The Wisdom of the Robinhood Crowd

Abstract

Robinhood (RH) investors increased their holdings in the March 2020 COVID bear market, indicating an absence of collective panic and margin calls. This steadfastness was rewarded in the subsequent bull market. Despite unusual interests in some “experience” stocks (e.g., cannabis stocks), they primarily tilted towards stocks with high past share volume and dollar-trading volume, itself mostly big stocks. From mid-2018 to mid-2020, an aggregated crowd consensus portfolio (a proxy for the household-equal-weighted portfolio) had both good timing and good alpha.

JEL Classification: D9, G4, G11