Increasing importance and new behaviors, a new era for retail investors, how does their performance measure up?

Abstract

This study examines the performance of the Robinhood (RH) consensus portfolio from 2018 to 2020. It refutes Welch's (2022) analysis that the consensus RH portfolios performed well, by showing its last months' influence on alpha’s abnormal return. This study reveals that while RH investors leaned towards trading volumes higher than the 12-month average, this alone does not explain their abnormal returns. I argue that the portfolio performance is mostly explained by the onset of the Covid-19. I defend that RH users largely benefited from increasing engagement during this period, intensifying holdings following major market shifts, notably during the 33% drop of March 2020. I conjecture that this, along with investing in stocks that see high absolute returns positively contributed to the portfolio performance post-2020.