Robinhood postponing UK launch indefinitely

Wildsound

Email came through today and various news stories online about the move:

"Hi there, We’re saddened to share that we’ve made the difficult decision to postpone our UK launch indefinitely. We'll be closing our waitlist and taking down our UK website shortly. The world has changed a lot over the past several months and we’re adapting with it. On a company level, we’ve come to recognise that our efforts are currently best spent on strengthening our core business in the US and making further investments in our foundational systems. Since we announced our intent to launch in the UK, we’ve been fueled by your excitement for Robinhood and humbled by your response. We’re sorry that we cannot deliver the product we promised you this year. Although our global expansion plans are on hold for now, we will continue our work to democratise finance for all and we look forward to the day when we can bring this mission to the UK.

Sincerely, The Robinhood UK Team"

I'm personally disappointed by this as this was an exciting prospect for traders and would push competition harder.

83705628

Good, the lastthing we need is even more speculation distorting the market.

bowlhead99

tcallaghan93 said:

Good, the lastthing we need is even more speculation distorting the market.

Hear Hear!  People should continue 'distorting the market' by speculating through all their existing platforms instead, right?

Albermarle

Maybe not such a bad thing . From CNN

The family of a 20-year-old student says he died by suicide after confusion over an apparent negative balance of $730,000 on his Robinhood account. Now they are demanding answers from the millennial-focused trading app.The tragedy has drawn attention to the potential dangers of the free-trading boom inspired by Robinhood, which has given young, first-time investors easy access to exotic financial instruments typically used by sophisticated investors.

The Kearns family believes Alexander was misled by the app's interface suggesting he owed $730,000, when that was not really the case. Before the suicide he posted on Twitter 'How was a 20-year-old with no income able to get assigned almost a million dollars' worth of leverage?" Kearns wrote in the note that Brewster posted. "The puts I bought/sold should have cancelled out, too, but I also have no clue what I was doing now in hindsight."

"The kid threw himself in front of a train over nothing,
The incident underscores some of the risks involved with the free-trading boom.Brewster blamed Robinhood for simultaneously pushing its product to young traders while not putting in safeguards to prevent this kind of confusion.

barnstar2077

Albermarle said:

Maybe not such a bad thing . From CNN

The family of a 20-year-old student says he died by suicide after confusion over an apparent negative balance of $730,000 on his Robinhood account. Now they are demanding answers from the millennial-focused trading app.The tragedy has drawn attention to the potential dangers of the free-trading boom inspired by Robinhood, which has given young, first-time investors easy access to exotic financial instruments typically used by sophisticated investors.

The Kearns family believes Alexander was misled by the app's interface suggesting he owed $730,000, when that was not really the case. Before the suicide he posted on Twitter 'How was a 20-year-old with no income able to get assigned almost a million dollars' worth of leverage?" Kearns wrote in the note that Brewster posted. "The puts I bought/sold should have cancelled out, too, but I also have no clue what I was doing now in hindsight."

"The kid threw himself in front of a train over nothing,
The incident underscores some of the risks involved with the free-trading boom.Brewster blamed Robinhood for simultaneously pushing its product to young traders while not putting in safeguards to prevent this kind of confusion.

God, that is horrific!  I feel sorry for him and his family.

hoc

Bad for the UK trader, while there are decent fintech challengers on the current account scene our trade commissions are higher than most developed markets.

Ceme3000

I read that the announcement that Robinhood is postponing its UK launch indefinitely was responsible for an increase in Hargreaves Lansdown's share price. Not sure if that's true or not but I gather the success of Robinhood in the States caused other platforms there to reduce their dealing fees.

Malthusian

Despite being the Waitrose of the DIY platforms, Hargreaves Lansdown is already extremely cheap if you build your portfolio around ETFs and ITs, and have a big enough portfolio and can avoid switching too often so that you don't lose on trading costs what you gain on platform fees. Other platforms are cheaper still.

Trading costs are irrelevant to punters. A punter needs to lose a given amount of money X before they get disillusioned and give up (or go bankrupt). How much of X is accounted for by trading costs and how much by the transfer of their wealth to more sophisticated market participants makes no difference to X.

For the tiny minority who successfully get rich and cash out, trading costs make a difference to their return, but not one they will lose any sleep over on their gold-plated 40-foot catamaran.

Ceme3000

Couldn't agree more! Which is why the movement in HL's share price surprised me.
https://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/news/hargreaves-shares-jump-10-as-major-us-player-axes-uk-launch/

Thrugelmir

Ceme3000 said:

Couldn't agree more! Which is why the movement in HL's share price surprised me.
https://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/news/hargreaves-shares-jump-10-as-major-us-player-axes-uk-launch/

Activity volumes in the UK have increased. With a fixed cost model the bulk of this falls directly to the bottom line.