About recurring investments

Here’s an example:

Say you set up a recurring investment to buy $10.00 of fictional stock MEOW every week on Monday. When Monday rolls around, we’ll automatically purchase $10.00 worth of MEOW for your account.

This means if MEOW is currently trading at $40 per share, you’ll receive 0.25 shares of MEOW. If MEOW is trading at $20 per share the following Monday, you’ll receive an additional 0.5 shares, for a total of 0.75 shares.

Mobile

From the detail page of the stock, ETF, or cryptocurrency you’re interested in:

1. Tap Buy or Trade > Buy

2. In the top right corner, tap Dollars or Shares for stocks and ETFs or Market buy for crypto to go to the Order Types screen

3. Choose Recurring Investment

4. Input the start date, frequency, preferred payment method, and dollar amount. If you choose to pay with buying power, you can add a backup payment method as well. This can help make sure your recurring investment stays on track if you run out of buying power.

5. Tap on Review Order. Double-check all the details.

6. If everything looks good, Swipe up to submit.

Web

From the detail page of the stock, ETF, or cryptocurrency you’re interested in:

1. Click on the drop-down menu in the top right corner of the sidebar.

2. From the list of order types, choose Recurring Investment.

3. Input the dollar amount, frequency, start date, and payment method you prefer.

4. Click on Review Order. Double-check all the details.

5. If everything looks good, click Submit.

Mobile

There are two ways to view your recurring investments in the app.

On the Investing tab (home):

1. Scroll to the Recurring Investments section

2. Tap on the recurring investment you want to edit

3. To pause this recurring investment, tap the green toggle to turn it to Paused

4. To delete this recurring investment, tap Cancel recurring investment at the bottom of the screen

On Account tab (person icon):

1. Tap Investing

2. Scroll down to Recurring Investments

3. Tap View Recurring Investments

4. Tap the recurring investment you want to edit

5. To pause this recurring investment, tap the green toggle to turn it to Paused

6. To delete this recurring investment, tap Cancel recurring investment at the bottom of the screen

You can also edit the amount you’re investing, the investment schedule, payment method, and backup payment method by tapping on the appropriate row.

Web

From the homescreen:

1. In the right-hand sidebar with your holdings, scroll down to the Recurring Investments section

2. Click on the recurring investment you want to edit

3. Click Edit Investment

4. Make the changes you want and click Review Changes

5. If all looks good, click Save Changes

Instant deposits are funds that Robinhood gives you access to so you can invest while your bank transfers are processing. Every account has an instant deposit limit—you can find yours on the Account tab under Investing > Instant Deposits Health.

If you fund your recurring investment with a bank account, some of your instant deposits will be used to place the order while the money from your bank is on the move. For example, a $50 recurring investment funded with a bank account will use up $50 of your instant deposits limit.

However, sometimes you might not have enough instant deposits available for a recurring order—you might have used them to place other orders, for example. When that happens, your recurring order will be placed once the transfer from your bank lands in your brokerage account, which can take up to five business days. For example, if your $50 recurring order funded through your bank account is scheduled for today but you don’t have any instant deposits, the bank transfer will start and your order will be placed after the transfer completes.

Recurring investment orders will typically start to be processed between 12:00 PM ET and market close on the scheduled date. If your recurring investment order falls on a day that the market is closed, like a weekend or holiday, it will be scheduled for the next trading day.

To fill recurring investment orders in a fair way, we typically group them in batch orders to be sent to market. In general, one batch order is created for each security—although please note that we may create multiple batch orders in rare cases.

For example: if Robinhood customers have set up 4,000 recurring investments in fictional stock POWA, then our system would create one batch order to send all 4,000 POWA orders to market at the same time. Creating batch orders like this helps to better ensure that all customers who created a recurring investment for POWA get their orders filled at the same price.

To figure out how many shares you’ll receive for your recurring investment, divide your investment amount by the price per share at the time the batch order executed. You may end up with fractional shares.

For example: if you have a weekly investment for $50 of POWA, and the price of POWA when the bulk order executes is $5 per share, you’ll receive 10 shares of POWA that week.

Our batch orders typically are filled around 1:30 PM ET, though this time may vary.

There are several reasons why your recurring investment might get paused automatically:

• The bank transfer for your order was reversed—this sometimes happens if there are insufficient funds in the bank account
• The bank account you chose for your primary payment method was unlinked
• There was a trading restriction on the stock or ETF at the time the order would’ve been placed
• Your account was set to position-closing only, meaning you weren’t able to place buy orders

A recurring order also might be automatically skipped for these reasons:

• You didn’t have enough buying power to place the order at the time
• The bank transfer to your account for your order failed
• There was a technical error on our end

Generally, securities that have a share price of over $1.00 and a market cap of $25 million or more are eligible for recurring investments. However, there are some exceptions. Here’s a list of the types of securities that we currently don’t support recurring investments for:

Inverse exchange-traded products

Inverse exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and inverse exchange-traded notes (ETNs) are designed to track the inverse of a set of stocks or underlying indexes—the idea being that when those stocks fall in price, the inverse ETF or ETN will rise in price.

Inverse exchange-traded products are designed to be used as short-term trading vehicles. Most of them reset daily or within a short time period and, as a result, are meant to be held and sold on a daily basis.

Leveraged exchange-traded products

Leveraged ETFs and ETNs use borrowed funds and other financial products (like options contracts) to try to magnify the returns of the index they track. Because the tools used to create the leveraged ETF or ETN are typically short-term tools (for example, most options contracts have short-term expiration dates), holding one of these products as a long-term investment would result in the returns being quite different from the underlying index they track.

Like inverse ETPs, leveraged exchange-traded products are designed to be used as short-term trading vehicles. Most of them reset daily or within a short time period and, as a result, are meant to be held and sold on a daily basis. As a result, Robinhood does not support recurring investments in them.

Volatility exchange-traded products

Volatility ETPs track volatility in the market. Volatility is generally associated with uncertainty or fear because a highly volatile market is often one that is losing value. Many of these products track the Chicago Board Options Exchange’s (CBOE) Volatility Index, also known as VIX or the “fear index.”

Because volatility ETPs reset daily or within a short time period, they’re meant to be held and sold on a daily basis, so Robinhood does not support recurring investments in them.

Pre-IPO instruments

We currently don’t support recurring investments for pre-IPO instruments because investing in a pre-IPO instrument means you’re taking place in the company’s IPO in the primary market (where securities are created) before the instrument trades on the secondary market (where investors trade the security). If you’d like to set up a recurring investment in a newly-listed stock, wait until the first day of trading to do so.

Securities that are not tradable

There are several different reasons why a security might not be available for trading at a given point in time: the security might be in a trading halt, undergoing a corporate action, might be very illiquid (meaning it's hard to find a buyer), or might be delisted (meaning it no longer trades anywhere).

Securities that don’t support fractional shares

Recurring investments use dollar-based orders to automatically purchase fractional shares of a stock or ETF. However, some securities don’t support fractional shares, so we can’t offer recurring investments in those securities. Fractional trading sometimes is temporarily unavailable on certain securities because of corporate actions, which are events that a company initiates that change its stock somehow. You can track the most recent corporate actions in this Help Center article.

Securities that are “position-closing only”

Securities that are set to “position-closing only” can’t be bought on Robinhood. Robinhood may set securities to “position-closing only” for a variety of reasons depending on the situation. For example, a security might be set to position-closing only in response to operational changes or government action.

Crypto recurring investment orders will typically be processed around 2:30-4 PM ET each day.

To fill recurring crypto orders in a fair way, our system aims to place all recurring crypto orders for a certain coin at around the same time.

For example: if Robinhood Crypto customers have set up 4,000 recurring investments in fictional crypto HET, then our system would send all 4,000 HET orders to market at around the same time. We do this in hopes of ensuring that all Robinhood Crypto customers who created a recurring investment for HET get their orders filled at around the same price.

To figure out how much crypto you’ll receive for your recurring investment, divide your investment amount by the price per coin at the time your order executed.

To help protect against dramatic price moves, crypto recurring orders are placed as limit orders collared up to 1% above the last trade price. This means that your order may fill for less than your chosen dollar amount. When that happens, the difference is returned to your crypto buying power.

For example: Imagine that fictional crypto HET is trading at $10.00 per coin, and you have a crypto recurring investment for $10.00 of HET each week. To protect against situations where the price of HET increases significantly between order placement and order execution, we’ll send your recurring order as a limit order for 0.99 HET at a price of $10.10 per coin. In short, this means that your recurring HET order won’t execute for more than $10.00, but it may execute for less than $10.00. If HET is still trading at $10.00 when your order executes, you’ll receive 9.90 HET. The remaining $0.10 will be returned to your crypto buying power.

If the price of the cryptocurrency moves more than 1% higher than its price when your order is placed, your order won’t fill and will be skipped. In the example above, this would happen if HET was trading at $10.11 at the time your order would have executed. Robinhood Crypto will let you know when this happens and you’ll never be charged more than your chosen dollar amount.

There are several reasons why your crypto recurring investment might get paused automatically:

• The bank transfer to your brokerage account for your recurring order was reversed—this sometimes happens if there are insufficient funds in the bank account
• The bank account you chose for your primary payment method was unlinked
• There was a trading restriction on the crypto at the time the order would’ve been placed
• Your brokerage account was set to position-closing only, meaning you weren’t able to place buy orders

A recurring order also might be automatically skipped for these reasons:

• You didn’t have enough crypto buying power to place the order at the time
• The bank transfer to your brokerage account for your order failed
• You have a margin-enabled brokerage account and placing the crypto order would have brought your brokerage account under the $2,000 minimum required for margin investing
• There was a technical error on our end

Yes, you can create a recurring investment for all the coins offered on Robinhood Crypto.

First, try making sure your app is updated with the latest version.

Otherwise, this may be happening because you live in a state where Robinhood Crypto is not available. Robinhood Crypto is currently available in every US state and the District of Columbia, except for Hawaii and Nevada. We’re working hard to make Robinhood Crypto available in those states as soon as possible!