Robinhood as controversial as ever as it makes market debut

Shares of Robinhood — the brokerage app popular among millennials for its commission-free trading — got off to a wobbly start Thursday, its first day as a public company.

Trading under the ticker HOOD, the online brokerage shifted between gains and losses around its opening price of $38 a share. It ended the day down $3.18, or 8.4%, at $34.82 a share. Before the company's market debut on the Nasdaq, Robinhood priced shares at the low end of a $38-to-$42 range, selling 52.4 million shares and raising nearly $2 billion through an initial public offering. The company took an atypical step in setting aside as much as 35% of the shares it offered for traders using its app. Those folks would normally have to wait until the stock's appearance on an exchange to purchase it.