Pandemic Villains: Robinhood
Matt Levine expressed this perfectly back in April<p>The weird thing about the coronavirus crisis is that it simultaneously (1) caused a stock market crash and (2) eliminated most forms of fun. If you like eating at restaurants or bowling or going to movies or going out dancing, now you can’t. If you like watching sports, there are no sports. If you like casinos, they are closed. You’re pretty much stuck inside with your phone. You can trade stocks for free on your phone. That might be fun? It isn’t that fun, compared to either (1) what you’d normally do for fun or (2) trading stocks not in the middle of a recessionary crisis, but those are not the available competition. The available competition is “Animal Crossing” and “Tiger King.” Is trading stocks on your phone more fun than playing “Animal Crossing” or watching “Tiger King”? [..] I gather that for some people the answer is yes.<p>If you believe the boredom thesis of the current retail rally, that is good news, because that thesis is basically countercyclical: The worse the economy is, the more bored investors will be. If stocks sell off because the coronavirus crisis is longer and worse than expected, there will be even fewer entertainment options and more people will turn, in desperation, to buying stocks on their phones. If someone finds a magic cure for the virus tomorrow, stocks will rally and all the new retail investors will happily sell into the rally at the top and go back to their other, more entertaining, entertainments.