The Latest Trend in Mobile Gaming: Stock-Trading Apps - the whole story is worth a read but I thought this bit about Robinhood particularly interesting because it suggests that the combination of a user-friendly app, fractional shares and a userbase habituated to frequent app engagement results in new kinds of trading behaviour.
Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt said in a September interview that Robinhood’s users engage with the app the way they engage with Instagram or WhatsApp, as opposed to rival e-brokers. Those with positions check the app an average of 10 times a day, he said, adding that those who actively trade tend to do so in low-price stocks.
“We generate a ludicrous amount of trades in $1 to $5 stocks,” Mr. Bhatt said. “Because we’re free, we’re the only place where you can day trade stuff like that.”
Via Matt Levine’s newsletter, which is excellent.