Robinhood Set To Fuel Stock Addicts With 24-Hour Trading

Shares of Robinhood Markets Inc. moved higher in premarket trading on Thursday after the trading app reported better-than-expected first-quarter results. But it's not the earnings report we're going to focus on. Instead, the company is preparing to roll out 24-hour trading of selected stocks and exchange-traded funds for five days a week. 

"Today we are announcing Robinhood 24 Hour Market, which offers people unprecedented flexibility and access to the markets. Using 24 Hour Market, people can place limit orders to buy whole shares of 43 of the most traded ETFs and individual stocks– such as TSLA, AMZN, and AAPL– 24 hours a day, five days a week," the company said in a press release on its website. The new trading hours run from 2000 ET Sunday to 2000 ET Friday.

Robinhood still believes there are enough meme traders that have survived the post-pandemic plunge in speculative stocks. 

Look at Goldman Sachs Retail Favorites, a basket of equities highly traded on retail brokerage platforms, which have been halved since the end of 2021, as retail's most favorite strategy 'BTFD' has failed to outperform for 1.5 years. Throughout this time, many meme stock traders lost their newly minted fortunes during the Fed-induced pandemic bubble and have since returned to their pre-Covid day jobs, like bartending or working in Amazon warehouses. 

Robinhood wants to take stock investing gambling to a 24-hour market because it believes "it's tough to find time for investing during regular market hours with work, family, and everything in between."

So Robinhood is betting on stock addicts not sleeping? 

The new service is set to be released next Wednesday to a small pool of users. It will be opened to everyone on the trading app in June.

And since meme stocks have been out of fashion for several quarters -- there's been an unprecedented explosion in 0DTE (0-days to expiry) or options with less than 24 hours to maturity (learn more about 0DTE here).

When does Robinhood dabble into overnight option trading for US equities?