Robinhood announces 24/7 trading, perpetual crypto futures and AI agents for active traders

Robinhood unveiled on Tuesday night, during its HOOD Summit held in Houston, Texas, a package of new features aimed at more active traders: an extension of trading hours to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the addition of perpetual crypto futures and new automated trading tools powered by artificial intelligence. The announcement marks a further step in the transformation of the company, which was born as a commission-free stock trading app and is now seeking to become a comprehensive platform for investors operating across multiple markets and time zones.

The most striking measure is the extension of trading hours: starting next year, Robinhood customers will be able to trade certain US stocks around the clock, including weekends. This expands the 24/5 trading feature the company launched in 2023, which already allowed trading from Sunday at 8 p.m. ET until Friday at the same time. Under the new setup, Robinhood would also eliminate the weekend gap for certain securities.

Alongside this expansion of hours, the company introduced AI-powered automated trading tools that will allow users to build their own agents, following on from the launch of its "agentic" trading earlier this year. The idea is that customers can delegate part of the trading process to these agents so they can execute strategies continuously, 24 hours a day, without having to monitor the market manually.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev defended the move with a clear statement about the company's positioning: "Ownership doesn't work without markets, and markets don't work without traders. We're making Robinhood the best place in the world for active traders, offering tools once reserved for hedge funds, large banks and quant firms." In a later interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box," Tenev noted that most markets went electronic about 20 years ago and that, although algorithms already dominate much of the volume on exchanges, human traders' strategies still play a role: "I don't think that's going away. I don't think it will ever reach 100%, but it does open up a new frontier of capabilities. Every time a new asset class appears — whether perpetuals, predictions on corporate earnings or a new capability like AI tools — it creates new ground where traders and market participants can compete, and my bet is that there are plenty of opportunities there."

In addition to these new features, Robinhood confirmed plans to allow trading of perpetual crypto futures contracts within its app. This type of product offers leveraged exposure to crypto assets without needing to own the underlying asset, and it is common on crypto-native platforms but still less so among regulated mainstream brokers in the United States.

The competitive context helps explain the strategy. Robinhood is moving ever further into the territory of specialized crypto platforms such as Coinbase, which has expanded its offering into derivatives and other financial products, and it also competes with traditional brokers such as Schwab, which this year added 24/7 trading in futures on certain cryptocurrencies through its thinkorswim platform. The article stresses that, as firms compete for customers trading across a wider range of markets and hours, competition among retail brokers is shifting away from low commissions — now practically standardized after years of price wars in the sector — toward access, speed and automation.

As for the market reaction, Robinhood shares (HOOD) barely moved on Wednesday after the announcement, suggesting investors did not see the new features as an immediate short-term catalyst, although they do reinforce the company's narrative as a player aggressively expanding its product surface into areas once dominated by institutional participants: complex derivatives and algorithmic automation.

From an analytical standpoint, Robinhood's move toward AI agents that trade autonomously for retail users raises relevant questions that the article does not explore but that are part of the broader debate around agentic AI applied to personal finance: what level of oversight and risk controls accompany these agents, how errors or unexpected behavior are handled in markets that would now operate nonstop, and what role US financial regulation will play in the face of an offering that brings retail users closer to capabilities once reserved for hedge funds and quant firms, as Tenev himself acknowledges in his statement.