It’s in Robinhood’s interest to speak in ways that indirectly support the conspiracy message.
They don’t get implicated in the conspiracy statements, but benefit from attention seekers like the Barstool guy screaming and hand waving. That distracts from the pretty obvious reasons why Robinhood is an awful and dangerous business and business model.
Now the mob is moving on to crypto and other scams, so the Robinhood PR strategy is perfectly executed and frankly, genius.
> Robinhood is an awful and dangerous business and business model.
That's why I scratch my head over this. It's not difficult to open a Vanguard or Fidelity account and be able to get better pricing on retail trades, even if you're paying a little up-front for certain trades. Nobody who's trying to invest in the stock market can sincerely believe the Robinhood trades are "free."
And Fidelity (for example) allows for other things that Robinhood can't. You can choose to lend your shares for shorts:
> Fidelity can also earn revenue loaning stocks in your account for short sales—with your permission, of course—and it shares that revenue with you. Fidelity tells us that for two months of lending certain hard to borrow securities, 38% of accounts earn $100 or less, another 37% earn between $100 and $1,000 and the remaining 25% earn over $1,000. Robinhood retains all the income it generates from loaning out customer stock and does not share it with the client.
They are just another discount broker, except they attract unsophisticated newcomers with growth hacker bullshit, accomplished by offering margin trading their customers don’t understand.
They don’t get implicated in the conspiracy statements, but benefit from attention seekers like the Barstool guy screaming and hand waving. That distracts from the pretty obvious reasons why Robinhood is an awful and dangerous business and business model.
Now the mob is moving on to crypto and other scams, so the Robinhood PR strategy is perfectly executed and frankly, genius.