Welcome to Skywalker Ranch. Can you believe that this is our fifth event this year? We've been busy. And although we've done a lot, there is one topic that we have yet to cover. Who here thinks we are not alone in the universe? That there's extraterrestrial life out there? Let's see those paddles. Yes or no? All right. Looks like we have a lot of believers. Now, here's the interesting part. You can price that belief. If you open the Robinhood app and search aliens, you'll see a Robinhood prediction market that quantifies this exact question: Will the U.S. government confirm that aliens exist in 2027? Right now, the market is putting that at about a 19% chance of yes. I was actually shocked when I saw that it was that high.
Anyway, this is just one of over 1,500 prediction markets live on Robinhood today across sports, entertainment, and world affairs. In less than a year, there have already been over 10 billion contracts traded. So what's actually going on here? Tonight isn't just about exploring the big questions of cosmic significance, although we love doing that. It's about a bigger shift in what Robinhood is becoming and how three key new pieces of Robinhood are going to converge to drive this change. So let's get started. And the way I'd like to begin is by talking a bit about prediction markets, why we find them so interesting, why they're resonating so much right now, and why we believe we're in the early stages of a supercycle for this burgeoning asset class. And as of today, you can access our prediction markets on the web.
Up until now, you've only been able to see them if you were logged in on mobile, which was great for traders, but now they're accessible to everyone. And I have to say, they look pretty sweet. So here's what many consider to be the most consequential prediction market: next Fed decision. It affects pretty much everything. Did anyone go to the pump today, by the way, or did you guys all drive EVs here? As you can get a sense of this by looking at all the markets, prediction markets dramatically increase the breadth of what's tradable on Robinhood. Look at all these categories that are available. We've gone from one contract to thousands in just one year. And over the coming years, we could get to tens of thousands or more. More recently, we added weather contracts like this one for the holidays.
It looks like our New York friends have a decent chance of snow on Christmas this year. Interesting, huh? Prediction markets also allow you to monetize your expertise and your personal areas of interest. How many people are gamers in the audience and feel like they know more about gaming than the average person? Great. We have markets for you. What about AI? Is anyone studying AI model progress and capability? Great. This is one of the most innovative areas to watch right now. We have a whole category exploring exactly this. Who can tell me when the next Star Wars movie is going to hit theaters? Okay. For us Star Wars fans, or maybe just me, this one's a bit of a freebie because it's been announced already. It looks like 8% of people don't trust the Hollywood timelines.
So when we talk about democratizing trading, it's not just about giving people access to what the elites have. It's also about making trading more personal and enabling people to trade what really matters to them, especially in cases where they would feel confident going against conventional wisdom or where they may have a unique edge, like in this example for music fans. Another thing we love about prediction markets is you can zero in your trade on a hyper-specific outcome in a way that can be difficult to do with stocks. Let's say you're convinced that a certain company is going to hit a very specific milestone, like Tesla delivering 400,000 or more cars. So you buy some shares, the company hits that milestone, and the stock goes down. Has anyone experienced that?
With prediction markets, you can invest solely in the outcome itself without having to worry about other exogenous factors that may affect the stock price. Warner Bros.' acquisition is another great example that's happening right now. But the thing about the prediction markets that excites me the most is that they generate a valuable forecast that's useful to everyone, not just traders. There's a lot of information in the world. You're getting it at all hours from so many different sources. But if you follow the money, you tend to get the truth. And we saw this most clearly in the market that started it all, the 2024 presidential election. We offer a much wider array of political contracts today.
So even if you don't want to trade these, prediction markets help you make sense of the world and see where the wisdom of the crowd stands on a very particular issue. And this is what's most exciting to us about this product. Just browsing it like we're doing now makes you smarter and more informed. So it's for these reasons that I believe we're at the very beginning of a prediction market supercycle. And as it progresses, we should expect to see adoption and volumes continuing to grow, potentially into the trillions of contracts traded each year. Our competitors scrambling to follow and figure out how to offer these products or risk becoming insignificant. And this is a big one: significant disruption of multiple industries, not just trading. Earlier, I showed one of the many weather contracts we offer on the platform. Here's another one.
Some people have already started to realize that using prediction markets can be cheaper than conventional fire, flood, and hurricane insurance. You can just place a trade on your phone without having to deal with a traditional broker. And I'm sure the $8 trillion insurance industry is starting to pay attention to this. So I think prediction markets are going to change the world for the better. Perhaps they already have. Now, you may have noticed that I haven't mentioned or showed the most popular category of prediction markets on Robinhood. Any guesses?
Sports.
Exactly. Sports. Well, we've been cooking especially hard on sports for our sports fans. So let's get Grace and Adam to the stage, who will show you how we're redefining the sports experience on Robinhood. Come on up, guys.
All right. Thanks, Vlad. So Adam and I were debating backstage whether this is a prediction markets crowd.
You know, Grace thinks it's less than half of the people here, but I think this is a prediction market crowd. I'd actually take the other side of that trade, and I actually think about 80% of you here have actually traded prediction markets.
Well, that's quite bullish. And Adam, we know you're not great with predictions. So since we have a full house here today, why don't we ask the audience with their paddle, hold up a yes if you've traded prediction markets before. Wow.
Look at that. Look at that, Grace. I'm not saying I called it, but I definitely called it. This is a prediction markets crowd. I'm curious, though, of those who have traded, how many of you have used our sports markets? Okay. Great. That's a lot of people here. Now, we're here today to show you some of the most requested enhancements for you. So Grace, why don't you take it away?
All right. So I know many of you guys are passionate about sports. And in the last few months, we have completely reimagined the sports experience. To access prediction markets, you're probably used to accessing it from the home screen. But we've introduced another way for you to explore sports. Now, when you go to search, you'll see an elevated search experience. From there, you can navigate to the brand new Sports Hub. And here, you'll find everything in one place: live games, upcoming games, and a quick way to navigate to any sport or league that you're interested in. I see here that there is a San Antonio-New York game happening in pro basketball right now. Why don't we take the audience there?
Sure. You know, Grace, one thing I was going to say, it's a big game. It's a championship game. It's not the championship game, but it's a championship game.
You know what they say, a trophy's a trophy, right? So what Adam is showing you is the elevated and enhanced game page, which shows you real-time scores, live trading activity, and a really easy way to trade winners, spreads, and totals. In addition to the Sports Hub and the game page, we have also recently added three new things. First, limit orders, which allow you to set your entry and exit price. Second, game notifications, so you'll never miss a game start or a close game. And third and last, our new daily sports newsletter from Sherwood Media called Scoreboard. If you want to subscribe, you can actually screen grab the QR code that's right behind me. But there's even more to show. So Adam, why don't you take it from here?
Thanks, Grace. So one of the other areas we wanted to show you is how this works across different sports. And what I'm going to do is let's go to the Thursday game between L.A. and Seattle. And you'll see here we have all the same enhancements that Grace just showed you that you saw from the pro basketball game. But we didn't stop there. Starting today, we're rolling out two new features that many of you have been requesting. First, something we've heard from everybody is player markets. Yeah. Now you can trade event contracts based on individual player performance, not just the result of the game. That means you can trade whether a player is going to score a touchdown, how many passing yards, receiving yards, or rushing yards they'll have for a specific game.
So if you're watching a game thinking, "Puka's definitely getting the end zone," or maybe " Smith-Njigba has been explosive recently. He's going to have more than 100 receiving yards," you could trade those views. So Grace, I got another question for you. Who are you watching in this game?
Recently, I've been liking Williams.
Williams? All right. Let's put a trade on Williams. Let me just navigate here and just say that Williams is going to score a touchdown. So I'm going to go ahead and click on any. And you'll see it brings up typical buy order here. I'm going to go ahead and let's buy it. And then, Grace, for this example, why don't we go ahead and just buy $10 worth of this contract? You can see it's going to pay out $20. We'll go ahead and review it, swipe up, and boom, there you have it. We're now long. That was pretty cool, right, Grace?
That's pretty neat.
Yeah. Next up, for those of you who are looking for more ways to trade, we're excited to launch what we call preset combos, which are just below the player contracts down here. For those of you that may not know, combos involve combining multiple events into one contract that allow you to get in at a lower entry price for a higher potential payout. Preset combos are curated, ready-made combinations that involve trading the winner and the total for the specific game. So if I think that L.A. is going to win and they're going to score more than over 44.5 points, I can go ahead and I can select it. And in a similar fashion of what I just showed you, I can go ahead and hit the buy button. Let's put another $10 on this trade.
You can see it's going to pay out 35 if correct. Again, I'll review it, swipe up, and now I currently have 35 contracts for this particular combo. The beauty of these preset combos is they're fast, approachable, and a perfect entry point for anyone who wants something more dynamic than a single outcome event. Both player contracts and preset combos are coming to Pro Football first, and we'll start rolling out today. If you're live in the audience, you'll be getting access to them right now.
All right, Adam. So what if someone wants full control? What if I want to craft my own combo?
You know, Grace, I had a feeling you'd say something like that.
I think we came prepared with a solution. So the moment you've been waiting for, custom combos are coming. Let me show you how that will work. So Adam, who's your favorite to win this Thursday's game?
You know, Grace, I'm from Chicago, and I don't like either of these teams.
Oh, geez.
But for the sake of this demo, I think we'll go with L.A. I think L.A. is going to win.
Okay. So being from L.A., I think that's the right choice. All right. Any thoughts on total points scored?
You know, I think they're going to score a lot of points in this game. I'm going to go ahead and select the over, but that shows 44.5. But you know what? I actually think they're going to score more than that. I'm going to actually change this and move this over to 47.5.
All right. Why don't we add one more leg? Who do you think will score a touchdown?
You know, I know we traded Williams earlier, but I think Puka's is going to get in the end zone in that game. So why don't we select him?
And just for fun, why don't you throw on a couple more legs?
Why not, right? We're having fun.
Yeah.
All right. Let's maybe throw a Smith-Njigba there, and let's just say Kupp. Let's just see if he can get in the end zone too.
Awesome. So what Adam just showed there is the power of custom combos. You can mix and match the exact outcomes you believe in across players, teams, spreads, totals, and turn your unique read of the game into a trade. Best of all, custom combos are coming in January in time for the playoffs. So what we showed today, combos, really lay a groundwork for a new era of prediction markets. They will begin within single games, but we plan on bringing them across games and ultimately across entire categories. Imagine mixing your predictions in sports, culture, politics, really any category into one trade. This is really just the beginning of prediction markets here at Robinhood. And we're incredibly excited for what's ahead. And with that, thank you. And back to you, Vlad.
All right. Give them a round of applause.
For all us sports fans, you no longer need all these pesky sports apps. You can do everything in your financial super app of choice, so Grace and Adam have illustrated the power of combos, the ability to put multiple predictions together into one custom trade. We're starting with sports, but we see a world where two things happen, quite possibly rather quickly. Number one, you should expect the number and variety of prediction markets on the platform to increase at a rapid rate. Remember, we started from one, and we've gone to thousands in just the past year, and second, you'll be able to combine any of them into a custom trade that can be priced for you in real time. What all this means is that you'll be able to trade and hedge pretty much anything.
Now, at this point, you may be thinking, this might get a little complicated, right? How will I make sense of tens, potentially hundreds of thousands of markets and millions of potential combinations of all these different markets, not to mention all the stocks, options, and cryptos that are already available on Robinhood? That's where Robinhood Cortex comes in. So less than one year ago, when we first introduced our in-house financial intelligence, we promised that it would make its way through the entire Robinhood experience. Today, we're excited to deliver on that and show you what Robinhood looks like when you can talk directly to Cortex. This is going to be really exciting.
So we have three of our top minds sitting right here who will show you what's rolling out in the coming months, starting with the man who you may remember from HOOD Summit, the mythical Sam Nordstrom. Come on up.
Thanks, Vlad. Excited to be back up here. Over the past year, we've been rolling out Cortex Digest to all of our gold customers, expanding coverage to more than 1,000 stocks, cryptocurrencies, and recently, ETFs. Who here has been using Cortex Digests? Let me see your paddles if you found them helpful. Wow, that's awesome. A lot of green. But there's one important digest that's still missing, particularly for those of us who are diversification hounds. To give you a hint, I'll tell you how I use Robinhood each day. I open up the app. I check my portfolio movement. I scan through my positions to find out what's driving it and what's moving so that I can figure out where to focus. So what would make this much easier for me would be a digest for my... Any guesses? All right. I think you guys got it.
Introducing Portfolio Digests. Portfolio Digest is your own personalized portfolio briefing. It decodes what moved in your portfolio, why it happened, and what's coming next, delivered directly in-app. Let's take a look. From the portfolio page, I can find digests below the chart in a new section devoted to summarizing the highlights in my portfolio. Here, I'll see top movers, drivers, key events, and a portfolio digest every time one is available for me to read. Tapping in, I can see how my portfolio is performing relative to my benchmarks, for me, the S&P 500 and Bitcoin, and a summary of how my portfolio is performing that day. Below, I get an explanation of the macro factors that are impacting my portfolio. Today, it looks like there's some mixed economic data that's weighing down markets and my portfolio a bit, but Bitcoin has gained due to supportive technicals.
Cortex also identifies the top drivers and movers in my account. Today, I can see that Microsoft and Tesla are driving up my portfolio returns, while Meta and Doge are moving the most, and for each, I get a summary of how it moved, what caused it to do so, and how it relates to my portfolio. Finally, it also highlights upcoming events that could impact my returns, and if any of these correspond to a stock or event contract on Robinhood, I can drill in directly from here to find out more. Since we've been testing Portfolio Digest, it has completely changed how I use Robinhood. Now, the first thing I do is dive into my digest to see what's happening and where to focus, but this is just the beginning of what we're rolling out with Cortex.
Here to share a little more is our very own Oren Naim . Let's give him some applause and get him pumped up to come up here. So, Orin, any feedback from using Portfolio Digest this past month?
You know I'm a fan, so that's an easy question. But I think you missed a little Easter egg there. Can you go back up for a second?
Yeah.
Scroll up for a second. That graph, Sam, that graph looks familiar.
That's a good eye. If anyone here watched our HOOD Summit broadcast, you'll recall that our customers voted on the two features that they wanted most back in the app this coming year, and while it's only been a couple months since, we're excited to be bringing back portfolio comparison tracking within digests.
That's awesome. One more question before we leave. What about strategies, Sam?
Another good question. Well, as you should know, as a strategies customer, you get human-generated insights directly from our very non-AI team of human experts who manage your portfolio already into what's driving their decisions and what's going on in your portfolio. But now, you also get Cortex-generated AI digests into what's happening in your portfolio. And these are paired with human-written explanations of the strategic purpose that each asset serves in your portfolio and why we're holding it.
That's awesome. Humans and AI living peacefully together. Give it up for Sam Nordstrom. All right, so before we move forward and show you the next generation of Robinhood Cortex, we thought it would be interesting to share a little bit more about how it all began. You see, Cortex didn't start out as a financial assistant. It actually began as a support bot. And to be honest, not a very good one. It could answer basic questions, mostly pulling content out of our help center, but not much more than that. It wasn't very different from what you see from most support bots out there today, but we kept working on it. First, we plugged it into internal systems and your account data, so now Cortex knows you. It knows your portfolio, your positions, even things like your cost basis, all in real time.
So we can design it to help you understand exactly what's impacting your portfolio and make better decisions. Now, to do this well, we needed more than just your account information. Since Cortex is built for trading, it had to be incredibly accurate. This means grounding every answer in high-quality sources like real-time market data or analyst reports. You see, other agents just aren't built for this. As great as these generic models are, we saw them fail miserably on real-time financial benchmarks. ChatGPT, for example, failing 97 out of 100 screener questions. It all comes down to missing data. And so we have these two qualities we haven't seen in other financial AI products: highly specific personalization and real-time accuracy. But Cortex needed one other thing to be really useful.
That's the ability to take action, whether it's setting up a trade or just changing an account setting, doing this seamlessly all through conversation. Now, the best way to see how this all comes together is really just to show you. So for that, let's bring up Girish Gupta on stage.
Thanks, Oren. All right. Until now, Cortex has been behind the scenes powering AI experiences across Robinhood. Today, for the first time, you get to meet Cortex, your personal financial assistant inside the Robinhood app. Now, Cortex is not just advanced intelligence for your money. It's also an incredibly natural way to use Robinhood. How's my Microsoft investment doing? You can type or speak your questions to Cortex. But I guarantee you, once you start talking to your portfolio, you'll never go back. Now, Cortex knows right off the bat, my Microsoft position is down about 8%. That's not a good look in this market. And right under that, I see some quick hits on what's been driving the price. But I think I need to find something with some more upside. Help me find some stocks that have been unfairly punished by the market, large caps only.
Now, this is something I struggle with all the time, going from idea to trade. Cortex can help me do it in a few questions. First, Cortex is going to figure out what I mean by unfairly punished. It's going to use its access to real-time data to set up some filters, things like implied volatility, volume, analyst ratings, PE ratios. And then it's going to use those filters to scan the universe of stocks and pick out five names that I should take a look at. It lays them all out right here in this table with some really interesting data that I should take a look at. Now, check this out. Right below the answer, Cortex is going to help me go deeper. It's laid out some related questions like this one. Compare the three-month performance of these stocks to Microsoft.
Now, this is something that I haven't seen any other AI in the market do. It's going to take the three-month performance of the stocks that I screened for and compare it to something I own, and then lay it all out in this beautiful and interactive comparison chart. And check this out. I can scrub all the way back to the beginning of the year and see how all of these stocks have performed. But taking a look at this view, it seems like Oracle's taken a beating lately. I wonder if now is a good time to get in. Run a technical analysis on Oracle. Now, Cortex cares about data and accuracy, and it does it fast. Right here, I get a full technical picture.
We got the trend breakdowns, momentum indicators, volatility, things like levels that I need to pay attention to, including the support zone and resistance zone. So who wants to see something really cool? All right. Okay. It's a demo, guys. All right. All right. Let's try this. Buy two shares of Oracle when it drops below 180. All right. This is my favorite thing that Cortex can do. From just a simple voice command, it lays out a limit order for me with the number of shares, the limit price, the session, the time in force, all here for me to review. I hit submit, and now my order is ready to execute. Pretty cool. So let's talk about some other things that Cortex can do. Who here is a football fan? Yeah? Okay. Some of you. I'm from New York.
So those of you who follow football probably know that my team has a less than 1% chance of making it all the way this year. But I want to hear from you guys. Who do you think is going to go all the way? Let's use those paddles again. Now, who out there thinks that L.A. is going to win the big game? Okay. There's a good number of yeses out there. Let's see what Cortex thinks. Who's going to win the Pro Football Championship? Now, Grace and Adam told you how we scaled to thousands of contracts on this platform. But finding the right one with the insight that you need is where Cortex shines. Check this out. Right here, we can see that L.A. has the highest chance of going all the way this year. Pretty sweet. Okay.
So that's just a fraction of what Cortex can do: answer your support questions, help you turn ideas into trades, help you go deep on your portfolio, or lean into the prediction markets. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. We've got some exciting surprises for our advanced traders coming soon. Hey, Vlad, anything you want to ask Cortex?
That was really exciting. I've been hanging out in the audience, and everyone is still thinking about the aliens thing. So.
Yep. Yep.
So this is what everyone's interested in hearing about. Let's say the audience is right. The government does announce there are aliens in the next year. How will that impact my portfolio? Or, I guess, in this case, your portfolio.
Let's see. How will aliens impact my portfolio? Now.
Have you seen the age of disclosure, Girish?
I haven't seen it yet. It's on my list.
All right.
Now, Cortex isn't going to give us personalized advice or recommendations. But it will call out some strategies for us to look at. Check it out.
I got some potential beneficiaries, technology spillovers. I think this looks credible. But what I'd really like to see is that summarized, and can it be done in a Yoda voice?
Ooh.
We'll try that.
All right. Let's give it a shot.
Do you guys see Yoda up front? Pretty cool.
Simplify that and answer it like Yoda.
This is really putting it to the superintelligence test.
Here we go.
No data on aliens the markets have. So all is guesswork, this is.
Sounds wiser already.
Can Cortex do that?
All right. Thank you all. I hope you all enjoy talking to Cortex as much as I do.
Thank you, Girish. By the way, the team has assured me that they'll be delivering Portfolio Digests and the all-new Cortex experience in time for my birthday, which is February 13th of next year. You might have noticed right before Valentine's Day, right? So for those of us looking for financial companionship, maybe Cortex will be helpful as well. So over time, we see Cortex helping you with everything around your financial life. We're starting with analyzing trades, but we can see it helping you plan for big goals and eventually even things like taxes and estate planning.
If you take Cortex, prediction markets, and Robinhood Social, which you saw a few weeks back at the HOOD Summit, Robinhood will become not just the place that you execute your trades, but also the source of the idea and the inspiration behind that trade, a place where you get smarter about money, one of the best sources for financial information and education in the world, and most importantly, a community where we can learn from one another. All right. I know what you're thinking. You want to do the paddle thing one last time. It's fun, isn't it? Who's excited to try out the new products? And let us know how we can keep making them better and better. Oh. How about that? I wanted to end with an auction, but George Lucas wouldn't let us sell the Yoda out front. All right.
Thank you for making this our best year ever. We're not done yet. We actually have something pretty special for you coming up. HOOD Holidays are launching on December 25th, right inside your Robinhood app. Whether you're looking for something to do after opening presents or instead of opening presents, check out your favorite financial super app on late Christmas Day. All right. Thank you for watching. Enjoy the rest of the evening.