> robinhood

It's easy to have no fees if your customers can't make transactions.

To be less snarky, I'd avoid them if you're trying to time the markets.

For those not in the loop: it's been impossible to make transactions on a number of platforms including Robinhood due to the overwhelmingly high load causing those platforms to fail. A lot of people were basically locked out from trading.

I got a warning when I logged into Interactive Investor (UK) this morning and its still there now.

"Please be aware that due to exceptional market volatility, there may be situations in which it is difficult to obtain a price for your trade."

Will be interesting to see what effect the Budget statement on Wednesday

I think the government are damned whatever they do. A massive fiscal stimulus admits there's a massive problem (and the government has been trying to project a quiet confidence that this is something under control), so markets will tank. A small response could be seen as inadequate.

They completely failed three different times in the past couple of weeks. The Feb 29th thing was a red herring.

One does not simply "use" Robinhood on a day like today. Or the last 3 large down days since Coronavirus. System-wide failures abound.

Expect your orders to not execute as intended and money to be lost.

There are still costs to your transactions, not least of which is the information gulf between you and an institutional investor with a Bloomberg terminal.

Not really. The only cost to your transaction is the bid-ask spread, which is extremely tight in liquid US equities.

Their fees come in the form of unexpected downtime at high volume.

A free system gets you only so far

Not just Robinhood. Charles Schwab and some others have moved this direction too.

Virtually everybody went to zero commissions, more or less.