Robinhood's Guinea Pig for Upending Public Offerings: Itself (nytimes.com) 28
When Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt created the stock trading app Robinhood in 2013, the entrepreneurs declared that their mission was to democratize Wall Street and make finance accessible to all. Now as they prepare to make their company public, they are taking that ethos to a new extreme. From a report: Mr. Tenev and Mr. Bhatt have long discussed how Robinhood's initial public offering would be more open than any other offering that came before it, three people close to the company said. This week, the two founders laid out the details: Robinhood plans to sell as much as a third of its offering, or $770 million of shares, directly to customers through its app. The company added that anyone can participate in a special livestream of its investor presentations this Saturday.
The moves are highly unusual and upend the traditional I.P.O. process. No company has ever offered so many shares to everyday investors at the outset; firms typically reserve just 1 or 2 percent of their shares for customers. And investor presentations usually take place behind closed doors with Wall Street firms, which have long had the most access to public offerings. But Mr. Tenev and Mr. Bhatt have made plans since at least 2019 to change the way I.P.O.s are done, said a person familiar with the company who was not authorized to speak publicly. Robinhood also chose Goldman Sachs to lead its offering partly because of the bank's ability to help sell pre-I.P.O. shares -- normally reserved for professionally managed funds -- to thousands of everyday investors on Robinhood's app, another person involved in the offering said.
The moves are highly unusual and upend the traditional I.P.O. process. No company has ever offered so many shares to everyday investors at the outset; firms typically reserve just 1 or 2 percent of their shares for customers. And investor presentations usually take place behind closed doors with Wall Street firms, which have long had the most access to public offerings. But Mr. Tenev and Mr. Bhatt have made plans since at least 2019 to change the way I.P.O.s are done, said a person familiar with the company who was not authorized to speak publicly. Robinhood also chose Goldman Sachs to lead its offering partly because of the bank's ability to help sell pre-I.P.O. shares -- normally reserved for professionally managed funds -- to thousands of everyday investors on Robinhood's app, another person involved in the offering said.
How Are They Different... (Score:2)
Re: How Are They Different... (Score:2)
If it's anything like in the US, they're even more discount.
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from discount brokerages?
Fundamentally, they're not, or not much. But, perhaps people feel intimidated working with older, larger, more established companies like Vangard, Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, etc... and think this small(er) startup will be more suited to small(er) investors. I don't think that's necessarily the actual case, but could see how people might believe that. Personally, I haven't had any trouble with nor do I have any complaints about the larger company I have an account with ...
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from discount brokerages?
Ability to trade crypto.
Maybe it's different in Canada, but none of the discount brokers in the U.S. such as Fidelity, Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Interactive Brokers, and E-Trade currently offer crypto trading, so that's one advantage Robinhood and other newer entrants like SoFi Invest and WeBull have.
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A discount brokerage is a regular brokerage, minus all the enhanced services. Basically, you're deciding what stocks to trade directly and paying to have those decisions executed. A full service stock brokerage offers more services including a full time analyst who can recommend you stocks and perform trades on your behalf. Of course, you're paying for this service in
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Desperate POS (Score:5, Insightful)
If the product is free, you are the product. Specifically, Robinhood is selling your information to the big hedge funds. Stay away.
Re:Desperate POS (Score:5, Informative)
If the product is free, you are the product. Specifically, Robinhood is selling your information to the big hedge funds. Stay away.
Noting that Robinhood routes [washingtonpost.com] more than half of its customer orders to Citadel Securities [wikipedia.org], part of Citadel, LLC (a hedge fund and financial services company -- the latter as Citadel Securities), which was founded and 85% owned by Kenneth C. Griffin.
From that WP article:
Robinhood and other brokerages cannot execute trades directly, so they usually work with market-making firms. Robinhood is required by law to work with market makers that can give their users the best market prices for a given trade. When Robinhood directs a transaction to one of these third parties, the market maker learns which security is being bought or sold before the trade happens.
Citadel and other market makers pay Robinhood a small fee for this privilege, which gives the market-making firms information about retail trading patterns. Citadel said it uses this information to improve its trading algorithms. Market makers also take a small profit on the “spread,” or difference in price between what a Robinhood user pays and the price at which the security is being sold in the market.
So, while Robinhood doesn't directly work with/for a hedge fund, one of their suppliers is, let's say, hedge fund adjacent and Robinhood makes a lot of their money from working with them ...
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If the product is free, you are the product.
Not necessarily and/or not always. Many of the discount brokers, like Vanguard, Fidelity, etc... make a small amount of money from just your trades and/or holdings (like mutual fund shares) and other mechanics of the markets. They do this at scale and can interact with the markets (mostly) directly and don't need (and wouldn't want) to sell your info.
Robinhood can't trade directly and executes their trades though other companies known as "market makers" -- who pay Robinhood for (some of) your information
Re:Desperate POS (Score:5, Informative)
If the product is free, you are the product.
Very true...except that Robinhood isn't free.
While they say it's free, the truth—once you cut through the BS—is that you're paying a fee on every transaction. The price you pay is higher than what the stock is actually selling for on the open market. Robinhood's partners make a profit from your overpayment, then share part of that profit with Robinhood as a "thank you" for directing traffic their way.
Because of the back-and-forth arrangement you never actually directly pay Robinhood, but the effective result of these arrangements is that you're paying Robinhood a fee for every transaction you make.
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Oh, sure. I'm not suggesting it's a raw deal or that people should be outraged. I'm merely suggesting that the OP's truism isn't applicable here because the product isn't free. The costs may be hidden, but the users are still paying them. I'm not making any sort of moral judgement about that arrangement, just pointing out its existence.
Re: Desperate POS (Score:3)
That's just how market makers work. If you put in a limit order, you get (or sell) at exactly the amount you entered.
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Sure. I'm not making any sort of moral, ethical, or other judgment on what they're doing. I'm just pointing out that we are effectively paying them, and thus the OP's truism isn't applicable in this situation.
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Grift (Score:3)
The grift is ON! Of course they want to offer as much of their stock to the very low information investors they've already been pillaging!
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Good move by them (Score:2)
Offer their IPO to the unwashed plebs. God knows people who do this professionally would do their due diligence, count the number of lawsuits Robinhood is facing about their core business practices and stay the heck away.
People still use that trash service? (Score:5, Insightful)
their mission was to democratize Wall Street and make finance accessible to all
Unless, of course, you peons threaten to make money and then they'll just cut you off completely. [cnbc.com]
Direct Listing (Score:3)
If they really want to make their stock offering more open, wouldn't a direct listing for the stock be better than an IPO since the market (buyers and sellers) determines the stock price and not the underwriters / investment bankers, and everyone has the same opportunity to get shares?
He who forgets... (Score:2)
Really Vlad? (Score:2)
I'm an APE and I'm assuming a majority of you understand that we have zero love for Robinhood. As far as I'm concerned, Robinhood can go straight to hell, and I hope their IPO burns and sinks. Please don't interpet this as a troll, but as pure hatred for a company that plays to the 1%, and really rips people off by conning them into thinking they're 'for the people.'
They're not - Robinhood is a fat-bellied Wall Street pig in sheep's clothing.
IPO's have a purpose. (Score:4, Interesting)
It is very hard to figure out the value of a company - that is the entire purpose of the stock market. So how do you figure out the value before you are part of the stock market?
The value of a company is entirely based on what people think of it. That is how the stock market works, by summarizing the general opinion. But certain people's opinions count more. Specifically, those that have more money. Those that have more money tend to care a lot about financial information.
IPO's do everything they can to take into account both the financial data and the 'demand'. But they also act as 'advertisement', which is why so many IPO's tend to have quick rise followed by a decrease as time passes and the advertisement goes away. Sometimes it ends at a price higher than the IPO offering price, others it ends lower.
Direct Sales tend to have less concentration on financial data and less advertisement. But they are in NO way superior to IPO's. They do not get more accurate prices.
Honestly, if there was a good way to calculate the price the stock market would give, that method would end up replacing the stock market, if only because traders would start using it.
IPO's give more shares to institutions but have to agree to a lock in period. Most IPO's end up lower than the IPO price a year later. While it does makes sense to buy every IPO if you sell it quickly, holding for a long term is not profitable.
Given that, in my personal opinion, IPOs are the right way to do it. Let the Institutions do the hard work of finding out the stock price. Letting average people do it just adds froth to the IPO 'spike', allowing traders to profit while long term investors lose out.
The hard quiestions (Score:1)