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Robinhood made trading easy but critics say it's also too hard to resist, making real money feel like a game. The company says the app wasn't built to be habit-forming, but it has some features that pull users back, such as animations, an initial scratch-off lottery ticket to win a share and intuitive design. The question is whether Robinhood is a little too good at what it does?
The app does have simplicity nailed. Every page it shows users is less cluttered than those on many older brokers' apps. Transferring money to your Robinhood account to start trading is a breeze: Unlike the TD Ameritrade app, for example, it doesn’t make you decide if you want a normal individual account, a Roth IRA, or perhaps one for “joint tenants.” Robinhood keeps things so basic it doesn’t offer individual retirement accounts at all. “In a time when there’s market volatility and a user who’s never invested before wants to participate, they are going to go to Robinhood because it’s the path of least resistance,” says Robert Le, a senior fintech analyst at research firm PitchBook.
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