New online tool tracks Robinhood traders and their stocks
What this means to you if you use the mobile trading app
Robintrack is a web application that offers analytics on Robinhood traders and how much stock is being owned by them. A 23-year-old programmer created it with interest in making trading data public to the world. For many senior investment firms, they already have access to information like this. For beginning investors, this is a rare opportunity to access valuable data thanks to Robinhood’s public API available to anyone.
This web application works by tracking the number of Robinhood users holding different stocks over time. The chart then displays the relationship between the price and popularity of a particular stock. It also builds lists that rank the largest changes in popularity in a day, week, or even a month. The idea behind this is simple, but not even a hedge fund manager could come up with it.
The website was created in March 2018 by Casey Primozic, an undergraduate student at Valparaiso University, as a side project while working part-time at a cryptocurrency startup.
“I had built other tracking websites for video games and music, and I saw an opportunity to do the same thing for Robinhood traders. The data was sort of just hidden on the Robinhood site, it was kind of nestled in there. I didn’t see anyone doing anything with it, but it seemed like it could have some value,” said Primozic.
Robinhood knows about the website. An employee spotted it in its early days and shared it on the company Slack. It was impressive enough that a recruiter at the company called Primozic for an interview. As the site gains more followers, many have gotten in touch, including those in high places.
“The biggest impact it’s had for me personally is the amount of people I’ve got to meet and get in contact with. People who run ETF-issuing funds and people working at prominent financial institutions and people trading. All these high-profile Twitter accounts retweet my content, stuff like that,” he said.
The fact that what he built was a big deal dawned on him when the Robintrack Twitter account posted on a day the stock markets were closed. “Previously no one really cared, I only had a couple hundred people following. Now that I have tens of thousands of followers it was seen as a comedic event, a corporate flub in a way. It was the most popular tweet of the entire month!”
