Robinhood leads the way

Brokerage app Robinhood is getting millennials to stop worrying and love investing.

The stock-trading app is ushering in a new generation of investors.

Dallas resident Steven Card has a thing for Costco hot dogs. “Every time I go, I Snapchat the sign, [telling friends,] ‘I’m here again!’ ” he says.

So when the 26-year-old started trading stocks through Robinhood—an online brokerage that launched in 2014—it made sense to him to buy shares of both Costco and Snap, Snapchat’s newly public parent company. Card’s other stock holdings follow a similar pattern: Ford (there’s one in his garage), AMD (maker of the graphics card in his computer), and Anheuser-busch Inbev (cheers to that).

“If I’ve never heard of the company, I don’t usually feel comfortable

Trading places After writing software for hedge funds, Baiju Bhatt, left, and Vladimir Tenev changed direction and created Robinhood.