[mattficke]

> “The existing two-day period to settle trades exposes investors and the industry to unnecessary risk and is ripe for change,” Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said in a February 2021 release. “There is no reason why the greatest financial system the world has ever seen cannot settle trades in real time.”

There’s important context missing at the end of the article. It came up at the time, but it’s a little ironic (given how much of their business relies on customers trading on margin) that Robinhood was advocating for real-time settlement, since that would dramatically limit the ability of entities to trade on margin. Delayed settlement of T+1 (or even T+1/2) allows brokers to net out trades at the end of the settlement period, rather than needing everything to be pre-funded. It’s not a technical problem that we’re not going to T+0, it’s a policy decision.