Robinhood is the service that’s fastly rising in popularity. In short, that’s an American financial services company headquartered in Menlo Park, California. It’s well-known for pioneering trades of stocks without a commission.
However, this service offers you not only in-hours trading but after-hours trading as well.
This has its advantages, such as better prices, but this feature is not available by default and you must activate it.
If you are interested in after-hours trading with Robinhood, you can do so. And here’s how.
Who can trade after-hours with Robinhood
This feature isn’t available to anyone, but only to those, who have upgraded their accounts to Robinhood Gold. That means, that if you haven’t upgraded your plan yet, you will need to do this in order to trade after-hours with Robinhood.
The Robinhood Gold membership costs $5 a month and you can upgrade your membership on your mobile device, that’s quite easy. Here’s what you should do:
- Go to your Account tab by tapping on account icon in the bottom-right corner of your screen
- On the top-right corner of this tab, press the hamburger icon
- Go to Settings
- Tap on the Robinhood Gold button on the top-right corner of the screen
- Follow the instructions to upgrade your membership
In case you’re using the website only, you can do the same using the Robinhood website. Here’s what you should do:
- On the top-right corner of the screen click on the Account
- Click on the Robinhood Gold and follow instruction to upgrade your membership
Now, when your account membership is upgraded, we can proceed with after-hours trading.
How to trade after-hours with Robinhood
With Robinhood Gold, you can trade after hours. Here’s how:
- Choose any stock you want to trade and open it’s details page
- On the bottom-left corner you will see the Trade button. You will need to tap on it.
- You will see Buy or Sell stock options. In case you haven’t bought the stock yet – you will see Buy only button
- Choose Dollars and enter the ammount you want to buy or sell
- Review your order and verify if everything is correct
- To submit an order you will need to swipe up
What are after-hours trading benefits
Trading after hours has its advantages because you can follow company announcements, which are often made after markets close.
For example, companies may release quarterly earnings reports after the market closes, which can cause a significant difference in price when the markets are open. If you take advantage of this information correctly, you can gain an advantage.
Another reason why after-hours trading is used by many traders is because American markets are influenced by other countries’ stock markets, especially European and American markets.
As we know, markets operate at different times, so activity in foreign markets also affects the opening price.
Trading after hours allows you to take advantage of new information you get from foreign markets.
What are Robinhood trading hours
Market trading during regular trading sessions at Robinhood begins at 9:30 a.m. ET. However, the Robinhood pre-market begins at 9 a.m. ET, which is 30 minutes before the start of the regular trading session.
Trading after hours is between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. Eastern time.
If you use pre-market and after-hours trading, you get an extra 2.5 hours of trading session.
