Imagine trading stocks from your phone with complete simplicity and at no cost. Now you can. So what’s the catch?

Robinhood has a very simple user interface with features like options trading and option spread (not recommended for beginners) trading with of course standard stock trading all at no commission. This brokerage is intended for those with little capital but who want to start investing. Robinhood does not offer much in terms of research and trading help, that would be found elsewhere in free websites or apps like Yahoo Finance and Seeking Alpha.  Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt founded the company in December of 2013.

Robinhood is used mostly as a mobile app; however, there is an online version also available. The app was originally created to challenge the ideas of the standard brokerage with commissions. Robinhood offers commission-free stock and options trading with a simple and easy to use platform. There are thousands of securities available to trade that are listed with Nasdaq, NYSE, and AMEX with few available in the over the counter (OTC) market.

Robinhood offers free trading of stocks, ETFs, options, and more recently, cryptocurrencies. The platform requires no account minimum and $2,000 for Robinhood gold which allows trading on margin at a 2:1 ratio. Robinhood offers a more simple line chart and a more complex candlestick chart allowing for a more technical analysis of the traded securities. Under each ticker, there are usually a few related recent articles and a few stats like P/E ratio, market cap, and the dividend yield ratio.

Robinhood is good for beginners with small amounts of money to invest. Any amount can be used to start whether it be $1 or $100,000 just invest with what you’re comfortable with losing. If you wanted to buy something easy that will move with the market, you could purchase the S&P 500 ETF with the ticker SPY which currently goes for around $280 a share. You must be 18 years of age to open an account and it’s fairly straightforward to sign up. Although if you are under 18, I recommend using your parent’s name and information with their permission of course.  It should not be used on its own in terms of financial education and research of investments, this is where Yahoo Finance can be utilized. Robinhood’s simplicity allows for easy to grasp trading, although cuts so much out that a lot is to be desired in terms of charting and company history.

Though much is to be desired, it is really easy to use and because there are no commissions, it makes trading with little capital easy. I would recommend Robinhood to beginners to learn the basics of trading and to people with less than $25,000.

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