Morning Minute: Robinhood Adds Perps, Weekend Stocks, and AI Traders

At its Houston Summit, Robinhood announced a dozen product changes aimed at active traders, widening its derivatives, trading hours and AI capabilities. The company introduced U.S.-accessible crypto perpetual futures for bitcoin and ether with up to 10x leverage, while other coins will be offered with lower starting leverage. Robinhood said these contracts will be available through Robinhood Derivatives and Bitstamp rather than its Lighter platform.

Robinhood is also extending equities trading into weekends for a selection of stocks and ETFs by routing orders through an alternative trading system called Bruce ATS, making those listings tradable 24/7 including Saturdays and Sundays. The firm previously offered round-the-clock trading during weekdays but had not enabled weekend sessions until now.

The product slate includes AI agents that can research markets and place trades on behalf of users. Customers will be able to create agents inside the app, choose models from providers like OpenAI or Anthropic, and give the agents separate trading accounts plus standing instructions through a feature called Loops. Robinhood said more than 150,000 agent accounts already exist from earlier openings of its systems to external AI.

Additional features unveiled include contracts tied to corporate metrics such as revenue or earnings-per-share to be offered via Cboe, expanded intraday margin and longer options trading hours, and an in-app social trading product called Robinhood Social. A Robinhood product executive described the aim as a single account where customers can move seamlessly between buying and selling stocks, crypto and prediction markets without thinking about which market they are in.