Robinhood Adds AI Agents, Perps, and Weekend Trading
Robinhood is bringing crypto-style trading to the app with AI agents, perpetual futures, and weekend trading in U.S. stocks. The broker is targeting active traders and using Bitstamp for its first U.S. perps.
Key Takeaways
- Robinhood is adding weekend trading in U.S. stocks, extra options hours, intraday margin, and earnings contracts.
- With Robinhood Agents, users can connect an AI agent to a separate trading account for analysis, watchlists, and trading in stocks, options, and crypto.
- The company is introducing perpetual futures for eligible U.S. customers, with up to 10x leverage on bitcoin and ether.
Robinhood is taking a big step toward the crypto trading model with new AI agents, crypto perpetual futures, and weekend trading in U.S. stocks. The broker wants to keep more active traders on its platform and keep them there longer, without forcing them to move to other markets or apps.
More Hours and More Products
During the HOOD Summit in Houston, Robinhood unveiled weekend trading for U.S. stocks, extra trading hours for options, and more intraday margin. It is also adding contracts that let users trade on company results, such as revenue and profit.
The core strategy is simple: more assets and more hours. Robinhood is responding to a market where investors have increasingly gotten used to the pace of crypto exchanges, where trading runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The broker now wants to bring that expectation closer to the stock market too.
Robinhood previously announced its 24 Hour Market in 2023, but that service still shuts down on weekends. The company now wants to fill that gap through Bruce ATS, an alternative trading system, where a selection of stocks and ETFs should be available on Saturdays and Sundays.
AI Agents in the App
A second major update is Robinhood Agents. Users can create an AI agent in the app, choose a model from OpenAI or Anthropic, and give it access to a separate trading account. The agent can analyze markets, build watchlists, and trade stocks, options, and crypto.
Robinhood says customers must approve every suggested trade by default. That protection can be turned off, but the agent will not have access to margin at launch and can only work with money in the user’s own account. According to the company, more than 150,000 agentic accounts have already tested the infrastructure that Robinhood previously opened up to external AI agents.
The move fits into a broader trend in the financial sector, where AI is increasingly being used to automate trading processes and support faster decisions. For Robinhood, it is mainly a way to offer more advanced tools without requiring users to have much technical knowledge themselves.
Perps Bring Crypto Back
The most crypto-native addition is perpetual futures. This derivative is popular in the crypto market because it lets traders go long or short with leverage, without an expiration date like regular futures. Robinhood wants to offer these products to eligible customers in the U.S. through Robinhood Derivatives and Bitstamp, starting with crypto.
Bitcoin and ether contracts will get up to 10x leverage. For other supported assets, Robinhood is starting with 3x leverage. The company says it is intentionally starting lower with more volatile tokens. That still makes the products risky, because even a small move against the position can quickly lead to liquidation.
For European crypto followers, this is especially relevant because a major U.S. broker is now bringing over products that were long mostly found on offshore crypto exchanges. It shows how trading formats from crypto are increasingly showing up in regular investing apps, while the line between traditional markets and crypto keeps getting blurrier. That lines up with the broader rise of special accounts for AI bots, as other platforms also try to bring automated trading and payments closer to the user.
