Robinhood’s New AI Trader Runs 24/7, With Market Risk on Users

Robinhood is expanding its AI offerings with agents that can independently research markets, develop trading strategies and execute transactions for customers. The agents can operate around the clock, but the company says users remain responsible for the risks associated with trades made on their behalf.

The Nasdaq-listed brokerage announced “Robinhood Agents” Tuesday at its HOOD Summit in Houston. The technology is built into the Robinhood app and lets customers choose an AI agent and establish the permissions and trading limits it must follow.

Robinhood has more than 27 million funded accounts. Unlike a standard chatbot that mainly provides information in response to questions, an AI agent can perform tasks independently. Under Robinhood’s system, that includes buying and selling assets for customers within the parameters they set.

The offering brings automated trading capabilities that have traditionally been associated with hedge funds and quantitative trading firms to retail investors.

The company began testing agentic trading in May by allowing technically experienced users to connect their own AI agents to Robinhood accounts. Since that launch, more than 150,000 customers have opened agentic trading accounts, and those agents use Robinhood’s tools nearly 30 million times per day, according to Robinhood.

The new feature allows customers to select and authorize an AI agent directly rather than developing one themselves.

“Agentic accounts come with trade approvals settings which you can configure to allow automated trade execution. With approvals on, your agent cannot place an order until you approve it. You can turn trade approvals off, and if you do, your agent can place orders without asking you to confirm each one,” the company said.

Robinhood is also working on a feature called Loops, which will allow customers to turn a trading strategy into a recurring instruction for an AI agent.

A user could, for example, instruct the agent to review the market each morning and execute trades when specific conditions are met. The strategy could also continue running overnight while the customer is asleep. Robinhood said Loops will be introduced soon.

The rollout comes as AI agents are increasingly being developed to handle financial tasks. Meta’s Muse assistant can access users’ bank balances and investments, while Coinbase’s x402 payments protocol allows AI agents to pay for services using stablecoins.

Robinhood warns users they carry the risk

The brokerage’s disclosures place responsibility for AI-driven trades on customers.

Customers “assume all risk for trades executed by AI agents and for any use of your data by third-party LLM providers,” Robinhood said. The company also stated that it “does not control, supervise, monitor, recommend, or audit agents.”

The risks could become more pronounced with Loops because the feature is designed to operate without requiring approval for every transaction.

After being activated, Loops “may place, modify, or cancel trades in your account automatically, without prompting you for approval on each transaction – including while you’re asleep, away from your device, or otherwise not monitoring the market.”

The system will execute a customer’s instructions “exactly as configured, including during periods of market volatility.”

Robinhood does not guarantee the performance of Loops under any particular market conditions and says automated trading carries the same risks as manual trading. Users can switch the feature off, although trades already placed by Loops will not automatically be reversed.

Autonomous AI trading draws wider scrutiny

The potential impact of agentic trading could extend beyond individual accounts if large numbers of AI systems begin operating in financial markets simultaneously.

Bank of England Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden warned in June that autonomous AI agents could “amplify volatility in stress” and potentially trigger a “market meltdown.” She also noted that existing financial regulation was not designed for agentic systems.

A major concern is herding, where multiple AI trading agents respond to the same information in similar ways. If many systems act simultaneously after a market development, their combined orders could intensify the resulting price movement.

A study from Wharton and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology found that AI trading agents in a simulated environment could collude and fix prices for collective profit even without an explicit communication channel.

Researchers also found that the agents could maintain above-market profits without communication, agreement or intent, highlighting potential challenges for regulators as autonomous trading develops.

For now, these broader risks remain largely theoretical because agentic trading is still an emerging technology and adoption is limited. The regulatory warnings and academic research address AI-powered trading in general and do not demonstrate that Robinhood’s agents behave in the same way.

The developments nonetheless show that automated AI trading comes with risks in addition to the convenience of allowing software to make and execute trades without constant human supervision.