Robinhood Continues to Push to Expand Their Users’ Possibilities

Robinhood (HOOD) has taken another step toward users having the ability to trade from their platform around the clock, seven days a week. It announced that the online brokerage service is extending its premarket and after-hours trading to provide a 13-hour window. Robinhood’s stated mission has always been to revolutionize the markets and bring more people into the financial system. Yesterday’s (March 29) announcement is another step toward that goal.

The company said this is an important step toward 24/7 equities investing; their new extended hours will allow users to trade from 7 am until 8pm. This adds four hours for users to transact. Its extended trading hours had been from 9 am to 9:30 am. ET and 4 pm to 6 pm ET.

In a Blog post the online stockbroker that introduced transaction free trades in 2014, added crypto in 2018, fractional shares in 2019, automatic investments in 2020, and 24/7 customer support in 2021 said about their mission to revolutionize the markets, “Today’s launch is just another step on this journey, and we’re just getting started.”

Robinhood has studied their data and said that they have, “…seen a community of Robinhood early birds and night owls who log in exclusively outside of regular market hours.” They believe the new extended trading hours, leading toward 24/7, will provide more opportunities to more customers to manage their portfolio at a convenient time for them.

The stock jumped 24%, its third-best trading day since the company went public last summer.

A Word of Caution

Trading is typically thinner pre and post-market. While access may be helpful, until there are a large number of transactions taking place, extended-hours trading can be riskier than the regular session. At the same time, it may also provide opportunities or dislocations worth considering. These risks would presumably lessen as extended hours volume increases.

Paul Hoffman

Managing Editor, Channelchek

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