.S.-based broker, it is well-regulated and safe for users. Nonetheless, in recent years, the company’s motives have been questioned, with issues centered around data, transparency, and trust. In December 2020, the SEC fined Robinhood $65 million for “misleading customers about revenue sources and failing to satisfy duty of best execution." Robinhood also falsely claimed on its website that its execution quality matched or beat that of its competitors. The SEC concluded that Robinhood’s inferior trading prices ultimately deprived investors on its platform of $34.1 million.

Robinhood was brought into the spotlight again in January 2021, after it decided to restrict access to certain securities such as GameStop, AMC Entertainment, Nokia, and others during the market frenzy surrounding the Reddit short squeeze on the stocks. One of Robinhood's primary market makers, Citadel Clearing, has ownership in the hedge fund Melvin Capital, which was one of the largest short sellers of GameStop and others. The decision to restrict customer buy orders for these stocks led many to suspect a conflict of interest, spurring class-action lawsuits and the attention of some members of Congress.

More recently, on March 7, 2025, FINRA fined the company nearly $30 million, primarily over inadequate anti-money laundering practices, as well as for “collaring” market orders, meaning converting them to limit orders without proper disclosure to clients.

The Bottom Line

Roughly 12 years after disrupting the market byꦦ launching no-fee trading, the Robinhood of 2025 stays true to the self-proclaimed mission of democratizing investing for all. Maintaining its no-fees, no-frills, easy-to-use vibe and feel, the brokerage now also offers a greatly expanded list of available assets, including crypto and futures, a significantly more advanced web platforඣm, more account types, a robo-advisor, and cash management features that are among the most competitive in the industry. The newsfeeds and podcasts available through Sherwood Media are also lively and helpful for new users to follow.

That said, however, Robinhood still isn’t a place for advanced traders and investors. The lack of assets like fixed income, mutual funds, and foreign exchange is a serious limitation. Order types, trading tools, and research amenities, though improving, are still limited. Overall, Robinhood provides a platform that makes it easy and enjoyable to trade, but a relativeಌ shortage of features and functionality means it likely won’t be the broker of choice for advanced traders.

How We Picked the Best Online Brokers and♏ Trading Platforꦍms

Providing readers with unbiased, comprehensive reviews of online brokers and trading platforms is a top priority for Investopedia. We combined our industry research and subject matter e🃏xpertise to guide the research and weightings for our 2025 online broker rankings. To collect the data, our researchers collected data points through online research of provider website🌟s. To fill in any gaps, our research team reached out to the individual brokerages. In some instances, our researchers did much deeper online research to get the information they needed to complete the data collection. The data collection process spanned from Dec. 20, 2024 to Feb 19, 2025.

We then developed a proprietary model that scored each company to rate its performance across 11 major categories and 120 criteria to find the best online brokers and trading platforms. The score for each company’s overall star rating is a weighted average of the criteria in the following categories:

Online Broker Evaluation Categories

Through this all-encompassing data collection and review process, Investopedia has provided you with an unbiased and thorough review of the top online brokers and trading plat✅forms.