Robinhood has made a bold move into social trading with its latest announcement at HOOD Summit 2025, introducing features that put it in direct competition with established social trading platforms like eToro. The commission-free trading pioneer unveiled a comprehensive suite of new tools designed to transform active trading, with social functionality taking center stage.
Robinhood Social: Following eToro's Playbook
The headline feature, Robinhood Social, represents the company's most significant departure from its traditional trading-focused approach. This new community platform allows users to follow other traders, view live verified trades, and discuss market strategies—functionality that eToro has been well known for providing through its extensive social network features and copy trading capabilities.
Unlike eToro's copy trading system where users can automatically replicate successful traders' portfolios, Robinhood Social focuses on transparency and community discussion. Users can:
- View live, verified trades from other Robinhood customers as they happen
- Track real performance data including 1-year and daily P&L, profit rates, and trading history
- Follow traders across multiple asset classes including stocks, options, futures, crypto, and prediction markets
- Monitor publicly reported trades from politicians, hedge funds, and market insiders
The platform launches by invitation only in early 2026, positioning Robinhood to compete directly with eToro's social trading dominance while maintaining its commission-free model.
AI-Powered Trading Tools Take Center Stage
Beyond social features, Robinhood is leveraging artificial intelligence to democratize advanced trading tools through Robinhood Cortex. This AI assistant can create custom indicators and market scans without requiring coding knowledge—a significant barrier removal for retail traders.
Custom Indicators: Simply tell Cortex what you want to analyze, and it builds the indicator automatically, syncing across both mobile and desktop platforms.
Custom Scans: The AI monitors markets in real-time based on natural language requests, helping traders identify opportunities across stocks, ETFs, crypto, and futures.
Expanding the Active Trading Ecosystem
Robinhood Legend, the company's browser-based trading platform, receives major upgrades:
- Futures Trading: Access to 40+ CME Group futures products with commissions as low as $0.50 for Gold members
- Enhanced Trading Ladders: One-click trading with Level 2 data across multiple asset classes
- Short Selling: Finally addressing one of the most requested features from active traders
- Overnight Index Options: Extended trading hours for select index options
The Competitive Landscape Heats Up
While eToro has long been recognized for its social network functionalities and copy trading features, Robinhood's approach emphasizes transparency and community over automation. This strategy could appeal to traders who want social insights without fully surrendering control of their investment decisions.
The timing is strategic. As retail trading continues to mature, platforms must evolve beyond simple execution to provide community, education, and advanced tools. Robinhood's comprehensive update positions it as a "financial superapp" rather than just a trading platform.
What This Means for Traders
For active traders, these updates represent a significant expansion of Robinhood's capabilities. The combination of social features, AI-powered tools, and advanced trading options creates a more complete ecosystem that could reduce the need for multiple platforms.
However, success will depend on execution and adoption. Social trading platforms require active, engaged communities to provide value, and Robinhood will need to cultivate this while maintaining the simplicity that made it popular.
The invitation-only launch of Robinhood Social suggests the company is taking a measured approach to building its trading community—a wise strategy given the challenges of moderating financial advice and maintaining platform integrity.
As the lines between traditional brokers and social trading platforms continue to blur, Robinhood's latest updates signal a new phase in retail trading evolution, where community, technology, and accessibility converge to serve increasingly sophisticated individual investors.