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rob_sully | 5 years ago

I'm not sure how I feel about this to be honest.

I appreciate they were following their guidelines and wouldn't like anyone to troll an app like this but I don't think google should have removed bad reviews. Unless court ordered maybe, based on FCC findings of market manipulation or something like that. Robinhood sells their client's data to financial institutions. These institutions then can use that to skim off Robinhood's clients. The GameStop fiasco puts all that at risk so they pull the plug. Like a casino kicking you out because you’re winning too much at poker and taking money from their high rollers, who pay a premium to peek at your cards.

https://blockworks.co/robinhood-sells-your-data-but-does-tha...

discuss

order

egwor|5 years ago

There's a real danger here that there are high level summaries upon summaries from those who don't really understand the details of the markets. Every broker will have various liquidity pools and those pools will be pinged to execute your order. The order has to get best execution (there are legal requirements on it).

Without knowing the internal details of RH all of this is speculation. I think that what folk are saying is that Citadel pay for the information on order flow (they don't provide any liquidity?). it sounds like that pays RH bills who have to pay execution and exchange fees. If that's true then isn't the choice to pay the information cost to Citadel or pay some fees to another broker?

I suspect that your casino analogy would be more accurate if the gambler was borrowing money from another casino (i.e. leverage or buying options) and they said 'You've hit your limits in borrowing' or the main casino you're in said 'We don't take bets higher than X'.

TeMPOraL|5 years ago

Still, in the context of reviews, it's not the job of Google to mitigate the fact that Robin Hood botched it's PR side and couldn't (or doesn't want to) explain its rationale to their users clearly.

From the POV of RH's users, the company and the app just pulled a fast one on them, costing individuals lots of money in both real costs and opportunity.

rob_sully|5 years ago

Thanks for that info on liquidity pools I wasn’t aware. Based on what you said my analogy would be more along the 'You've hit your limits / no bets higher than X’ line. I definitely don’t know the internal details of RH or am an expert so have speculated and it is probably a bad over simplification of poor information I’ve read from media sources. Regarding use of RH data I just thought if I was Citadel and paid for the information on order flow, I’d be in a better, well informed position to make educated guess on the market, which people on RH wouldn’t be in.

ficklepickle|5 years ago

RH doesn't guarantee best execution, unlike a regular broker.