Ryan Knudson

I mean, even the earnings calls are designed based on NBA postgame interviews.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it's like it couldn't be more different from the way that Vlad talks about investing and finance, which is kind of exciting and futuristic and kind of almost makes you want to be a part of this movement and this club.

Yeah.

The flip side of that is what happens if, or I should say when, markets go the other way.

Individual investors have more choices and ways to take on risk than ever before.

And that has compounded their gains in the good times that we've seen recently.

And the big question, the concern that I hear from Robinhood's critics is,

Will it compound the pain when markets experience a really prolonged downturn?

Their point of view is essentially that they serve the next generation of investors.

And their chief brokerage officer told me, you know, we are introducing more asset classes and capabilities to people.

That's what they want.

And that's sort of their point of view and their response to this criticism.

And I think it's worth noting that this has really worked for them.

And their customers are quite pleased at the moment.

The rise of Robinhood has been really emblematic of a much broader shift going on in the world of financial markets right now, which is the growing power of individual investors.

And we talk about individual versus institutional investors, with institutional primarily being Wall Street, banks, folks that are trading on the behalf of those institutions.

These really plugged-in, active traders that are buying and selling stocks, options, cryptocurrencies on a daily basis, practically.

That group has grown so much larger and gained so much power over the past five years, and even more so in just the past year.