Robinhood has lured young traders, sometimes with devastating results

Re:Robinhood has lured young traders, sometimes with devasta... by dh5 on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @05:24PM (#23774403)

Agreed, some degree of personal responsibility is needed in the case of addictive behavior. Robinhood in that aspect (gamification) falls into the same category as gambling, and the only difference is that is that it comes from the Bay Area as opposed to Vegas or AC.

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Re:Robinhood has lured young traders, sometimes with devasta... by kjksf on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @06:22PM (#23774848)

By that definition: does Strava and Duolingo fall into the same category as gambling?

Those are both highly gamified apps.

So maybe let's not play loose with meaning of words.

Gambling means 1 of 2:

"play games of chance for money; bet."

Investing is not a game of chance. I'm not making investing decisions randomly.

"take risky action in the hope of a desired result."

Investing could be gambling according to this definition (there are risky investment strategies) but on average investing in U.S. stock market is not risky.

If you abstain from doing risky things, you can have 8-15% yearly return by putting all your money in S&P 500 tracking stock.

And if you want to blame someone for people's risky investing, blame https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/ (1.3 million people reading stories like "$35k -> $1.25 in 4 months") not Robinhood for making an easy to use stock trading app.

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Re:Robinhood has lured young traders, sometimes with devasta... by andrewzah on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @05:38PM (#23774533)

Trading options is gambling. It is.

Just because TDAmeritrade has a very spartan UX doesn't mean people haven't made very stupid trades on it.

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Re:Robinhood has lured young traders, sometimes with devasta... by throaway1990 on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @08:46PM (#23775885)

You are right, but Options trading isn't available to people with less than $5k deposits on Robinhood and I think same is true with margins.

Robinhood is more agressive when it comes to margin calls, that actually protects inexperienced investors.

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