Robin Hood Review

Yesterday I posted about my Recent Buys that I had been buying using some new strategy. The new strategy that I am employing is called dollar cost averaging. Using my normal broker, Tradeking, I wouldn’t fathom the idea of using this strategy but I would with some of my other accounts. As you all know I have been using Loyal3 since February when I wrote my Loyal3 Review. Lately though I learned that Robin Hood was out of beta so I decided to go and sign up for an account and check out this new broker which also offered free trades.

It took no time at all to sign up for a new account and to get my bank account linked up with it. Once I loaded the app on my phone I noticed something right away that I didn’t really like. I like that it shows me a chart for a certain period…. but once you click on say 1M (month) it doesn’t show you where it breaks down into days and months. So it just shows the chart on a white background…. if it shows a big drop in the value… you don’t really know when exactly that happened. In general, I really like the look and feel of the app. I really like on the Accounts page in the app how it breaks down and shows me how much of my portfolio is in stocks and how much is in cash.

It does have some nice benefits that the Loyal3 app doesn’t offer. For instance, whenever you place an order with Loyal3 they do a batch order at 2:00pm and you get the stock at whatever price that it was selling for at that time. The Robin Hood app is a lot better because you have more versatility with how you place orders. Much like a more traditional broker you have the option to do market orders or limit orders etc. By having the option to place different types of orders that allows you more control over the price that you pay… as opposed to having a batch order placed and you just get whatever price that you get.

Currently Robin Hood doesn’t offer any kind of Dividend Reinvestment Plan for dividend paying stocks. That is something that I hope they will change in the future, although with no trade fees it is not that big of deal to just add the dividend amount into your next stock purchase.

In the future, if I decide to transfer my stocks from Robin Hood into another brokerage account that will incur a $75 fee which seems kind of steep because I think Loyal3 only charges $25. I guess this is one way that the company gets paid on the back end. Check out there Fee Schedule Here.

During the accumulation stage this platform may not be a bad choice. So far I have only been using the app to build a position in KR. I intend to continue to use the app when I deem it appropriate. I have no intentions of buying a large position with Robin Hood. I would be more inclined to use it to dollar cost average my way into positions. Maybe at some point later on I would consolidate all of the positions into one account, I’m not sure. I guess I will cross that bridge when I get there.

I think the app is especially great for anyone who is just starting out and cannot afford to invest a lot of money at one time. I think it will also work well for dollar cost averaging. I’m going to continue to use it while I try this strategy and then just reevaluate the whole idea in a few months. If you want to download the app then please visit the Official Robin Hood Website.

I am very interested to hear if any of you guys have ever used Robin Hood and to hear what you thought about it. Please leave your comments below!