Is Robin Hood good for investors? I was asked this question on a digital Zoom conference a few weeks ago.

Below is a more refined version of my answer. Note that when I say Robin Hood, which I'll use from here and out, I mean any brokerage

that gives you free trades and allows you to purchase fractional shares. New investors today are far more informed than younger investors of previous generations.

They have more information at their fingertips between YouTube, Twitter, and Substack

than they could possibly hope to consume.

Thanks to Robin Hood, they're able to put this

knowledge to work. Robin Hood didn't lower the age at which you can open a brokerage

account, but they did make it financially feasible. Five years ago, you needed to come with the $600 to buy one share of Amazon.

And if you did have that $600, you had to pay $8 for that share, more than 1% of your purchase

price.

Thanks to fractional shares and zero commissions now all you

need is a couple of bucks to buy a piece of this company. If stock picking isn't

your thing you can also buy ETFs with no minimums and no transaction fees. This is a huge win for new investors.

Benjamin Franklin said, money makes money and the money that makes money makes money.

This is a perfect way to describe compound interest.

Time is a fuel to compound interests fire. The earlier you start, the better off

you'll be. To use a simple example, $100 growing at 6% a year from the time you're 18 to 65

would be worth 34% more than if you started five years later.

Getting that snowball rolling early is a huge win for investors.

Experiences can't be taught in the stock market. They have to be learned. You cannot read what it feels like to lose 50% of your money.

The only way to learn how to swim is to go in the water, and thanks to fractional shares and

zero commissions, investors can go in with only a little money on the line.

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