coindesk.com
Robinhood (HOOD) is borrowing more from the crypto playbook as it looks to win more business from active traders on its platform.
On Tuesday, at its HOOD Summit in Houston, Texas, the brokerage unveiled AI agents that can execute trades, crypto perpetual futures with up to 10 times leverage and weekend trading for U.S. stocks. It is also extending options trading hours, offering more intraday margin and adding contracts that let users trade on corporate earnings metrics.
The bet Robinhood is making is that traders want more markets, longer hours and more ways to take risk — and that it can give them those tools without sending them somewhere else.
“One of our top priorities as a company is to be number one for active traders,” vice president of product management, Abhishek Fatehpuria, said in an interview. “We’re not focused on one particular asset class over another.”
Competition for those customers has been growing. Traditional brokers such as Charles Schwab, Interactive Brokers and Fidelity have expanded their trading products in order to appeal to a generation of investors who’ve been conditioned by crypto exchanges to expect markets that never close.
Crypto trades around the clock, every day of the year. This has put pressure on the U.S. stock market, which still trades around a weekday session, even as brokerages and alternative trading systems have expanded equity trading well beyond the traditional 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. window.
Both the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq have filed to expand their trading hours, while Robinhood launched its 24 Hour Market in 2023. That service still stops on weekends. Robinhood now plans to fill that gap by offering a selection of stocks and ETFs on Saturdays and Sundays through Bruce ATS, an alternative trading system.
“More assets, and then more hours,” Fatehpuria said, describing Robinhood's strategy.
Perhaps the bigger break with the traditional brokerage model comes from Robinhood Agents, which the trading platform announced earlier this year.
Customers will be able to create an AI agent inside the app, selecting a model from OpenAI or Anthropic, and give it access to a separate trading account. The agent can analyze markets, build watchlists and trade stocks, options and crypto.
It can eventually do that repeatedly without waiting for a new prompt. A feature called Loops will allow customers to give an agent standing instructions to monitor markets and execute a strategy when specified conditions occur.
