Can Robinhood Seize the Moment?

Robinhood has quickly become one of the hottest fintechs in the world during the pandemic as they added more than three million funded accounts from January through April; with more than 13 million users now using the platform can they build a sustainable business given they make no money on commissions?; the company does earn money from trading through rebates from wholesale market-makers which made them $90mn in Q1; they have also recently added a cash account and debit card, alongside building out their infrastructure to help generate more revenue from lending shares; large retail trading volumes have historically shown themselves to be short lived with Schwab not seeing the same volume for seven years after the dot-com bust; their technology is remarkably easy to use and very user friendly; venture investors have put their trust in the company to answer the monetization question, or at least continue to scale. The Wall Street Journal.