Robinhood Rolls Out AI Trading Agents, Crypto Perpetual Futures, Cboe Earnings Contracts and Weekend Stock Trading Plans

Robinhood Markets used its 2026 HOOD Summit on September 29 to unveil a cluster of new trading products aimed at active traders: AI-driven "Robinhood Agents" that can place trades inside the app, U.S. crypto perpetual futures offered through Bitstamp, Cboe-listed binary "earnings contracts" tied to company financial metrics, and a plan to extend equities trading into weekends. The announcements, detailed in a Robinhood newsroom post and reported by Yahoo Finance and CNBC, push the brokerage deeper into territory now contested by crypto-native platforms and legacy brokers alike.

AI agents can trade, but only with guardrails customers set

Robinhood's newsroom post describes setup as simple: a customer names an agent, opens a dedicated agentic account, and picks a model from several AI labs including OpenAI, with usage of OpenAI's GPT-Luna free through the end of the year. The agent can only touch funds held in that separate account. Trade approvals default to on, meaning, in Robinhood's own words, "With approvals on, your agent cannot place an order until you approve it." Customers can turn that setting off, after which the agent can place orders without per-trade confirmation. CoinDesk reported that agents cannot borrow on margin at launch.

An upcoming feature called Loops, per the newsroom post, will let a strategy run as a standing instruction "continuously in the background, including when you're not using the app," and may place, modify or cancel trades automatically without prompting approval on each transaction. Robinhood's disclosures also draw a clear liability line: Robinhood Agents is provided by Robinhood Labs, LLC, which the company states "is not a broker-dealer, investment adviser, futures commission merchant, or money transmitter," and the newsroom post says "Robinhood does not control, supervise, monitor, recommend, or audit agents," with customers assuming all risk for agent-executed trades.

Gina Pasqua-Abeles, Robinhood's senior director of product management, told CoinDesk she thinks of the agent "as an extension, like a trading tool that's mainly for research that can execute trades," adding, "We do expect users to still have some level of oversight over what their agent is doing." Robinhood said in its newsroom post that since opening agentic trading to third-party AI agents in May, more than 150,000 customers have opened agentic accounts, with agents now using Robinhood's tools almost 30 million times a day.

Crypto perpetual futures through Bitstamp, tiered leverage by position size

The new perpetual futures are, in Robinhood's words, "Offered by Robinhood Derivatives through Bitstamp," with a flat fee of one basis point (0.01%) per trade through year-end. Robinhood Derivatives, LLC is registered with the CFTC as a futures commission merchant and is a member of the National Futures Association, according to the company's own disclosure.

Robinhood's support documentation on collateral tiers by contract shows leverage scaling down as position size grows. On one contract tier structure, positions up to $1 million qualify for up to 10x leverage (10% collateral required), stepping down to 7x, 5x, 4x, 3x and 2x at higher thresholds before reaching 1x (100% collateral) above $20 million. Other contracts in Robinhood's tables cap maximum leverage at 3x even at the smallest position sizes, dropping to 2x between $5 million and $10 million and to 1x (100% collateral) above $10 million. Robinhood warns that "If your collateral falls too low, your position may be partially or fully liquidated," and the app provides stop-loss and take-profit orders, real-time liquidation-price tracking and at-risk alerts.

Cboe-listed earnings contracts pay out on financial metrics, not stock price

Robinhood also introduced earnings contracts, described in its newsroom post as binary options contracts made available through Cboe that let customers trade on company-specific KPIs, such as whether a company beats earnings or hits a revenue target. Settlement is determined not by the stock's market price but by whether a metric reported in the issuer's earnings-related SEC filing meets the stated condition. Each contract carries a maximum payout of $1.00 and a multiplier of 1, versus the standard 100 multiplier for equity options. The contracts require options approval and, per Robinhood, will roll out to eligible customers over the coming weeks; both Cboe and Robinhood will waive contract fees through year-end, subject to regulatory review, Yahoo Finance reported.

Weekend equities trading pending regulatory review, powered by Bruce ATS

Robinhood said weekend trading is "coming soon, pending regulatory review," extending its existing 24 Hour Market, which has run from Sunday 8 p.m. ET through Friday 8 p.m. ET since 2023, into Saturdays and Sundays for a curated list of stocks and ETFs across all account types. The session will run on Bruce ATS, an alternative trading system operated by Bruce Markets LLC, an SEC-registered broker-dealer, according to a Bruce Markets press release, which said the expansion will be funded by new strategic investments from majority shareholder PEAK6 Investments and from Robinhood Markets, with launch expected "in the coming months."

Bruce Markets said it will expand its use of Nasdaq's trading technology for matching, while clearing, carrying and custody will be handled by Apex Clearing Corporation, a subsidiary of Apex Fintech Solutions. Bruce ATS CEO Jason Wallach told the HOOD Summit, as transcribed by Stock Analysis, that the firm currently runs five overnight sessions a week from 8 p.m. ET Sunday through 4 a.m. ET Friday, and is "working closely with regulators" on compliance alongside the central clearing party. He said the weekend push reflects market demand rather than a regulatory mandate, and that Bruce is working with large liquidity providers to build a concentrated book of liquidity for launch. Wallach added that the structure will remain limit-orders-only, since "the concept of a market order ... really does not exist outside of the core session," calling that a long-standing investor protection.

Wallach cited overnight volume data tracked across three ATSs, including Bruce: from August to August, nightly volume rose from 22 million shares to roughly 109 million shares, and executed notional rose from $1.2 billion to $5 billion a night — increases of 87 million shares (109 − 22) and $3.8 billion (5 − 1.2) per night, which Wallach characterized as "nearly a 400% increase" in volume. Robinhood Chief Brokerage Officer Steve Quirk said the weekend rollout will begin "with a limited number of symbols and then quickly ramping up as we become more comfortable with the liquidity," following the same approach used for the 24/5 launch. Quirk also said Sunday night is currently the busiest overnight session because two days of news bunch up, and that many of Robinhood's 28 million customers, half of them new to brokerage, are "puzzled by a model where this market isn't open all the time."

Market reaction and competitive backdrop

CNBC reported that Robinhood shares were little changed on Wednesday following the announcements, though MarketBeat noted the stock gapped up before the open after BTIG Research raised its price target to $135 from $125, a $10 increase, while maintaining a buy rating. MarketBeat said Robinhood shares last traded at $115.2970 on volume of 10,894,691 shares, after previously closing at $116.22 and opening at $122.61.

CNBC framed the rollout as intensifying competition with crypto-native platforms such as Coinbase and traditional brokerages such as Charles Schwab, which added 24/7 trading in select cryptocurrency futures on its thinkorswim platform this year. Yahoo Finance noted the earnings contracts build on a prediction-markets business that generated $156 million in revenue in the second quarter, and follow an earlier-September deal with Crypto.com to carry event contracts from its OG.com unit on the Robinhood app. Robinhood also took its Robinhood Social feature out of beta for all eligible U.S. customers and introduced a live earnings experience letting users watch earnings calls and trade in real time, per the company's newsroom post.

Robinhood's own materials caution that the product plans are forward-looking statements, as of September 29, 2026, subject to "regulatory developments, market demand, legal challenges, technological changes, our reliance on third parties, and economic conditions."

Bottom Line

Robinhood is betting that AI-assisted trading, leveraged crypto derivatives, earnings-linked binary contracts and a seven-day equities market can deepen engagement among active traders, but each product carries explicit caveats: agent-placed trades shift risk to the customer, perpetual futures carry liquidation exposure that scales with leverage tier, and weekend equities trading remains contingent on regulatory review and a phased liquidity ramp-up rather than an immediate full launch.