Hiltzik on Robinhood

One of the fundamental lies of early 21st century investing is that making it easier and cheaper to play the markets with tools including a full range of derivatives will democratize the system and finally let the little guy compete on an equal footing.

This isn't just wrong; it's dangerously wrong, but far too many journalists have been too timid to call this out. Fortunately, here is LA we have Michael Hiltzik. 

The cost of the settlement is $70 million, including $12.6 million in restitution to customers. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra, which imposed the settlement, calls the fine the largest in its history.

Robinhood settled the Finra case without admitting or denying the allegations, but “consented to the entry of FINRA’s findings,” the regulator said. Stripped of its jargon, that statement implies that you can interpret Finra’s allegations as true.

That’s not a good look for a company about to issue stock to the public for the first time, especially since Finra’s case is so comprehensive. Nor is it particularly consistent with Robinhood’s corporate boast that its mission is “democratizing finance for all.”

The company founders say in a letter to shareholders and customers attached to its SEC stock registration filing that “we believe that it’s important ... to be able to own stocks directly in the companies you love, without any middlemen.” (Of course, Robinhood itself is a middleman, but leave that aside.)

Indeed, Robinhood’s performance thus far raises the question of whether Wall Street will look askance at any alleged wrongdoing as long as there’s money to be made. The date for Robinhood’s public offering on Nasdaq hasn’t been set, but the whisper number on the street is that the firm could be worth $30 billion.

That’s possible because the details of Finra’s findings haven’t been as widely reported as the size of the settlement, which is broadly seen as Robinhood putting its problems behind it.

We’ll take a closer look. Finra accused Robinhood of plying millions of customers with “false or misleading information” about their account balances, of leaving millions of customers unable to trade because its IT systems broke down at crucial moments, and of approving thousands of customers for options trading even though it should have known they were unqualified to play the options market.

...

Its app was crafted to resemble a video game, with features that appear designed to get customers’ blood flowing, including a digital confetti shower to mark customers’ first trades and other milestones.

“Our app is simple, easy-to-use, bright — maybe even delightful,” its website says. But it scrapped the confetti thing after Massachusetts regulators filed a complaint that it was luring inexperienced customers into treating investing as a game.

...

The mystery of why Robinhood would be so cavalier about exposing its customers to options trading risk may have been solved by its stock registration filing. That document reveals that the firm made handsome revenues from options trading, through a process known as “payment for order flow.”

This is a controversial practice through which retail brokers such as Robinhood steer customer orders to big trading firms, which appreciate the volume, for a fee. (Robinhood’s alleged failure to fully disclose this practice to customers and how it might affect the prices at which they bought and sold securities is what brought the SEC down on its head in December.)

According to the filing, Robinhood collected about 0.2% of the value of its customers’ holdings of stocks as payment for order flow as of the end of the first quarter of this year — $133.3 million in “transaction-based revenues” on holdings of $65.1 billion. But it received 9.7% of its customers’ option holdings as payment — $198 million on holdings of only $2 billion. Obviously, the options market was a cash cow for Robinhood, compared with the stock market.

That brings us to one more aspect of Robinhood’s business that became known through its stock registration filing: It has become a big player in the cryptocurrency market, especially in Dogecoin.

Dogecoin, as it happens, is a cryptocurrency that was originally launched as a parody of Bitcoin. But since nothing in the crypto market makes any sense in terms of financial fundamentals, it has gained a foothold as a tradable instrument.

Among the “risk factors” Robinhood listed for would-be investors in its SEC filing is its immoderate dependence on revenues from Dogecoin trading. In the quarter that ended March 31, they amounted to about 6% of total revenue of $420.4 million, or about $25 million.