Robinhood agentic trading: how to use it to invest

Agentic trading is Robinhood's name for letting software act on your behalf inside your brokerage. Before May 2026, an AI assistant could tell you what it thought about a stock, and then you went to the Robinhood app and placed the order yourself. With agentic trading, the assistant connects to your Robinhood login, reads what you own, and can place the order itself in an account set aside for that purpose.

Robinhood announced it on May 27, 2026 as a beta, describing the company as “open to agents”. The connection works through the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the open standard many AI assistants use to talk to outside tools. Robinhood publishes one link, the Robinhood Trading MCP, and any compatible agent can use it after you sign in on Robinhood's own page and approve access. Robinhood names Claude Code, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, Codex, Codex CLI, Cursor and Grok as supported clients, and Perplexity, Replit and Poke among others.

So “what is agentic trading” has a short answer: an AI agent with permission to place orders, inside limits the broker sets. The limits are the interesting part. An agent connected this way can read all your Robinhood accounts (positions, balances and order history) and can trade in exactly one of them.

When you connect an agent for the first time, Robinhood offers to open a new account named Agentic. It is a self-directed individual brokerage account like the one you already have, with one difference: it is the only place a connected agent is allowed to place orders.

Your primary Robinhood account stays where it is. The agent can see it, which is what lets it talk about your real holdings, but it cannot buy or sell anything in it. That separation is the core safety feature of the whole design. Whatever an agent does, it does with the money you chose to put in the Agentic account, and nothing more.

A few practical details from Robinhood's support pages:

• You need a primary individual investing account in good standing to open one.
• Robinhood lets you hold up to 10 self-directed individual accounts, and the Agentic account counts toward that number.
• The Agentic account starts empty. You fund it with a transfer in the Robinhood app, the same way you would fund any account.
• Through Robinhood's MCP, the account supports stocks, ETFs, options and crypto. Which of those a given agent uses depends on the app doing the trading.

A common question in any Robinhood agentic account review is whether you can point an agent at your existing account instead. You cannot. The second account is required, and given how new agent trading is, the separation is the part worth keeping.

Robinhood built the connection; other apps decide what to do with it. Today there are three realistic routes for a retail investor. They differ in setup, in what the agent is designed to do, and in how much control you keep.

1. Walnut: investing with no setup

Walnut is an AI investing app that connects to Robinhood's official agent connection, the same Robinhood Trading MCP that Claude and ChatGPT use. You choose Robinhood on Walnut's Brokerage page, or ask the Walnut assistant to connect it, and you sign in on Robinhood's own page. Walnut never sees your Robinhood password. There is no ChatGPT account, Developer Mode, config file or MCP link to paste.

Once connected, Walnut reads all your Robinhood accounts, including US stock and ETF positions with average cost, so the assistant can talk about your actual gains and how concentrated you are. In the Agentic account, after you approve, Walnut places basket buys and recurring investments. It works on the web and in the Walnut iOS and Android apps.

What it is better at: investing to a plan. Target weights, a dollar amount split across several stocks, and a buy that repeats on a schedule. What it does not do: sells, options or crypto through Robinhood. If you want those, the next two routes cover more ground.

2. ChatGPT or Claude with Robinhood's MCP link

You add https://agent.robinhood.com/mcp/trading as a connector in your assistant and sign in to Robinhood. In ChatGPT this requires turning on Developer Mode under Settings, then Security & login. In Claude Desktop or Claude Code you add it as a custom connector. Our guide to the Robinhood MCP server covers each client step by step.

What it is better at: breadth. Robinhood's MCP exposes tools for equities, options and crypto, watchlists, alerts and market data, and a general assistant can combine them with web search and your own instructions. If you want to ask an unusual question, or trade something Walnut does not handle, this is the most flexible route.

The tradeoff is setup and supervision. A general assistant has no built-in idea of a target allocation, so you supply the plan in every conversation. And because the full tool set is available, the guardrails are mostly the ones you write. Robinhood's own documentation notes that if you tell the agent to act without asking, it can trade without your confirmation.

3. Robinhood Agents in the mobile app

Robinhood also built its own agent experience. In the Robinhood mobile app there is an Agents tab: you name an agent, open an Agentic account, choose a model and fund the account. Chat is paid for from a prepaid token balance, with a free starting balance. Approvals are on by default. For now it is mobile only.

What it is better at: staying entirely inside Robinhood. There is no second app and no outside connector, and the agent sits next to the rest of your Robinhood experience. If you already use Robinhood Cortex, the AI research tool for Robinhood Gold members, this route will feel familiar. For a broader look at Robinhood's AI features, see our guide to Robinhood AI.

A short comparison

• Setup: Walnut is a sign-in from the Brokerage page. Robinhood Agents is a few taps in the mobile app. ChatGPT needs Developer Mode and a connector link; Claude needs a custom connector.
• Where it runs: Walnut on web, iOS and Android. Robinhood Agents on mobile only. ChatGPT and Claude wherever those apps run.
• What it can trade: Walnut places buys of US stocks and ETFs. Robinhood's MCP, used from ChatGPT or Claude, covers stocks, ETFs, options and crypto.
• Built around: Walnut around baskets with target weights and recurring buys. General assistants around open conversation. Robinhood Agents around chat inside the Robinhood app.
• Approvals: Walnut asks for approval on every one-time buy and once when you set up a recurring plan. Robinhood Agents has approvals on by default. With ChatGPT or Claude, approval depends on what you instruct.

The steps below take about as long as a normal brokerage transfer. The only waiting is for your cash to arrive in the Agentic account.

1. Connect Robinhood

Open the Brokerage page in Walnut and choose Robinhood, or type “connect my Robinhood” to the Walnut assistant. Robinhood's sign-in opens in its own tab. You log in there, on Robinhood's page, and approve the connection.

2. Accept the Agentic account

During that sign-in, Robinhood offers to open the Agentic account. Say yes. Without it, Walnut can still read your portfolio, but it has nowhere it is permitted to place a buy.

3. Fund the Agentic account in the Robinhood app

Transfer cash into the Agentic account from the Robinhood app, from your bank or from your main Robinhood account. Walnut does not move money at any point. Put in only what you intend to invest through the agent.

4. Build a basket or pick one

A basket is a set of stocks or ETFs with a target weight for each. You can build one from your own idea (“AI chips: NVDA 30%, AVGO 25%, TSM 25%, AMD 20%”), ask the assistant to draft one around a theme, or start from one of the ready-made ideas in Walnut and adjust it. The weights are yours to set.

5. Approve the buy

Open the basket's Invest dialog and enter a dollar amount, or ask the assistant (“put $200 into my AI chips basket in Robinhood”). Walnut splits the amount by weight and shows you each order before anything is sent. Nothing is placed until you approve. Orders are market orders by dollar amount, placed during regular market hours, and each stock needs at least $1 under Robinhood's minimum.

6. Optionally, make it recurring

In the same Invest dialog, choose Recurring instead of One-time and pick a schedule, such as weekly or monthly. You approve the plan once, at setup. On each date Walnut spends the fixed amount across the weights, using cash already in the Agentic account. If the cash is not there, the run is skipped and retried, and you get a notification saying so.

Say you have moved $500 into your Agentic account and want to invest it across a basket called AI chips, with these target weights: NVDA 30%, AVGO 25%, TSM 25% and AMD 20%.

You open the basket, tap Invest, choose One-time and type $500. Walnut works out the split:

• NVDA: 30% of $500 = $150
• AVGO: 25% of $500 = $125
• TSM: 25% of $500 = $125
• AMD: 20% of $500 = $100

What you approve is those four dollar-amount market buys, in the Agentic account, at the next available price during market hours. Because the orders are by dollar amount, you end up with fractional shares, so a $150 order buys whatever fraction of an NVDA share $150 covers at the fill price. Every leg is well above Robinhood's $1 minimum.

If you then set the same basket to $100 a month, each monthly run would place $30 in NVDA, $25 each in AVGO and TSM, and $20 in AMD, as long as $100 of cash is waiting in the Agentic account on the day. Adding the money each month is your job, done in the Robinhood app or through a recurring transfer you set up there.

Afterwards the assistant can tell you, from your real positions and average cost, how the basket and the rest of your Robinhood holdings are doing, and how much of your total portfolio now sits in semiconductor stocks. That last figure matters if your main account already holds the same names.

The phrase “agentic trading” suggests a bot making rapid decisions. For most people, the more useful application is slower: carrying out a plan they have already made, consistently, without the friction of placing ten orders by hand.

That is why the investing tools are structured the way they are. A basket fixes the plan in advance, so the agent is executing a decision rather than inventing one. Target weights stop a single enthusiastic purchase from becoming half the portfolio. Recurring buys spread purchases over time, which is the idea behind dollar-cost averaging. Approvals mean every new decision passes through you.

Letting any agent trade without approval is a different proposition. Language models can misread an instruction, act on a stale price or a wrong ticker, and repeat a mistake quickly. An instruction like “trade whenever you think it's a good idea” hands those risks to software that nobody at the broker supervises. If you use a general assistant with the full Robinhood tool set, write the limits down explicitly: which account, what maximum size, and that it must ask before every order.

None of this makes an agent a source of advice. Walnut is not an investment adviser, and neither is a general AI assistant. The agent can do arithmetic, read your holdings and carry out what you approve. Whether a basket makes sense for you is still your decision.

The protections come from a few layers, and it helps to know which layer does what.

• The Agentic account: set by Robinhood. Agents can trade only there, with only the cash you transferred in. Your main account is view-only to the agent.
• Your sign-in: you authenticate on Robinhood's page. Walnut never receives your Robinhood password.
• Approvals: in Walnut, every one-time buy needs your approval, and a recurring plan is approved once when you create it. In Robinhood Agents, approvals are on by default. In a general assistant, approval depends on how you instruct it.
• Disconnecting: you can remove Walnut's access from the Brokerage page, and you can revoke any agent connection from your Robinhood settings. Disconnecting does not touch the holdings already in your accounts.
• Robinhood's rules: orders execute at Robinhood under Robinhood's rules and fee schedule. Walnut is not a broker.

Robinhood states plainly that it does not control, supervise or audit third-party agents, and that you take the risk of their trades. That applies to every external agent, Walnut and ChatGPT and Claude included. It is the strongest reason to keep the Agentic account sized to what you are comfortable having an agent act on.

For a step-by-step look at connecting a general assistant instead, see how to connect Robinhood to an AI assistant.

If your goal is to invest regularly in a few ideas, with a fixed split and a buy that repeats, Walnut covers that end to end without any assistant setup, from the web or your phone. If you want the widest set of actions, including sells, options and crypto, and are comfortable writing your own guardrails, ChatGPT or Claude with Robinhood's MCP link gives you the most room. If you want to stay inside one app and do not mind a mobile-only experience paid for with tokens, Robinhood Agents is the most self-contained.

These are not exclusive. The Agentic account belongs to you, and more than one app can be connected to your Robinhood login. Many people will research in a general assistant and invest through a tool that keeps the plan in one place.

Launch details come from the Robinhood newsroom, Robinhood is now open to agents, and from Axios coverage on May 27, 2026. Robinhood's product page is at robinhood.com/us/en/agentic-trading. How the Agentic account, the MCP link, supported clients and Robinhood's risk position work is described in the Agentic trading overview. Robinhood Agents setup is covered in Setting up an agent, and Cortex in Robinhood Cortex. Walnut is not a broker or an investment adviser, and this guide is educational and not personalized investment advice.