This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, January 21st, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Get that sweet federal relief check, fire up that stock trading app, and buy the next big thing.

At least that's what a lot of Americans thought they were doing last year.

Many of them use the Robin Hood trading platform, which has drawn the ire of some state-level regulators.

Jennifer Shelp directs financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute.

We talked about if Robin Hood is breaking the rules and what it might mean for your investment options.

I know some people that during this pandemic have, let's just say, gotten bored.

They've been working from home, our producer, Cecil, he's one of them, but he's not one of the following people, which

is people who have gone into trading stocks, equities, and other securities on these sort of happy fun looking platforms will give you

your first stock free and the one that jumps out as the name that sort of encompasses this kind of

trading is Robin Hood. So what is the problem with Robin Hood as you see it?

I'm not sure there is a problem with Robin Hood or the concept.

Well, let me clarify then to say that there are complaints about how the shiny red candy-like button that you can press to purchase stocks and see confetti around you and the

complaint seems to be that there is a bit of gamification going on that people can play with real money, in fact large sums of money and in fact potentially very large losses exceeding your entire portfolio in fact when you get into certain

options trading so what are the complaints and how are regulators trying to make that into some sort of cause of action?

Sure. So Robin Hood has attracted a lot of attention in this space, but I want to make sure to put it in context because the increase in retail investing during this pandemic time is part of a larger trend that started pre-pandemic.

It picked up substantially during the pandemic in part possibly due to the fact that people

were bored as he suggested and Robin Hood's gotten a lot of

press here because it has been one of the biggest players in what would be the

the quote-unquote fun trading space.

Robin Hood's app is designed specifically

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