Robinhood makes Wall Street debut, stumbles at start

NEW YORK (AP) — Robinhood made its own leap into the stock market Thursday, the one it helped reshape by bringing millions of new investors to Wall Street, and its shares were falling in their first day of trading.

Robinhood Markets' stock was at $36.16, as of 1 p.m. Eastern time, down 4.7% from the initial price of $38 set late Wednesday. It's a disappointing opening for the highly anticipated offering, which had already priced at the low end of its expected range. But the stock could swing sharply through the day given Robinhood's unusual move to reserve a big chunk of shares for its own smallerpocketed customers rather than big professional firms. It had been above $38 briefly after opening trading.

At its current price, the company is valued at roughly $30 billion, which puts it on par with companies like Kroger and

Old Dominion Freight Line, but its heft on the pop-culture landscape may be even weightier. Robinhood has created plenty of passion, both by users and critics alike.

The company has grown explosively since its 2013 founding, with an estimated 22.5 million funded accounts, after it did away with trading fees and made investing easier and even fun to do with its mobile app. More than half its customers are first-time investors, giving them more ability to keep up with the stock-holding, wealthier households that had been pulling away for years.

But Robinhood has also drawn heaps of criticism from users and regulators alike, with a lengthening list of regulatory settlements. Critics say Robinhood encourages unsophisticated investors to make trades too often that may be too risky.

Some users, meanwhile, are still angry at Robinhood after it and other brokers temporarily locked them out of trading GameStop shares earlier this year, when hordes of smallerpocketed investors were pushing the stock up in part to spite the monied elite on Wall Street.

Now that Robinhood's stock is trading on the Nasdaq, its performance gives a real-time look at the market's judgment of Robinhood's prospects.