The number of active monthly users of the commission-free trading app Robinhood grew steadily since 2014, even though the app did not officially launch until mid-2015. The number of users grew from ************** in 2014 up to **** million, reaching a peak in 2021. While the number of active monthly users now rests at under ** million, the Average Revenue Per Users (ARPU) has increased. The app’s net revenue did also grow steadily since its official launch, reaching *** million U.S. dollars as of 2023. Robinhood and the GameStop story Robinhood was a key player in the GameStop story in January 2021, when they restricted the trading of GameStop stocks for a few days. The platform with its commission-free trading is known to be "for the young and poor" and their trading halt caused a lot of anger among its users, who called it market manipulation and claimed the company was helping the hedge funds. Did the GameStop story affect the number of downloads? The number of downloads of the Robinhood app increased markedly in April 2021. The number of downloads grew by almost five times compared to the previous month, reaching around 3.23 million downloads from Google Play Store and Apple App Store in April 2021. This increase show that the app had a central role for the GameStop stocks, where young investors saw an opportunity to make money with commission-free trades.

As of June 17, 2024, the most shorted stock was for, the American holographic technology services provider, MicroCloud Hologram Inc., with 66.64 percent of their total float having been shorted. This is a change from mid-January 2021, when video game retailed GameStop had an incredible 121.07 percent of their available shares in a short position. In effect this means that investors had 'borrowed' more shares (with a future promise to return them) than the total number of shares available for public trading. Owing to this behavior of professional investors, retail investors enacted a campaign to drive up the stock price of Gamestop, leading to losses of billions when investors had to repurchase the stock they had borrowed. At this time, a similar – but less effective – social media campaign was also carried out for the stock price of cinema operator AMC, and the price of silver. What is short selling? Short selling is essentially where an investor bets on a share price falling by: borrowing a number of shares selling these shares while the price is still high; purchasing the same number again once the price falls; then returning the borrowed shares at a profit. Of course, a profit will only be made if the share price does fall; should the share price rise the investor will then need to purchase the shares back at a higher price, and thus incur a loss. Short selling can lead to some very large profits in a short amount of time, with Tesla stock generating over one billion dollars in short sell profits during the first week of March 2020 alone, owing to the financial crash caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. However, owing to the short-term, opportunistic nature of short selling, these returns look less impressive when considered as net profits from short sell positions over the full year. The risks of short selling Short selling carries greater risks than traditional investments, and for this reason financial advisors often recommend against this strategy for ‘retail’ (i.e. non-professional) investors. The reason for this is that losses from short selling are potentially uncapped, whereas losses from traditional investments are limited to the initial cost. For example, if someone purchases 100 dollars of shares, the maximum they can lose is the 100 dollars the spent on those shares. However, say someone borrows 100 dollars of shares instead, betting on the price falling. If these shares are then sold for 100 dollars but the price subsequently rises, the losses could greatly exceed the initial investment should the price rise to, say, 500 dollars. The risks of short selling can be seen by looking again at Tesla, with the company causing the greatest losses over 2020 from short selling at over 40 billion U.S. dollars.

According to a January 2021 survey of social media users in the United States, around five in ten users of LinkedIn reported having money invested in the stock market. Reddit users were also more likely to have made stock investments in the past, as 52 percent of the respondents belonging to the Reddit's community reported having money personally or jointly in the stock market. In January 2021, Reddit users belonging to the subreddit r/wallstreetbets came together in a coordinated buying of GameStop shares in order to deliberately increase the losses of hedge funds that had expected the price would decrease.

The net revenue of the online trading platform Robinhood experienced a peak of 565 million U.S. dollars in the second quarter of 2021. Following this, revenues have remained relatively stable, resting at 471 million U.S. dollars in the final quarter of 2023. Robinhood came under the spotlight in January 2021, in connection with the GameStop story, when they implemented a trade halt on GameStop stocks for a few days, which benefitted the hedge funds who were still able to trade, and upset their users.