Robinhood Markets is pushing US stock trading closer to a 24/7 model with its weekend trading initiative running from Sunday at 8 p.m. New York time through Friday at 8 p.m., marking a significant shift in market accessibility. As reported by Mint, the service will route weekend orders to a trading venue operated by Bruce Markets, with CEO Steve Quirk noting that "Breaking news doesn't wait for an opening bell." However, the conventional US equity session still runs from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. New York time, and the 4 p.m. close remains important as it sets reference prices, index levels, corporate actions and the T+1 settlement clock. According to Mint analysis, Saturday and Sunday prints should be read as a thinner, off-exchange session with wider spreads, less depth, and prices that may not hold at Monday's open. The weekend initiative essentially seeks to fill the Friday-to-Sunday gap, taking retail investors closer to continuous access while maintaining the distinction between extended hours and traditional market structure.
Robinhood has officially launched Robinhood Agents, an AI-powered automated trading system that lets customers build strategies and place trades around the clock. As reported at the company's HOOD Summit in Houston on September 29, 2026, the tool is built directly into the Robinhood app and can research markets, build strategies, and execute trades for customers at any hour. OpenAI's GPT-Luna model will be free to use until the end of the year, with customers naming their agent, opening a separate agentic trading account, and selecting AI models from supported labs. The system includes guardrails where agents can only access funds in their own dedicated account, and manual trade approval is turned on by default during setup. A planned feature called Loops will let users create recurring instructions for agents to check markets and execute trades when preset conditions are met. The company is now expanding this offering by introducing AI agents powered by OpenAI and Anthropic, allowing customers to automate market analysis and trading within a separate account, with user approval required for each trade. Robinhood is also opening the door to third-party AI agents, suggesting the company sees itself as a platform rather than the sole provider of intelligence. According to the latest reports, more than 150,000 agentic accounts have opened since the feature launched in May, and agents use the company's tools more than 30 million times a day. About 25% of conference attendees were already using agentic features, demonstrating strong early adoption.
Robinhood has announced plans to launch crypto perpetual futures for eligible U.S. customers with leverage of up to 10x, while preparing 24/7 weekend trading for selected U.S. stocks and ETFs. According to the company's September 29 HOOD Summit release, the perpetual contracts will arrive in the coming months and cover Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, XRP, Dogecoin, Cardano, LINK and HYPE as the initial eight supported assets. Bitcoin and Ether contracts will offer leverage of up to 10x, while the other six assets will be capped at 3x leverage. The contracts will have no expiration date and will be priced at 0.01% per trade through year-end 2024. CEO Vlad Tenev described the product as "America's first true perps," with profit and loss settling every 15 minutes. The planned U.S. perps product will be offered by Robinhood Derivatives through Bitstamp, following Robinhood's $200 million Bitstamp acquisition completed in June 2025. The company is also introducing new product offerings including crypto perpetual futures with leverage of up to 10 times, extended options trading hours, increased intraday margin, and contracts tied to corporate earnings metrics through Cboe.
Robinhood has introduced Robinhood Social, a new social trading layer that allows users to share trades and insights with each other. The platform uses verified trading signals, real profit and loss data, portfolio allocations and position posts to reduce fake trades, wash trading and Telegram-style signal scams. Market commentators, companies, politicians, CEOs and news sources can appear in curated feeds, with the social feed integrated into Legend, its trading platform, through a widget that shows trade cards and entry and exit points. The company also unveiled an earnings call player that combines audio, real-time transcripts, speaker attribution, live comments and one-tap trading. The tool includes tap-to-jump navigation, a scrubber, 2x playback speed and picture-in-picture mode, rolling out during this earnings season. Through a partnership with Cboe, Robinhood will introduce earnings contracts that let users take positions on specific metrics tied to company performance, essentially betting on whether a company beats or misses on particular data points around earnings releases. The company serves more than 27 million funded accounts and aims to be "the best place in the world for active traders" by delivering tools once reserved for hedge funds and quant firms.
Robinhood has introduced an app ecosystem built around third-party data and analysis tools to bring institutional-style research into a retail app without requiring separate subscriptions or technical setup. The company partnered exclusively with some of the top data providers in the world to bring data into one place for everyday traders. Unusual Whales will help spot unusual options activity, Nasdaq will provide retail and Wall Street trading data, QuiverQuant will track congressional trading and corporate lobbying, Token Terminal will provide blockchain and crypto analysis, Visual Crossing will add weather data, Narravance will track social media narratives, and AppNexus will serve as the subscription interface, with one-swipe access. The first month will be free for all partners at launch. Robinhood has also expanded into prediction markets, having traded more than 50 billion prediction market contracts to date. A new Predict tab will surface earnings trading and other event contracts, allowing users to trade binary outcomes tied to revenue, earnings per share and other company-specific metrics. The feature will cover 20-plus popular symbols and hundreds of events, launching in the next few weeks in time for third-quarter earnings.
