Fintech Disruption

Last week I wrote about why I love the fintech industry. Coincidentally, last week Charles Schwab also announced that they were getting rid of stock trading commissions. Interactive Brokers, TD Ameritrade, and E*Trade quickly followed suit.

Robinhood has been one of the fintech darlings when they launched with completely zero commission trades many years ago. Millenial investors like myself began our investing on the Robinhood app and the amount of users on the app is astonishing.

The start-up has been so successful it has forced the other traditional brokerages into their business model. Many are saying that Robinhood is no longer a disruptor because of this, but I believe the opposite. This is disruption at it’s finest—Robinhood broke the traditional system!

It’s going to be interesting to see where Robinhood goes from here. I find it hard to believe that they were not expecting this for many years now. Yes, they may lose a portion of their top part of the funnel, but I have a hard time seeing many Robinhood users now switching brokers and millenials/Gen Z using anything other than Robinhood.

Howard Lindzon writes about Schwab and Robinhood in his blog and I thought it was really interesting and insightful to hear from a primary Robinhood investor.