Robinhood IRA Accounts
Robinhood was the first online broker in the U. S. to offer $0 stock commissions. But today, the
majority of brokers have the same trading fee. So just how competitive is Robinhood now? Our
Robinhood IRA review is going to provide the answer.
Robinhood Advantages...
Low margin rates. Robinhood is offering a great deal on borrowed cash.
Apple Watch app. Another unique offering that’s not available at several prominent firms.
Zero per-contract charges on options. The broker has even eliminated assignment and exercise fees.
Robinhood Disadvantages...
Few account types available.. There are no custodial, trust, or joint accounts.
Unrefined trading tools. A lot of features are missing.
Customer support lacks a lot. Many Robinhood customers have complained about the service
they have received.
No mutual funds. Investors looking for mutual funds are left in the cold.
Tradable Assets
Robinhood offers the following investments:
- Stocks
- Options
- Exchange-traded funds
- Closed-end funds
- A small selection of over-the-counter equities
- Cryptocurrencies (7 are available)
The crypto offering piques some interest. Missing on the list, however, are futures, regular
forex, mutual funds, fixed-income securities, contracts for difference, warrants, and precious
metals.
Customer Service
This has been Robinhood’s Achilles' heel from the very beginning. In order to deliver zero commissions on every trade, the company has to cut costs somewhere; and this is one place it cuts.
Robinhood offers 24/7 phone support for any issue: 650.940.2700.
The Robinhood website has no chat, either in AI or human format; and there aren’t many self-service features, either. There is a method of reaching out to the broker via the website at Robinhood.com/contact.
Robinhood has no brick-and-mortar locations, and we don’t ever expect to see any.
Account Types
Robinhood offers individual brokerage accounts only. Don’t bother asking about trusts, custodial accounts, or 401(k) plans. The broker doesn’t even offer joint accounts.
Margin is available; and in fact, every new Robinhood account now is a margin account.
There are no account fees or minimums at Robinhood. The company does charge $75 to transfer an account to another broker.
The Cost of Trading
So it appears that Robinhood doesn’t offer very much. But what does it charge? Not much, either.
The broker promises that it will never charge commissions, and so far, it has kept that promise. All of the investments it offers are commission free, and this includes per-contract charges on option trades. Even assignments and exercises are free.
Using a live agent over the phone (if you can get a hold of one) to submit an order is free, too.
Robinhood Gold is a margin account on steroids. It costs $5 per month and comes with instant deposits above $1,000. (A regular account gets instant deposits below $1,000.) Gold also comes with Level II quotes and Morningstar reports.
Robinhood Promotion
Free stock up to $200 and 1% IRA match when you open an account.
Open Robinhood Account
Mobile Platform
A mobile app is available to Robinhood customers that functions on Android and Apple phones. It is not designed for tablets.
The software comes with charting, although it’s very basic. There are 2 display styles (line and candlestick), and no tools of any kind. A chart cannot be rotated horizontally.
During our analysis, we found both market-hours and extended-hours pricing. There is also trade data, such as volume, high and low numbers, and last trade price.
The platform also shows what other customers have bought at Robinhood. For example, on General Electric’s profile, Robinhood shows that traders also bought Westinghouse and Ford.
The order ticket on Robinhood’s mobile platform splits into two display choices: options and stocks. For options, the app will first ask you if you think the underlying instrument is going up, down, or sideways. Based on your answer, the software will offer short-term, mid-term, and long-term trade ideas. Some of these are multi-leg strategies like straddles and strangles.
The stock trading form provides 4 order types: market, limit, stop loss, and stop limit. Each limit order has to be specified as either market-hours only or day plus extended.
Robinhood’s app for Apple Watch delivers a watchlist, a small graph, and trade confirmations.
Website
Robinhood’s site has a similar look and feel as the mobile app. There are two color themes, light and dark; and these automatically change whether the market is open (light) or closed (dark).
Charting on the website is a little better than what we found on the mobile platform. For example, a graph can be shown horizontally. And there are a few technical indicators. We found four of them—admittedly not very many of them, but they’re there.
One really unique feature is the ability to increase or decrease the size of the charting area vertically, which simultaneously increases or decreases the size of the indicator’s area.
The order ticket has one more trade type (trailing stop order) than the mobile app. And the extended-hours option is a little different, too. This time, a box needs to be checked to specify extended-hours execution.
Strangely, options can’t be traded from the chart space. Instead, you have to go back to the stock’s profile page and click on the “Trade Option” button. It is possible to enter a stock order from a chart.
Another weird thing about Robinhood’s derivative trading ticket is that only calls and puts are available. (On the mobile app, there are a few strategies.) And the calls and puts aren’t presented in normal chains. It’s not necessarily bad, but it is different.
Funds
As already mentioned, there are no mutual funds at Robinhood. But the broker-dealer does provide access to closed-end funds and ETF’s. Unfortunately, there’s not much of a screener for these products.
The best way to find ETF’s may be to go to the dashboard and scroll down to “Popular Collections.” Here, there are various categories of securities, such as “Video Games” and “Upcoming Earnings.” These are groups of stocks, but there’s an “ETF” tag as well.
Clicking on this last button generates a list of 500 funds. The results can be narrowed by market cap, analyst ratings, price change over a day, and current price. They can also be sorted by the same criteria.
As for closed-end funds, there’s also no screener for them, either. Finding the tag under “Popular Collections” may be daunting. It may be simpler to type in the URL Robinhood.com/collections/closed-end-fund.
A fund’s profile page doesn’t contain a cornucopia of information. We found information on P/E ratio, dividend yield, market cap, and earnings history. There are no trade recommendations or fund commentary from anyone.
Security Analysis Tools
Robinhood is known for cutting back on services, and this is one area where the broker doesn’t stray from convention. Sadly, there is no stock screener Robinhood customers can use. It is possible to go through the Popular Collections section mentioned earlier and find groups of stocks, such as technology or finance.
In the right-hand column, there are a few variables that can be manipulated to narrow down the results. One of these is price. There’s a convenient interactive price slider to quickly cut the choices down. The percent change in price can also be adjusted from 1 day to 5 years.
There is very little in terms of financial education on the Robinhood site. The brokerage firm does have a list of FAQ’s that many new customers will have.
Robinhood does not provide any third-party stock reports.
Trading Option Contracts
Option tools are also in short supply at Robinhood. There are no probability calculators, derivative screeners, profit-loss diagrams, Greek values, or other advanced tools.
On both the website and mobile app, traditional chains aren’t used. Instead, Robinhood uses its own system of displaying calls only or puts only. During our trial of the system, we found it easy to switch back and forth between the two choices.
The mobile app actually begins with a Q&A session centered around the user’s forecast for the underlying stock’s price. There are four icons: up, down, either, and sideways. After selecting one, the app will offer some trade ideas. These are:
- Buy a put
- Buy a call
- Buy a straddle or strangle
- Buy an iron condor
Surprisingly, the website doesn’t offer these multi-leg trades; although they can be manually built.
Digital Currencies
Now it’s time to look at what is perhaps the company’s most popular offering right now: cryptocurrency
trading. Here are the coins available:
- Aave (AAVE)
- Avalanche (AVAX)
- Bitcoin (BTC)
- Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
- Chainlink (LINK)
- Compound (COMP)
- Dogecoin (DOGE)
- Ethereum (ETH)
- Ethereum Classic (ETC)
- Litecoin (LTC)
- Shiba Inu (SHIB)
- Steller Lumens (XLM)
- Tezos (XTZ)
- Uniswap (UNI)
- USDC (USDC)
Other coins, such as NEO, Zcash, and Bitcoin Gold have streaming data. The only time clients can’t trade coins is when the broker’s site is down for maintenance.
Robinhood does not support coin withdrawals, so if you want to withdraw your crypto holdings, you must first sell them, and then withdraw the cash. It’s also not possible to transfer coins into Robinhood.
While these policies aren’t the best, it’s a start. And the broker says it has plans for more coins in the future.
Robinhood Promotion
Free stock up to $200 and 1% IRA match when you open an account.
Open Robinhood Account
Other Services
Robinhood does have a DRIP service for all eligible stocks and ETFs. There’s no auto investing in
mutual funds. Maybe someday.
Comparison
And now we come to how all of this compares to Robinhood’s rivals. Now that most broker-dealers offer some type of $0 pricing schedule, Robinhood has lots of competition.
Most firms do continue to charge per-contract option fees. These include big names like Fidelity, Schwab, and E*Trade. Firstrade is with Robinhood, not assessing per-contract fees.
When it comes to software, Robinhood underperforms most brokers. WellsTrade is about as elementary as Robinhood.
While Robinhood doesn’t offer access to global stock exchanges, Schwab and Fidelity do.
Recommendations
Mutual Fund Investors: Charles Schwab and
Firstrade
are good choices.
Individual Retirement Accounts: Robinhood is the only broker to offer a 1% free IRA match.
Beginners: Robinhood does
have user-friendly software, which would be beneficial to new traders.
Active ETF and Stock Trading: With a $0 commission schedule, plenty of stock and ETF
resources, and a very nice desktop platform, we have to recommend
Webull.
Long-Term Investors and Retirement Savers: Charles Schwab
offers financial planning services, branch locations, target-date mutual funds, and self-employed 401(k)
plans. It gets our approval.
Small Accounts: With no minimums, no fees, and no opening balance requirement, Robinhood would
be a great pick.
Robinhood Review Summary
Although Robinhood is a major outperformer in the crypto category, it seems to falter in other areas.
Robinhood Promotion
Free stock up to $200 and 1% IRA match when you open an account.
Open Robinhood Account
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