Robinhood is pivoting to retirement accounts as novice traders shun the get-rich-quick appeal of meme stocks

REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

• Robinhood announced plans to add retirement accounts for customers on Tuesday.
• The move comes as Robinhood faces a slump in retail trading activity.
• Robinhood shares are down 49% year-to-date, struggling to recover since the heyday of the meme-stock era.  

Robinhood Markets Inc. will soon offer its customers retirement account services, according to a company announcement. The retail trading platform popular with meme-stock enthusiasts launched the waitlist for the product on Tuesday. 

Robinhood's new offering aims to tackle the "gig" economy sector — those who have skirted the 9 to 5 corporate life, have side hustles, or run their own businesses. 

"There are a lot of people who are contractors or who are working multiple jobs that don't have access to a traditional safety net pension plan or 401(k)s with a match," Vlad Tenev, the cofounder and CEO of Robinhood, told TechCrunch.

Tenev added: "Employer-sponsored 401(k)s are a really huge force behind getting people to save for retirement. But not everyone is privileged enough to be eligible for one – either they don't have full-time employment or if the day, their employer is too small or doesn't offer a match...We're building this for them."

The offering, dubbed Robinhood Retirement, will match 1% of what customers put it into their Roth or traditional IRAs on every eligible dollar. Robinhood offers crypto trading for user brokerage accounts, but will only allow equities and ETFs for its retirement account.

As a decline in trading volumes continues to steepen, the announcement comes at a critical time for Robinhood. Last year, droves of retail investors opened accounts with Robinhood to get in on the meme stock craze, but interest in the stock market has declined as pandemic restrictions have eased and inflation eats into the amount of disposable cash people can invest. 

In October, the average daily number of retail stock and options trades on Robinhood fell 36% from the same month last year to 1.9 million, the Wall Street Journal reported, adding that the October average daily volume on crypto trading fell 55% to 200,000. The company had two rounds of layoffs in 2022, most recently cutting 23% of staff in June. 

Robinhood shares are down 49% year-to-date. The company did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.