By Justin Issleib | Feb. 27, 2021 2:00 p.m.

GameStop has been in the news a lot lately. GameStop is a store that sells video games which has been struggling since the beginning of the pandemic. The reason for all of the buzz about GameStop is because small average investors started shaking up Wall Street investors by using investing apps like Robin hood. These apps have since come under fire in the aftermath of this phenomenon.

GameStop Trending

GameStop stock (GME) started to rise rapidly in value, after investors bet against GameStop, which ended up costing Wall Street investors a lot of money in losses, and really shaking the Wall Street world. The main reason that this happened was through an investing app called Robinhood and a reddit page called Wall Street Bets.  These sites have been used by more ordinary investors rather than the usual Wall Street investors. The Robinhood app allows average people to invest small amounts of money into the stocks they choose. 

The Robinhood app and company has been around since 2013 and is free to download through the Google or Apple Play Stores.  When people sign up on Robinhood, they do not have to pay a fee and people can start investing with as little as five dollars to one-hundred dollars.  One hundred dollars is the limit  people can invest by transferring money from their bank account. Once planned investment money is approved by Robinhood, people are free to start investing and can choose the stocks they feel the most comfortable buying.

Since people have been so obsessed with Robinhood, the buzz around GameStop, and how it shocked investors on Wall Street, I downloaded the Robinhood app to give investing a try for myself. The main reason for downloading Robinhood was also due to hearing about friend’s journey with investing in stocks. This has been a new experience for me, as I had never invested in stocks and I was glad to have my friend mentor me because he had experience with navigating the stock market.

Using Robinhood

Currently, the experience with Robinhood has been user-friendly. When people sign up with Robinhood, they are given a free stock, which can range from four dollars to one-hundred dollars per share. The stocks offered on Robinhood are placed in different categories. The categories include entertainment, pharmaceuticals, technology, and more. People also have access to  a list within the ap that shows them the stocks that are beneficial to invest in. This list of stocks is usually on the front page of the app. The stock that I am most interested in investing in is Twitter. After viewing how Twitter’s stock performed over the past week, I noticed how stable it was.   This also showed me how I would gain money in that stock rather than continuing to lose money over time. The way investors can tell how a stock does and rather if it is worth investing in, is how it does when the stock market first opens during the start of each day to the close of the stock market at the end of each day. An example of this is that if Netflix’s stock was at $552.34 at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day drops to $534.46, something happened for it to be disrupted.

After the initial experience with Robinhood, I believe I will continue to invest in stocks. Arguably a good  time for people to invest in stocks is when they are young and they can risk their money without the risk of financial setbacks. E-trade is a similar app that has peaked my interest, but for now, I will stick with investing in stocks with the  Robinhood app. I will use Robinhood to gain my knowledge with trading in stocks, then, possibly, in the future move on to other investment apps.