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Robinhood Markets, a trading app that many investors flocked to during the COVID-19 shutdown, is having trouble today. It’s not the first time. Bloomberg reports:
Robinhood Markets has catapulted ahead of its online brokerage rivals with a smartphone app that has attracted an army of young investors. Yet with the company’s rise has come a litany of problems: trading outages, angry customers and regulatory probes.
Over the first half of the year, U.S. consumer protection agencies received more than 400 complaints about Robinhood — roughly four times more than competitors like Charles Schwab Corp. and Fidelity Investments’ brokerage unit. The grievances, obtained via a public records request to the Federal Trade Commission, depict novice investors in over their heads, struggling to understand why they’ve lost money on stock options or had shares liquidated to pay off margin loans.
Among the setbacks highlighted in the documents is a pivotal breakdown in early March when Robinhood stopped working for more than a day, just as markets were swinging wildly on coronavirus fears. Some complainants reported losing thousands of dollars because they couldn’t sell holdings. Others bemoaned the missed opportunity to profit. Most disturbing to the investors was that as the chaos reigned, there was nobody at Robinhood to call for assistance. Many couldn’t even find a listed phone number.
Robinhood is currently trending on Twitter. The stock trading app is down on what, for many of its core customers, is the biggest trading day of the year, with Tesla and Apple stocks splitting. Here’s a selection of some of the responses users are posting on Twitter right now:
Very frustrating morning.
Should have made 1k profit but barely made $100.
Robinhood took 10-15 minutes to process my buys and sells 🥴🙃 pic.twitter.com/PrQp6V4OWy
— Speed Capital 💵 (@SpeedCapitalX) August 31, 2020
Theres absolutely no way @RobinhoodApp is serious
— 👨🏾💻 (@PrimeCut32) August 31, 2020
40 minutes into trading. Still can’t cancel orders. Execution notifications not showing up. Anybody else lose money on Robinhood today because of this? pic.twitter.com/kNteJzw22y
— Jonathon Oden (@jonnyrayrap) August 31, 2020
Just sitting back watching hundreds of dollars slip away as @RobinhoodApp @AskRobinhood is nowhere to process my order for Apple stock. What a nightmare. @robinhooddown
— Pizza Baratheon (@pizzabaratheon) August 31, 2020
Can’t cancel/change pending orders on @RobinhoodApp because freaking ‘high volume shit’ again… I mean srsly
— MACKY (@NISHIKINO_MACKY) August 31, 2020
That feeling when you submit a Robinhood order and it’s pending while you see the stock price shooting up pic.twitter.com/ulJErXRkly
— Ben 🪐 (@cfc_benny) August 31, 2020
Tesla was in the high 430s at the opening of the market. When I placed my order. #robinhood is playing games with peoples money. pic.twitter.com/gZpssl6O4U
— Carl Roberson (@paperchasher443) August 31, 2020
Robinhood #lawsuit
— StocksWizard (@thestockswizard) August 31, 2020
They go on and on like that, but perhaps this is the truest of all:
Nothing good is ever #FREE = #Robinhood pic.twitter.com/CjiVqZND9M
— Layden Robinson (@LaydenRobinson) August 31, 2020
