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Robinhood is broadening its offerings in a bid for more active traders who may be seeking trading access beyond traditional U.S. stock market hours. The brokerage is expanding trading hours, adding crypto perpetuals and AI-powered automated trading tools to appeal to more active traders, it announced Tuesday evening at its HOOD Summit in Houston, Texas. The new offerings reflect Robinhood's evolution beyond its commission-free stock-trading roots as it seeks to become a more comprehensive platform for active traders. The strategy puts the company increasingly in competition with both crypto-native platforms like Coinbase, which has expanded into derivatives and other financial products, and traditional brokerages like Schwab, which added 24/7 trading in select cryptocurrency futures on its thinkorswim platform this year. As firms vie for customers who trade across a wider range of markets and hours, the competition among retail brokerages is moving beyond low trading costs toward access, speed and automation. Robinhood shares were little changed on Wednesday following the news. "Ownership doesn't work without markets, and markets don't work without traders," Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said in a statement. "We're making Robinhood the best place in the world for active traders by delivering tools once reserved for hedge funds, big banks, and quant firms." Starting next year, Robinhood customers will be able to trade certain U.S. equities 24/7, including weekends. The move is an extension of its 24/5 trading feature, rolled out in 2023, that lets customers from Sunday at 8:00 PM ET to Friday at 8:00 PM ET. Agentic trading Robinhood also introduced AI-powered automated trading tools that will let users build their own agents, following the launch of agentic trading earlier this year. The idea is that customers could use the agents to automate parts of the trading process, allowing them to pursue around-the-clock strategies. Tenev noted that most markets went electronic about 20 years ago, and that although algorithms now driving much of the volume on exchanges, human traders' strategies still have a role. "I don't think that's going to go away," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box" Wednesday. "I don't think it'll ever be 100% but it does open up a new capability frontier. Every time you have a new asset class – whether it be perps or earnings predictions or a new capability like AI tools – it creates a new domain where traders and market participants can compete, and my bet is there's lots of opportunities." Additionally, the brokerage unveiled plans to allow users to trade crypto perpetual futures contracts in the Robinhood app, which offer leveraged exposure to cryptocurrencies without requiring traders to hold the underlying assets.
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