Robinhood Options Fees Overview
Robinhood is one of the first
choices for novice investors and traders with limited capital when looking for brokerage services.
Their $0 transaction policy makes them a haven for investors of all experience levels to be able to grow their account without the costly fees that disproportionately affect smaller account sizes. Similarly, the company charges no minimum account fees or account maintenance fees.
Considering other brokerages charge upwards of $10 per transaction in addition to at least $.50 per
contract, a Robinhood account can start to accrue real savings fairly quick. To highlight the advantages of this structure, consider the investor who only wants to allocate $500 toward a specific trade. With the standard $5 transaction fee, that same investor needs to achieve a return of at least 2%, just to break even.
Robinhood Options Pros and Cons
While Robinhood’ fee structure makes having access to the platform a useful tool in any investor’s arsenal, how it is used varies from user to user. Less experienced investors will find the incredibly simple user interface welcoming as they begin to learn more about the markets, and more experienced investors will enjoy the constraints of the platform as a way of simplifying their trading or investing processes.
But there are cases where the uber elegant mobile application can get in the way of investing plans and risk management. And it is important to
consider them when deciding upon a platform. Robinhood is the base package. It will simply get the job done but there are areas where it naturally
falls short. The weak features of the platform include limited visibility of options data and limited accessibility of an investor’s orders. This
naturally means that there is a ceiling to how active and complicated your investment and trading strategies can get before you will need to open an
additional account with a more customizable broker.
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There’s an App for That
While Robinhood does support trade execution and account management via its web platform, its intuitive
mobile user interface is what really sets it apart from the competition.
Once logging into the mobile app, the dashboard greets you with a clean, at-a-glance line chart of your account’s performance over various timeframes. Just below that are lists of stocks or options you own in your account, alongside a watchlist of stocks you are currently interested in. Note that you cannot add specific option contracts to your watchlist which again, adds to the amount of maneuvering necessary to actively trade.
Both the portfolio and watchlist sections have a 1-day line chart alongside a numerical statistic of either the stocks last price, percent change, or other various return metrics. This makes it very easy to see how your portfolio is performing day-to-day. The beauty in Robinhood user interface is its incredibly thorough color coordination: green for positive on the day and red for negative.
Trade Research
Trade execution is also fairly intuitive on the mobile platform. You can search a symbol to trade either by company name or ticker. Once a stock is selected, Robinhood does a really nice job of aggregating various data sources to present a high level overview of the company. Recent news, technical data, fundamental data, and earnings are all listed for you to scan with a simple scroll.
Where the complexity of equity derivatives really starts to wear on the simplicity of the platform, is in displaying all of the data associated with the options. Equity derivatives are notoriously complicated financial instruments that come with a host of necessary information to really understand how they behave. Robinhood with its simple design, doesn’t quite meet the challenge of allowing you to make the most informed options decisions.
Typically, most option brokerages will display calls and puts on the same row, sorted by strike price. It is also common for those brokerages to include information like the ‘Greeks’, delta, vega, gamma, and theta. The drawback of Robinhood is that it makes it a little tricky to find those specific values. The option’s trading screen is controlled by two toggle buttons at the top of the screen: one for Buy/Sell and the other for Call/Put, which really silos what you can look at once. The platform does have data for The Greeks but to view it you have to select each option one by one, which makes it difficult to really understand how the those metrics relate across strike prices and expirations. This lack of visibility practically limits your options trading to purely directional moves, which is fine depending on your investment strategies.
Trading Options on Robinhood
The trading execution does a nice job of taking away the complicated features of trading. Once the specific option to trade is selected, it is only a matter of filling out the desired quantity and price before swiping the order to the exchange. But the most glaring drawback of the platform is its lack of variety of order types. For Robinhood, there are only limit orders available; no market orders, stop loss orders, or stop limit orders. While it is very likely that the brokerage will in the near future add more order types to its platform, for now its current configuration can make it difficult to properly manage your portfolio’s risk.
As mentioned above, order management is also a weakness of the elegant platform. There is no section of the user interface to easily view and edit live or pending orders. The only route for modifying your orders is to navigate to the sidebar and then to the History tab. There you can see a chronological history of all orders placed, filled, or cancelled. But finding your live orders is time consuming and once you do, the only modification you can make is to cancel it entirely.
On the Close
Robinhood is a stellar attempt to bring no-fee trading to the derivatives world. What worked so well for the company’s flagship product, simplicity and ease of use, has a tough time translating to the complicated world of options. Before committing to any brokerage account, it’s important to know exactly what your needs are, and Robinhood is incredibly well-designed for simple transactions. After all, the entire platform lives on a mobile device.
Those just getting into the options space or those with a little more experience who want a no-cost way of experimenting with new trade ideas will
love Robinhood. These are great jumping-off point. But as your trading experience
and skill sets grow, you will quickly start to expose the limitations of the platform.
Robinhood is still widely used in some capacity by many professional traders who want to explore and tinker with new trade ideas. Furthermore, the young fintech startup has shown itself very quick to adopt new features over short periods of time. So the chances are if you find a vital feature missing from their services, wait a few months and they will likely find a way to implement it into their platform.
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Trading Puts at Robinhood
There are many situations when trading puts can help you grow or maintain your investment account. Whether you want to take advantage of a downward price move or set up a protective hedge, puts can be very helpful.
It is also possible to create spreads with put options that benefit from bullish and bearish price movements.
Placing a Put Trade at Robinhood
Locate the options chain for your preferred stock or ETF to place a trade with a put option. The web interface has a button for the options chain directly under the order ticket.
With the option chain open, you’ll be able to select a put option that best suits your goals and strategy. Whether you want to buy a long put that is in the money, at the money, or out of the money, all you need to do is scroll to your desired strike price.
With your put option selected, you will see the option’s price and the Expected Profit/Loss diagram.
If you are unhappy with the parameters your chosen put option provides, simply cancel the put option and select another, more suitable one.
Trading Put Spreads on Robinhood
If you want to define your risk and reward metrics, you can create put spreads just as easily as buying a put option. All that is required is to sell a put to add to your long put.
If your short put has a strike price above the strike price of the long put, you’ll want the underlying stock's price to remain above the short put (neutral to bullish). If your short put’s strike price is below the strike price of the long put, you want the stock price to go down (bearish).
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Robinhood Options Fees and Commissions
There are no commissions on options trades at Robinhood. You don’t have to worry about hidden fees when using put options as a part of your trading strategy.
Technical Trading Levels
If you are a technical trader, depending on chart-based levels, you’ll be happy to know that Robinhood recently rolled out a new, advanced charting offering.
With the option to apply some fundamental technical indicators like Moving averages, RSI, MACD, and others, it is now possible to get a clearer picture of price action and the math built into the available indicators.
Tools & Insight
Other than charting tools and a very simplified approach to put option selection, Robinhood also provides some market analysis to help you decide on a strike price for your put option.
You’ll find a news feed with feature stories covering issues related to your chosen stock or the industry it belongs to. You’ll also find analyst ratings and price predictions.
In addition, Robinhood offers some company profile data if you want to learn more about the company or fund you are shorting.
Pros and Cons of Put Trading at Robinhood
There are many good things about trading puts at Robinhood, but some drawbacks exist as well. Here are some of the most notable pros and cons for options traders buying puts at Robinhood.
Pros
- Simple option buying experience
- Updated charting is a step up from the previous versions
- Mobile put trading is very easy
- Access to a large number of securities
- No fees or commissions for options trades
Cons
- Some investors may want more information on the options chain
- The lack of Greeks makes some strategies difficult
- Fills on volatile stocks can be a bit slow compared to some other brokers
Updated on 1/1/2025.
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