Or will be burned by the next prolonged downturn and exit the market permanently.

Seems like I'm getting a lot of advice about the market from people with less knowledge about the market than shoe shine boys. My mom and my sister are invested in Dogecoin and neither can explain what a cryptocurrency is or even what the doge meme was to begin with. Seems like the next prolonged downturn is right around the corner.

Turns out the whole dealership, or at least most of the employees, traded crypto as a hobby. I asked a few questions, mainly about Proof of Work, and the salesman had no idea what that was. He was completely ignorant of how crypto worked.

The most common feature of assets bubbles is that they draw in people who would normally never engage in risky financial speculation. People early to the party get rich and that draws in everyone else. Its hard to stay out of the market when your neighbor has short-term gains larger than your salary.

In the tulip bubble, everyone was a botanist. In the tech bubble, everyone was an equity trader. In the housing bubble, everyone was flipping houses or getting their real estate license. Now everyone is a crypto trader. Regardless of how useful crypto will be in the future, there is only one way this party ends. Pumping trillions of dollars into the economy can delay the pain, but the pain seems inevitable at this point.

The casual throw away statement about business made during transit from a passenger might be important info.

This story is just elitism, and exactly the argument Wall Street used against RH. "unsophisticated traders". Sorry Mr Banker, the market is made up of people. Claiming unsophistication is a projection of their own insecurities.

There were very few Amazons in the mix, and very many Palms. Even a reliable blue-chip like Cisco is still underwater compared to its March 2000 price.

Hard to know exactly where we are right now, but certainly feels closer to the latter.

(not investing advice)

I use both Robinhood and Schwab, and the Robinhood app is absolutely terrible.

The visual aesthetic is nice, but usability is awful... I don't really understand the hype. For example they have no dedicated orders screen to cancel limit order that I can tell. There's an "inbox" where your limit order will show up after some delay. I placed an order once and decided to cancel it, but the inbox message didn't show up for 5 minutes, so I had no way to cancel it.

Also you can't see older than 5? years on stock charts. Or zoom or anything, only specific presets.

Finally, I bought a small amount of crypto, and did a market order sell once, and my fill price was like 10% under current market value. Obviously market orders are bad, but most brokers have safeguards that prevent executing them at such a difference from last traded price.

Anyway, bad experience all around. I imagine the only people who use it seriously are those that haven't tried more serious brokers, or that don't know any better.

The idea behind Robinhood is good, but it could be done so much better. So many obviously bad design elements

Most people will stop at RH, the idea of a complex brokerage account is beyond their comfort zone. They will not see the need to look elsewhere, as it has everything they believe they need in one app.

These things are not about you or I, they are about the acceptability by the masses. And the masses love RH. You cannot dismiss the huge effect they had on the industry with their business model, and they have lots more things planned.

I only used the app for a few weeks and encountered so many problems. I'm even surprised people tout their UI as a pro. The visual flair/theme is nice, but it's quite poor from a UX perspective.

Sidenote, I don't get why brokers don't offer a monthly payment to avoid having your order flow sold/provide better fills. Lots would take up on that