Munger Blasts Robinhood for Short-Term Gambling

Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charlie Munger has been an outspoken firebrand and as the right-hand of Warren Buffet, his words have had gravitas. He has blasted Robinhood over the weekend for what he described as “disgusting practices” which are now forcing the company to “unravel.”

Munger on Robinhood: Too Much of a Good Thing

He criticized the company for “overdoing a good idea,” and his comments echoed with some of the investment world’s elite as Munger spoke during the annual shareholder meeting on Saturday.

He previously vituperated against cryptocurrencies, calling them a Ponzi scheme while his partner, Buffet, has chosen to remain mostly silent on the matter of digital tokens, reflecting on a broader adoption of these assets by partners.

Munger said that Robinhood was betting on something of “short-term gambling” and criticized the “big commissions, hidden kickbacks, and so on.” He called the core Robinhood model unreliable and said that the company was finally facing the consequences of what it wanted to sell as a viable product.

Munger was somewhat glad that the model was unraveling, too, as it confirmed his own view. In the case of cryptocurrencies, though, Munger has been anything but right in the way he describes or perceives cryptocurrencies, which skyrocketed again in 2021 and most of 2022 and have been drawing interest from mainstream investors in droves.

A Dirty Place for Making Money

The man has been particularly critical of Robinhood over the past year or so, calling the company a “dirty place for making money” and lambasting it during times of dips. Robinhood surged a lot when traders began discovering the opportunity to purchase cryptocurrencies on the cheap, such as dogecoin, and hoping to flip their investment into the millions worth of dollars.

Buffet, who has been mostly quiet after delivering several critical remarks about Robinhood and cryptocurrencies over the past years, has remained mostly quiet. He did describe what was going on with Wall Street, though, as investors turning the stock market into a “gambling parlor.