Quite the Turnaround

Yahoo Finance story that ran not a month ago, not a week ago, but yesterday:

Robinhood, which is responsible for popularizing both commission-free trades and fractional investing, has long had the goal of democratizing investing. In an interview with Yahoo Finance, CEO Vlad Tenev explained that the investing climate of the past few days has illustrated a key problem in the world of investing — inequity.

“Retail investors and individuals have felt like they’ve been talked down to. Lots of them felt like they haven’t been taken seriously,” he said. “There’s this term ‘sophisticated investor’ that’s been thrown around, so there’s an idea that they’re unsophisticated.” […]

“I think people are seeing now that [retail investors] now have the ability to invest and they’re empowered,” Tenev said.

Yesterday: Robinhood customers are empowered.

Today: Robinhood customers can’t buy the stocks they want to buy.

I don’t see how Robinhood ever recovers from this reputation-wise. Who would ever trust them after this? Their slogan was literally “Let the people trade.” They’re already in legal trouble too.

★ Thursday, 28 January 2021