Congratulations on beginning your career as a Robinhood investor. š The purpose of this article is to be an investing guide for beginners. Investing is a great way to grow over time. Why not get the most out of the platform you use? With Robinhood, there are a number of different things you can do with your money and let it grow. Taking advantage of the benefits will maximize your earning potential for whatever investing strategy you are following. It doesn’t matter whether you have $1,000,000 or $100, Robinhood offers a number of ways to fully enhance your experience.
Robinhood: Quick introduction
I actually remember the moment I had stumbled across Robinhood on Apple’s app store. It was around 2014 and I was a business student in college and had interest in the stock market, but I was ignorant to how everything was done. I was scrolling through the app store when I found Robinhood. At the time, it allowed you to purchase stocks straight from your phone, something that wasn’t really considered doable before. It was founded in 2013, with a beta launch in 2014, and has become known as one of the most user-friendly investing platforms today.
Since Robinhood’s beta launch in 2014 on the app store, and really the only thing you could do at the time was invest in stocks. Years passed, and the amount of tools Robinhood incorporated on its platform has grown. If you plan on buying and selling stocks on Robinhood, it’s in your best interest to utilize all its functionality. That’s what this article is going to get into, teaching you everything you can get out of Robinhood.
Investing in Stocks & ETFs
As a beginning Robinhood investor, it’s time to learn what stocks, ETFs, and other investing instruments theres out there. Robinhood offers you the ability to invest in most stocks that are offered by most brokerage firms. The availability of one stock will change of course depending on a number of factors, but all the major players aren’t going anywhere.
Fractional shares
Originally, buying a stock was like buying anything else. If you couldn’t afford the current trading price, you couldn’t buy it. However now, like most brokerage firms, Robinhood offers you to purchase fractional shares. You can use any amount of your funds to buy any stock, regardless of what price its at. This is an amazing feature because it allows investors to focus soley on the performance of a company without having to worry about having enough to fund the investment. This is especially helpful for new investors – start investing right away without having to consider if the amount of money they have will be able to cover the price.
Blue-chip stocks
Still figuring out which companies are trustworthy? Robinhood offers blue-chip stocks. They are well-established and financially stable companies that have been around for many years. Examples include: Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Coca-Cola (KO), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ).
These companies often offer dividend yields. This of course depends on the company. Each one will offer a different percentage, so make sure to check the percent yield for the stock you’re interested in. To check if a company offers a dividend, go to Robinhood and click on a stock to get to the stock page. Scroll down until you see the “Key Statistics” section. There, you’ll see a number of metrics for the company with one being the dividend yield.
Growth stocks
A growth stock is a stock that belongs to a rapidly growing company. Its very common to see a tech company’s stock as a growth stock.
Growth stocks will typically reinvest their profits back into the business instead of paying quarterly dividends. The value tradeoff is through price appreciation. Some examples of growth stocks include NVIDIA (NVDA), Tesla (TSLA), and Amazon (AMZN).
Why growth stocks are appealing to beginner investors
Growth stocks have a high potential for returns over time. If you invested $1,000 in NVDA in 2015, you’d have $350,000 as of October, 2025. Growth stocks represent exciting companies that are often trending on online communities.
Growth stocks are known to be volatile – they go down faster then they went up. If you are willing to take on more risk, growth stocks are for you.
Lists and watchlists
Beginners and pros will always have one thing in common, and if you want to be successful when investing on Robinhood, you must use watchlists. A watchlist is metaphorically your Spotify playlist of stocks. On the Robinhood mobile app, your watchlists are at the bottom of your home screen. There is no limit to the amount of lists you can make. A good strategy for beginner investors might look something like this:
- š” Future stocks (stocks you’re researching)
- š° Dividends
- š Growth stocks
- āæ Crypto
Lists are an excellent way to get an overall idea of how industries are performing with a quick glance. It gives you an idea of how a set of stocks are performing together.
Cryptocurrency
Beginning any pursuit into investing on Robinhood will definitely introduce you to cryptocurrency. With the rising popularity of Bitcoin and altcoins, Robinhood offers an excellent way to invest in crypto. I like keeping my crypto, stocks, and other investments all on one platform. Robinhood offers the most popular coins, but not all of them. I would suggest a new investor to purchase crypto on Robinhood because of is user-friendly platform.
You can easily see what crypto coins are offered on the Robinhood mobile app, or by checking it out here.
24/7 trading
Robinhood allows you to buy crypto around the clock. This is in contrast to buying stock on any exchange. While you’re able to send orders for stocks on the platform at any time, the order is not executed until the next opening hour. That could be the next morning or after the weekend.
Crypto is different in nature because orders are executed at all hours of the day. Many times the price of Bitcoin dropped significantly through midnight PST.
Theres more risk involved with crypto – keep that in mind when making investment decisions into crypto on any platform.
Gold membership perks
For $5 per month, or $50 per year, Robinhood Gold is a subscription service that offers many perks. Gold members are able to grow their accounts beyond stock buying and selling. These perks not only teach you in a hands-on way how to diversify your portfolio, they are there for your benefit to maximize your ROI. These perks will come in handy to a beginning Robinhood investor.
3.75% annual percentage yield (APY)
With Robinhood Gold, your Robinhood account earns interest over time with uninvested cash sitting in your brokerage account. Instead of money just sitting in a checking account, why not let it earn interest over time. With Robinhood Gold, your individual brokerage account acts very similar to a money market account, which is one that earns interest over time while acting like a debit account.
This is a great perk for someone who likes to pick and choose when the right time for them is to hold stocks. It gives you the opportunity to be earning whether you are invested or not.
Professional research
As a Gold subscriber, you gain access to perform professional research for 1,700+ stocks. Some of the reports you have available to you include:
- Fundamentals (balance sheet, earnings, etc)
- Check out our article on the balance sheet basics
- A companies competitive position (“economic moat”)
- Analyst ratings
- And more
As an amateur investor, understanding why a company is in a favorable position is key to becoming a more successful investor.
Larger instant deposits
When transferring funds from your bank account to your Robinhood brokerage account, you have two options for your deposit. The standard transfer takes 4-5 business days and this is the best option if you are not in a rush to purchase a stock. Robinhood also offers instant-deposit to allow for an immediate transfer of funds for a 1.75% fee of whatever amount you are transfering in or out of your brokerage account.
Without being a Gold member, instant deposit will still be available to you. However, Robinhood limits the amount of money that non-Gold members are allowed to instantly deposit. Gold members are also limited, but that limit is larger than non-Gold members. The amount for each type of user is determined by how large your current asset value is in your Robinhood account. You can read more about limits and instant deposit here.
Robinhood IRA
A retirement account is a savings vehicle that offers tax advantages for the money that sits in its account. One of the best decisions anyone can make for themselves is to make a retirement account. Planning for the future provides security for yourself and loved-ones. A retirement account gives you that security for the unknown, and its one of the best perks thats offered to Robinhood users.
There are several kinds of retirement accounts in the world, and Robinhood offers some and favorable types. Here I’ll discuss a roth IRA, a traditional IRA, and how they’re used in Robinhood.
Roth vs traditional IRA
The main difference between Roth and traditional IRAs is how your money is taxed. In a traditional IRA, the contributions you make to that account now are considered tax deductions. However, the money is taxed at the time you make the deductions. A traditional IRA is best for those who expect to be in a lower tax-bracket at the time of their retirement.
A Roth IRA contributes the amount with after-tax dollars. This basically means that any money that has been reported to the IRS is allowed to be deposited into your Roth IRA account. The key advantage here is that any future withdrawls from your Roth IRA account during your retirement are tax and penalty-free. Individuals who expect to be in a higher tax-bracket during their retirement would benefit more from using a Roth IRA.
1-3% match on contributions
Anyone with a Robinhood IRA account is eligible to receive a 1% match to any deposit you make to your retirement account on Robinhood. There is no maximum limit you can contribute to your retirement account, but the 1% match will only be applied to the first $7,000 each year. This is an extra $70 dollars just by adding funds into your retirement account.
With Robinhood Gold, that match is bumped to 3% on the first $7,000 each year. And that corresponds to an extra $210 dollars a year.
How to automate contributions
We live in a world where it can be easy to look past goals or habits we want to accomplish. Automation is becoming a major factor in every one of our lives, and its here to help. You have the ability to automate recurring deposits each day, week, month or year to meet your goals without having to do any extra work. Consider setting up an automated transfer. To fully utilize your IRA account, an automated deposit system will help you reach your goals much more easily.
Final thoughts
This article is one that will be ever growing – Robinhood is adding new features quite consistently with prediction markets being one of its latest ventures.
This article did not cover everything that Robinhood offers, but it should give you a solid understanding of what the platform is about and how you can utilize it to your benefit when trying to grow your investments.