Firstly, What Is Robinhood?
Robinhood offers various financial services and products, but here I’m focusing on the prediction markets element of their service. If you sign up to Robinhood, you can participate in their prediction markets if you wish.
What Are Prediction Markets?
Have you ever tried to predict the likely outcome of an event? It could be the result of a football match, a golf tournament, or even a Presidential election.
That’s the idea behind prediction markets. You’ll be able to attempt to predict everything from elections to weather events, and even who might win in the main categories at the Oscars or the Grammys. There are also several Robinhood sports prediction markets, and they’re quite popular.
You’ll find probabilities based on specific questions in a certain topic area. For example, will there be an interest rate rise this month? Will the next Star Wars movie be released in 2027? Will the price of gold be over $4,900 this month?
You get the idea.
Trade “Yes” or “No” Event Contracts
The question format means that each market will resolve - or end, if you prefer - with either a Yes or No outcome. You must decide which is more likely to happen, so you can choose whether you would like to back that outcome.
For example, let’s say you follow basketball, you live in Oklahoma City, and you support your local team. You might decide to look at the market for Oklahoma City being the Pro Basketball Champion this year. At the time of writing, Robinhood had 38% of the market backing Yes. This means each Robinhood event contract in that market would cost you 38 cents.
While you support the team, you may not think they’ll be champions. You might decide to back the No option in this case, which is currently 62% of the market. These percentages could fluctuate depending on supply and demand as people buy or sell these contracts. If you end up successfully choosing the right outcome, you’ll get $1 per event contract.
The bottom line is to try and predict the most likely outcome, whether you would prefer that outcome or not.
Does Robinhood Provide an iOS or Android App?
Yes, it does - in both cases. I picked up some basic stats from the App Store and Google Play Store respectively, which I’ve provided you with here.
| App | Number of Downloads | Rating | App |
|---|---|---|---|
| iOS app | Not stated | 4.3 out of 5 from 4.7 million reviews | iOS app |
| Android app | Over 10 million | 4.1 out of 5 from 524,000 reviews | Android app |
You can use the banners on this page to visit the Robinhood website, where you can find options to download the app.
Do Their Apps Work on Tablets and Smartphones?
My research suggests that they’ve designed the apps to work primarily on smartphones. The Robinhood website states that they “don’t specifically support” tablets. However, you might still find you can use them, depending on which tablet you’ve got and how old it is. Note that the iOS and Android apps are intended for smartphone users though.
The exception is the iOS app, which also works on Apple Watches.
Do You Need to Download the App or Can You Use Their Website Instead?
I checked out their website recently and found that I could access the prediction markets there - but I could only view them. You will see separate login and signup buttons at the top of the page in the right corner.
While you can see the format and get a sense of how the prediction markets work, you’ll see they invite you to scan the QR code to download their app and trade event contracts there, so you will need to get the app when you’re ready to take part.
Advantages of Using the Robinhood Mobile App
I found that I could easily get involved with their prediction markets via the app. I could view all the categories and choose any interesting prediction markets I wanted to trade in. Here are a few key points I noticed along the way.
You Can Login and Check Your Event Contracts From Anywhere
It doesn’t matter whether you’re following Robinhood election predictions or your favorite sports player or team, you can keep track of everything simply by downloading the app. Since it’s in your pocket, it’s always there when you need to check it. Or in the case of an Apple Watch, it’s right there on your wrist.
You Can Exit a Market Early Whenever You Wish
Each prediction market will have an end date, at which time that market will resolve to either Yes or No according to the outcome that occurred. However, you can sell your event contracts before that date if you wish. You may decide to do this if you bought at a low price and that has since gone up by a significant amount.
Since prediction markets can see sudden changes according to the latest events occurring around them, you can quickly access your account via the relevant app and sell your event contracts should you decide you would like to do so.
That is, of course, assuming there are buyers available. Robinhood’s prediction markets are P2P, meaning you can only sell if there is someone willing to buy, and vice versa.
You’ll Be Using a Highly Rated Mobile App
I noted the millions of downloads from people using the iOS and Android apps. You’ve also seen the excellent reviews from App Store users. Individual reviewers found it to be user friendly, with one saying it is ‘leaps and bounds ahead’ of competitors. It has excellent security too, with regular updates further securing the service.
It Provides You With an Accessible Interface
I found it easy to view the colored bar that indicates how the Yes and No options are currently sitting for a particular prediction market. As with any new app, you might want to take your time becoming more familiar with it, but on balance, I found it fine to use.
Pros and Cons of the Robinhood Predictions App
Whether you want to know more about their prediction markets or the type of Robinhood fees you might need to pay, you’ll be able to access all this information and plenty more in their app. Overall, I think there are far more plus points than negatives to consider before you download it.
Pros
- Plenty of prediction markets
- Markets covering sports, elections, and more
- Logical format and layout
- Easy to use
Con
- Small trading fee
Robinhood Has Developed a Solid App
Their app is designed chiefly for smartphones, although you can also use it on the Apple Watch, according to their app page in the App Store. Whichever app you use, you’ll find it provides quick access to the widest range of prediction markets in many topic areas, from sports to politics. You can visit the Robinhood website by using any of the links I’ve given you here to reach it.
It might take a while to settle in and become more familiar with their app, but it helped me gain a much better understanding of prediction markets. If you like the idea of attempting to predict the outcome of a sporting event or even a weather event using event contracts, you can visit Robinhood and check out the app that suits your device.
