Robinhood’s plan to launch a social media platform is drawing mixed reactions from the financial advisory industry, as it also anticipates the fintech giant’s upcoming referral program to connect RIAs with the company's young investor base.
Robinhood Social was announced last week at the HOOD Summit in Las Vegas; it will debut in the Robinhood app for select US customers early next year. Users will be able to post their trades to their social feed, discuss investment strategies and market moves, and track stock trades to mimic from billionaires, politicians, and other high-profile figures. To post on the platform, a user’s profile will display their past trades, enter and exit positions, and performance.
“I do like the idea that those who post will need to disclose their holdings in the security they write about, and their position will continue to be tracked over time,” Larry Sprung, founder of the Carson Group-affiliated Mitlin Financial, told InvestmentNews. “This is something that is inherently missing from other platforms that allow influencers to simply talk about securities that, in many instances, they do not and have never owned.”
A Gallup poll published earlier this year found that 42% of American adults under 30 are getting financial advice from social media, prompting concerns of the rise of “finfluencers” producing this content. A real estate Ponzi scheme from social media influencer Tyler Bossetti defrauded investors of more than $20 million, the DOJ ruled in June.
“This feature will further entrench an already-existing problem with the internet — investors taking financial advice from potentially unqualified influencers on YouTube or TikTok or X,” Andrew Herzog, advisor at Texas-based RIA The Watchman Group, said of Robinhood Social.
“I do not take issue with this type of platform, as there are differences between traders and investors,” Sprung said. “The families that work with RIA firms are typically investors, and those that are attracted to Robinhood and a social media platform like this will be traders.”
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said its new social feature is part of the company’s goal to deliver a “financial superapp” to customers for trading stocks, options, crypto, an alternatives fund for private market investing, and sports betting through prediction markets.
Nearly 27 million investors have Robinhood accounts, spanning $279 billion in total platform assets, per the company’s Q2 2025 financial results.
"Robinhood’s plan to launch a social media platform is fascinating. There’s clearly a demand for community among investors, whether they’re in their 20s or nearing retirement. If it’s structured well, it could be a positive force — almost like a 'WebMD for finance,' where people can compare experiences but also access vetted commentary from real advisors," said Adam Spiegelman, who departed Commonwealth this year to launch his own RIA Spiegelman Wealth Management. But "without that structure, though, it risks becoming an echo chamber for speculation, much like the AMC/GameStop meme-stock craze," he said.
“From a compliance perspective, the conversations are already happening on Reddit, TikTok, and Discord. Hosting them inside Robinhood makes regulators’ jobs harder, but it also creates an opportunity,” said Spiegelman. "FINRA and the SEC could use this as a way to encourage better disclosures, disclaimers, and even channels where advisors can participate responsibly. Personally, I’d be open to contributing in that kind of forum with the right guardrails.”
Unlike other popular social platforms such as Reddit where users can discuss their trading, Robinhood is a member of both the SEC and FINRA through its brokerage subsidiary, Robinhood Financial LLC. Jason Wenk, CEO and founder of the RIA custodian platform Altruist, warns that a “blind lead the blind” discourse is likely to come from Robinhood Social.
“If you build a social network and the primary premise is you can track other people's portfolios and all of their trades, by default what will happen is people will want to sort those by who are producing the best results,” Wenk told InvestmentNews. “And many investors, if they're not guided properly they're going to look at those results over short time periods like, oh my goodness this person's up 80% the last two years and the market's only up 20%, they must have figured it all out.”
Wenk’s Altruist competes alongside legacy firms such as Fidelity and Schwab in the RIA custody market. Robinhood is also preparing to enter this space through its acquisition of custodian TradePMR in February for $300 million.
“Making it easy for people to track short term performance of non-professionals could be highly speculative and very dangerous to follow, and then encouraging them to follow that type of trading is not sound,” Wenk said. “We all know because we have compliance teams, if we advertise performance as an advisor, or mutual fund or whatever it is — you always have to put the big bold disclaimer that past performance is not indicative of future results.”
Robinhood Investor Index tracks the performance of the top-100 owned investments on Robinhood. The published index includes text that reads “past performance does not guarantee future results,” on Robinhood’s website. “They track that index against the NASDAQ 100, which is what the [Robinhood] index most closely replicates. And the average customer is getting roughly one half the return of the index,” said Wenk. “So creating a message board for people to share what they're doing, I think is a pretty good way to let the blind lead the blind.”
Earlier this year, the SEC announced that Robinhood agreed to pay a $45 million fine over securities law violations, and FINRA fined the firm $30 million. Regulators have also investigated Robinhood’s in-app prediction markets for wagering on sporting events.
“I think advisors are just so important, we need to have voices of reason to help people make good decisions. Putting sports betting in your trading app, that's not good for humankind,” said Wenk.
“I think [Robinhood is] killer at building stuff. I do wish they would take that killer product ability and focus it on things that we know produce better outcomes for people like reducing costs, trading less frequently, lowering your taxes,” Wenk said.
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