Review - Robinhood Investing App

Robinhood is an online investment brokerage that offers commission-free stock, ETF, and options trading.  While Robinhood used to stand out as one of the only brokers to offer commission-free trading, their model has forced a lot of the bigger brokers to follow suit to remain competitive.  Robinhood offers both web and mobile trading, but can leave something to be desired with it's bare bones model.  So let's take a look at some of the Pro's and Con's as they relate to Robinhood.

Pros:

- No account minimum

- Simple user interface

- Commission Free Trading

- Fractional Shares - Available for some user coming for all users in the near future

If you are new to investing and just looking to get started investing then Robinhood is a great way to get started.  For users new to investing the simplistic design of Robinhood's app makes it very easy for a user to understand and use.  Robinhood's basic search functionality will not leave new users overwhelmed with a lot of charts and numbers they may not understand.  The commission free trading used to be a big selling point for Robinhood, but is not the huge advantage that it once was as big brokerages have been force to follow suit to stay competitive.  Fractional shares trading is a new feature to Robinhood that has not been rolled out to all users at the time of this posting, but should be rolling out to all users at some point.  Fractional shares are nice when you are just starting out and don't want to put all your eggs in one basket.  

Cons:

- No retirement accounts

- No mutual funds or bonds

- Limited Customer Support

If you are looking for tax advantage retirement account you won't find that with Robinhood as they all offer taxable options and no access to mutual funds or bond purchasing.  There is also limited customer support that is limited to email only.  So if you are someone that wants to talk to a person if you have questions you won't find that here.  Something that I mentioned in the pros could be a cons for some users as you will have to do a lot of in depth research outside of the Robinhood app, because of the limited search functionality.  

Overall Robinhood is a good choice for you if you are looking for a streamlined interface with some limits as a secondary brokerage account.  If you are looking to build your retirement then looking at some of the bigger firms is probably a better option.

Robinhood does offer new accounts a free stock once you link a bank account when you sign up, so even if Robinhood doesn't sound like the right choice you signing up could still get you a free stock valued up to $250.  

Sign up for Robinhood