Robinhood Markets: Teenage stock investors is now listed on Nasdaq

Robinhood Markets, Inc, (Nasdaq: HOOD), a modern financial services company, which is on a mission to democratize finance for all was listed on Nasdaq 100 on July 29, 2021. In honour of the occasion, Vlad Tenev, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder rang the Opening Bell.

The retail brokerage app, which fuelled a "meme stock" frenzy earlier this year, closed 8.37 per cent lower at $34.82 per share on the first day of trading. Robinhood priced its public offering at $38 and $42 per share, the low end of its IPO range. IPO came just a month after the firm found itself being criticised for its role in a scandal over trading in so-called meme stocks like Gamestop.

Robinhood's easy-to-use interface has made it a hit among young investors trading from home on cryptocurrencies and stocks such as GameStop Corp during the COVID-19 pandemic.

About Robinhood Markets, Inc.

Headquartered in Menlo Park, California, Robinhood Markets, Inc. is an American financial services company and was founded in 2015 by Stanford University roommates Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt.

Robinhood is a brokerage firm that provides access to individual investors to invest in stocks and ETFs with no account minimums. It also allows its users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. It is a FINRA-regulated broker-dealer registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. It is a member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. It is known for offering commission-free trades of stocks and exchange-traded funds via a mobile app introduced in March 2015.

The firm showcased its app publicly for the first time at LA Hacks, first published it on AppStore in December 2014 and then officially the app in March 2015. The company's name comes from its mission to "provide everyone with access to the financial markets, not just the wealthy". The company's revenue comes from three main sources, and they are:

• Interest earned on customers' cash balances
• Selling order information to high-frequency traders
• Margin lending

The founders of Robinhood, Tenev and Bhatt, had earlier built high-frequency trading platforms for financial institutions in New York City.

Financials

Robinhood recorded total revenue growth of 245 per cent to $959 million for the year ended December 31, 2020, compared to $278 million posted in the year ended December 31, 2019. In the period, the company recorded a net income of $7 million against a net loss of $107 million. Besides in the quarter ended March 31, 2021, the company's revenue grew 309 per cent to $522 million as against $128 million posted in the same period last year. It recorded a loss of $1.4 billion compared to a net loss of $53 million. As of 2021, Robinhood has 31 million users and has been valued at $32 billion.

If in case, you are looking forward to buying shares of Robinhood or any other US stock from India then you will have to open an international trading account and start diversifying your portfolio across foreign stocks.