The equities broker model has been slammed by two waves of change:
- End of fixed commissions. This happened decades ago and simply opened the market up to competition.
- Internet. This is what enabled the human broker to be replaced by servers and led to e-brokerage firms such as eTrade, Charles Schwab and many others.
Which brings us to RobinHood
RobinHood offers zero cost equities brokerage and plans to upsell to premium services later – a classic Freemium strategy. They recently raised a $13m Series A and claim traction among Millenials (who have less to invest and therefore scrutinize the current fee of about $10 per trade more carefully).
For a service that is close to zero cost on a per unit basis and falling further every day thanks to Moore’s Law, a Freemium strategy makes sense.
The question is about the upsell. If RobinHood creates their own value added premium services they will end up competing directly with the bigger e-brokerage firms. However, if they simply offer an API to anybody who creates value added services they will create an ecosystem that is far more powerful than what any single firm can create. These kinds of Low Cost Active Alpha services are complex, so it is smarter to let other entrepreneurs create them. These entrepreneurs will be quite happy paying RobinHood for customer access. This could be a classic network effects game that unbundles services and creates a stack. It is the same dynamic we are seeing in the lending marketplace business.
Today, RobinHood appeals to Millenials with less to invest. When we get another Bear Market, wealthier older investors will also scrutinize the per trade cost. At first a Bear Market will reduce trading costs as we get the usual “death of equities” stories. That will hurt the traditional e-brokerage firms but RobinHood can afford to sit it out. Trading volume will eventually return. There is always money to be made by active traders. All they need is volatility, the actual direction matters less. Active traders care about the per trade costs. RobinHood could be one of those businesses that take off in a Bear Market.
[…] Brokerage is being driven by Moore’s Law to Free as the story about Robin Hood illustrates. So brokers will take more risks with customer funds. So we can add to that question: […]
[…] Brokerage is being driven by Moore’s Law to Free as the story about Robin Hood illustrates. So brokers will take more risks with customer funds. So we can add to that question: […]
RobinHood is in the news big time now thanks to their big raise and unicorn valuation. It will be interesting to see how this plays out and how existing brokers handle the race to zero cost brokerage.
I suspect that RobinHood will be acquired by a firm that has figured out monetization. How much they will pay is clearly debateable and to late stage investors in RobinHood with preferential terms that may not matter. What is interesting is where does value creation move to if brokerage moves to zero? Or will an existing broker do well on a pitch that says “low cost is better than zero cost, because zero cost means you are the product and that means you are paying even if you cannot see how you are paying”?