Daisy Watts 
Nov 30, 2023
Robinhood, an app where you can invest your money online, is going to expand its availability in the UK in early 2024, the third international expansion attempt of the company.
Vlad Tenev, the CEO of Robinhood, said he isn’t afraid of “déjà vu” with the firm’s third attempt to launch in the U.K.
“We’ve made sure we took care of all of the details, the platform is much more robust,” Tenev told CNBC in an interview. “So I don’t think that it’ll be déjà vu. I think that we’re very confident we’ll be able to serve the customers here tightly.”
On the app, you can pick from 6,000 U.S. stocks, and you can trade 24 hours a day, five days a week. Right now, in the US, you can already trade 24 hours a day, which means you can buy and sell stocks outside the usual times.
Initially, the platform won't entail stocks from the UK, but they might add them later.
Jordan Sinclair, Robinhood’s UK chief, believes that being able to trade 24 hours a day will bring global acclaim, as it lets users trade when there is important news affecting the stock market.
“You wake up in the morning, you read the news headlines, and then you have to wait,” Sinclair said. “Customers actually can make a trade and choose their investment strategy and actually act on that market news.”
In 2019, Robinhood launched a waiting list having more than 300,000 people signed up on it. However, it claimed that it had to delay its expansion in the UK because a lot of people in the US showed interest in investing due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Similarly, Robinhood attempted to buy a British crypto-trading app called Ziglu but to no avail, following which the company claimed that the money it spent on it (about $12 million) was a loss.
Now, people in the U.K. can join a new waiting list, starting from Thursday. They will get a notification later when they can sign up early. To make things go faster, Robinhood is asking users to share a special link with their friends and family so that they can move up the waiting list.
“My aspiration is to be one of the largest employers in England, nothing would make me happier,” Tenev said. “And, you know, there’s a lot of great talent. So this, this could be a centre of excellence for Robinhood.”
