What Is Robinhood?
Robinhood is a stockbroker app that focuses on helping everyday individuals get into investing and better their personal finance. The app has taken hold of millions of people. To be exact, the app has over 1 million downloads on the Apple store alone. They also have a total of 6 million active users, which is obviously a lot for one app. Altogether the app currently has over 12 million unique holdings. Robinhood’s mission is to “democratize finance for all. We believe that everyone should have access to the financial markets, so we’ve built Robinhood from the ground up to make investing friendly, approachable, and understandable for newcomers and experts alike.”
Why Choose Robinhood Over Traditional Brokers?
Robinhood is commission-free. This means that, unlike brokers, they do not take a percentage of your earnings. However, this could be a downfall to newcomers, who would not have the advantage of market knowledge. Whereas stockbrokers, especially experienced ones, typically have a lot of knowledge and information that could be invaluable to newcomers.
Where Can You Learn About the Stock Market?
The simplest place to start is YouTube. It’s free and there is a lot of great information. However, if you want something that might be more of a “classroom” type of environment, go to Skillshare and check out the courses they have on the economy and stock market. But the best option is to talk to someone with a securities license or series 6/7. This way you know the information is 100% accurate and they know what they are talking about.
How Does Robinhood Work?
Robinhood is the single largest internet-based stock-broker. Here are the first steps to trading:
- Step 1: Complete your applications – The app needs some information before it can get you trading on their platform. Fill in all necessary information and submit the application.
- Step 2: Transfer funds – Robinhood has a $0 account minimum, so it really does not matter how much you transfer to your Robinhood account. Just know that it’s actual money and you can lose it all. So be careful!
- Step 3: Start trading! – Once that money hits your account you can start trading.
That’s about all there is to Robinhood. It’s a fairly simple, user-friendly way to get into the stock market and learn how things actually work.