Social media has an unprecedented sway over stock prices.
Financial influencers give stock advice on YouTube and TikTok. Trading communities on X and Reddit resurrect financially undesirable stocks from their ashes just for the sake of memes. It’s undeniable that a growing subset of investors are adamant on using platforms like X, Reddit, YouTube, and TikTok to make their financial decisions. The X-based finance community even has a name for themselves: FinTwit.
Popular online brokerage Robinhood has decided to take advantage of that. The company announced on Wednesday that it will be adding a social media feed to its mobile app.
Called Robinhood Social, the feed will allow users to post the trades that they make and follow along with other traders, including famous investors and members of Congress. These public figures are of course not all on Robinhood, but their publicly-reported trades will be posted via avatars. Users will be able to share trades in stocks, crypto, options, and other assets.
“We’ve heard from active traders that they rely heavily on social media to navigate the markets. But it’s harder than ever to understand what’s real and what isn’t,” the company shared in a press release on Wednesday.
All posted trades will be verified and live, the company said. Users will be able to discuss strategies with each other and see the real-time performance rates of the traders that they follow.
The feed will first launch by invitation only to some American customers early next year with broader availability to follow.
Is this copy-trading?
Yes, but also no. Copy-trading is a technically legal but often scrutinized practice in the U.S. There are many platforms that offer it, most famously the Israeli company eToro, which is available to U.S. residents in most states and allows users to automatically copy the trades of other investors.
In contrast, Robinhood’s new platform doesn’t copy trades automatically. It shows users the trades in real time and the user can decide to copy them manually.
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